NFL moves Week 18 Eagles-Cowboys game to Saturday night

The Philadelphia Eagles’ Week 18 game against the Dallas Cowboys at Lincoln Financial Field will not be played as originally scheduled.

The NFL officially announced the 1:00 PM Eastern start time for Sunday, January 9 has been moved to Saturday, January 8 at 8:15 PM Eastern.

It’s the second year in a row that the Eagles’ season finale has been flexed. The league (quite unnecessarily) moved the Week 17 game between the Eagles and Washington Football Team to Sunday Night Football last season.

One could argue that this year’s reschedule was pretty pointless as well. The Eagles could very well be resting their starters against Dallas considering there isn’t a ton to play for. The Birds can move up to the No. 6 seed ... but they’d need a win plus a 49ers loss to move ahead of San Francisco.

List of complete NFC playoff picture seeding scenarios provided by true sicko Deniz Selman:

The Cowboys might decide to rest starters as well, especially considering they’ve been eliminated from clinching the No. 1 seed. They’re likely locked into the No. 4 position, though they do still have a slim chance of moving up a spot or two.

We’ll just have to wait and see how the teams approach this game. Perhaps we’ll glean more insight this week.

If you’re old (at heart, at least) like me, you might not love seeing a 1:00 PM start turn into a night start. I’d say it’s not something to lose sleep over ... but that’s literally what happens when the Eagles play so late.

The rescheduled game does help the Eagles in that it gives them a rest advantage over their opponent. That is, assuming the Eagles don’t play the Cowboys in the first round ... which is unlikely but not impossible. Then again, Dallas also benefits from the same advantage, so that’s not great.

In any case, it is what it is. The Eagles are playing on Saturday night in Week 18.

The details of their wild card playoff game, meanwhile, have yet to be determined.