Week 3 of the 2023-24 NFL season will include the New Orleans Saints hosting the Philadelphia Eagles. The Saints are looking to break a three-year streak of not making the playoffs. They finished 9-8 last season, the second under Dennis Allen, but lost key tiebreakers to keep them out of the postseason.
Philadelphia is coming off an 11-6 campaign one year after rolling to an NFC Championship. The Eagles won 10 of their first 11 contests. They then lost six of their last seven, including a rout at the hands of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the wild-card round of the playoffs.
Each side made significant coaching changes after the year. New Orleans hired Klint Kubiak as new offensive coordinator while revamping most of their offensive staff. The Eagles changed coordinators on both sides of the ball, which included the hire of former Saints defensive assistant Vic Fangio.
This will be the 36th meeting between two franchises that have been very familiar with each other recently. They didn't play each other last season, breaking a string of five games over four straight years against each other. The previous three straight were in Philadelphia, with the last meeting in New Orleans between the teams during the 2019 divisional playoffs.
This is a look back at the history between New Orleans and Philadelphia.
• 16-19 (all-time record)
• 11-8 (home)
New Orleans and Philadelphia were division rivals during two of the first three years for the Saints, 1967 and 1969, in the NFL's Capitol Division. After losing the first seven games of their existence in 1967, New Orleans notched the first victory in franchise history with a 31-24 win over the Eagles at Tulane Stadium. In that game, Saints WR Walter ''Flea'' Roberts scored three touchdowns--one on a kickoff return, another on a fumble return, and the last via scoring reception.
The Saints would lose the 1967 rematch in Philadelphia, another road loss in 1968, and the first of two division matchups in 1969 in Philadelphia. New Orleans would then win their next three meetings against the Eagles in 1969, 1972, and 1974. All those victories were at home, when the Saints played in Tulane Stadium.
The first time these teams squared off in the Superdome was during the 1978 season. Philadelphia took a 24-17 victory, the second of five straight Eagles wins in the series after the Saints 1974 victory. The last four of those five wins were inside the Superdome.
New Orleans wouldn't defeat Philadelphia at the Superdome until 1985. Despite being significantly outgained in total yardage, the Saints forced five turnovers and scored a defensive touchdowns for a 23-21 win.
These teams each boasted two of the top defenses in the NFL from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s. They'd split their six meetings between 1985 to the end of 1993. The last of those matchups, however, would be one of the biggest in the series history between these teams.
The 1992 New Orleans Saints was arguably the finest during the ''Dome Patrol Era''. They rode an underrated offense and an elite defense to a 12-4 record and third straight playoff appearance. In the wild-card round, they'd host the Eagles, who they lost to in Philadelphia to open the year in a defensive slugfest.
New Orleans pulled out to a 17-7 halftime lead, which they extended to 20-7 early in the third quarter. After that, offensive ineptitude and a defensive collapse helped the Eagles to 29 unanswered points and a 36-20 Philadelphia win.
Those two losses kicked off six straight losses by the Saints to the Eagles between 1992 and 2003. Four of those losses were at home. The Saints finally snapped the skid in 2006 with a 27-24 defeat of the Eagles at home in 2006. In that game, QB Drew Brees connected with WR Joe Horn and K John Carney hit a field goal with no time remaining to pull out a comeback win.
The Saints and Eagles squared off again in the playoffs later that season, again in New Orleans because of a tiebreaker advantage earned with that prior win. Running backs Deuce McAllister and Reggie Bush combined for 239 scrimmage yards and three touchdowns to lift the Saints to an identical 27-24 win, again coming from behind for the victory.
New Orleans and Philadelphia have met four times in the playoffs, with the Saints taking three of those showdowns. One of those was a last-second 26-24 in the 2014 wild-card round in Philadelphia. It remains the only road playoff victory in New Orleans franchise history.
The last meeting between these teams was a 20-10 Saints win in Philadelphia during the next-to-last game of the 2022-23 season. It was the third consecutive year that the teams had met in Philadelphia, with the first two resulting in convincing victories for the Eagles.
New Orleans has won five of the last six times that they've hosted the Eagles in the Superdome, including the last three times. The last time the Saints would host Philadelphia was in a 2019 Divisional Round showdown.
New Orleans had destroyed the Eagles, defending Super Bowl champions, by a 48-7 score during a prime-time matchup in the Superdome earlier that season. The playoff rematch was much closer. Brees and WR Michael Thomas were complemented by some defensive heroics to turn a 14-7 halftime deficit into a 20-14 New Orleans victory.
This week 3 matchup against the Eagles will be the third of seven games the Saints play against the NFC in the first 10 weeks of the season. It's imperative that New Orleans gets off to a good start over the first half of the year.
Losses to fellow NFC teams dearly cost New Orleans the last three seasons, causing a missed postseason berth because of tiebreaker matchups. Given the number of in-conference matchups early in the year, getting off to a solid start is especially vital in 2024.
