From London to … Australia? Pondering the next international trip, and everything else to know ahead of Eagles-Jaguars.
Jalen Hurts and the Birds will face Trevor Lawrence and the Jags in London. Here’s what you need to know about their Week 5 matchup across the pond.
LONDON — Eagles green — in its varying colors — dotted portions of the viewing areas around Buckingham Palace Friday morning during the Horse Guards Parade, and fans filled the Philly-themed bar Passyunk Avenue in the city’s Waterloo district later in the afternoon during a 94-WIP live show.
My flight here on a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner with around 250 seats had plenty of Eagles gear and some “Go Birds!” exchanges as a form of salutation. And that was out of New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Eagles fans aren’t afraid to travel with their team. They traveled even further two years ago when the team opened the 2024 season in São Paulo, Brazil, for the first international Eagles game since a 2018 trip to London. This week is the team’s third game outside the U.S., and the NFL’s continued expansion of international contests means more are inevitably on the way.
Next stop: Australia?
Jordan Mailata, probably the most decorated Aussie to play in the NFL, hopes so. He watched this year’s Week 1 contest between the 49ers and Rams from Melbourne, the first ever NFL game in his home country, and felt a bit of FOMO. He said he was proud of his countrymen and women, and seeing 100,000 people in the seats day drinking before noon made him smile.
He hopes more games there helps grow the sport at a grassroots level to eventually get “more Aussies in the NFL.”
Mailata, who is from the Sydney suburb of Bankstown, also hopes to one day get the chance to bring the Eagles to his homeland.
“I guess I would be disappointed if I never got to, but being here and being able to represent Australia, Samoa, and even America is a badge that I always wear with pride and honor,” Mailata said in September. “If the day comes and I retire and I haven’t played back home, that’s OK. I’ve done my best here and represented as best as I could.”
In theory, an Eagles game in Australia could happen as soon as 2027. Jeffrey Lurie hasn’t been shy about not wanting to give up a home game after doing so in 2024. The Eagles have nine road games in 2027 and eight home games, making it possible a road game is moved overseas.
The Eagles do have marketing rights in Australia.
Sunday’s opponent, the Jacksonville Jaguars, not only has marketing rights in the UK, London is basically the organization’s second home.
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A word or two on the Eagles’ travel plans
I type this to you a bit lethargic early Friday afternoon London time, operating on little sleep. 7:25 p.m. is a little too early of a departure time across the Atlantic when the jet stream is blowing and the flight time dips below six hours. I’m not a good plane sleeper, and I can’t imagine having to play a football game tomorrow.
Then again, I didn’t have the luxury of a lie-flat seat on my commercial plane. (Tell more of your friends to subscribe to The Inquirer!)
If you’re a newsletter subscriber, this is hitting your inbox around the time the Eagles are landing here Saturday morning, less than 36 hours before Sunday’s kickoff. A lot has been made about the team’s decision, but with no bye week afterward, the team’s focus seemed to be on the back end of the trip rather than the front.
In that regard, they’re operating as if they’re in the eastern time zone the entire time. They left late in the evening Friday and land in the late morning here. They’ll get off the plane, get to their hotel outside of the city, have a walkthrough in the late afternoon, eat, and rest up. Their body clocks are going to say it’s 9:30 a.m., the same as yours will at the 2:30 p.m. local kickoff time on Sunday.
No, this is not like Sean McVay flying the Rams to Australia the day before that aforementioned Week 1 game. Los Angeles to Melbourne is a 15-hour flight. This is six.
“We went through all this,” Nick Sirianni said earlier this week. “I don’t want to get into too many specifics there. Like I said, we feel like this is giving our team the best chance to win, taking everything into account, jet lag included.”
How to watch Eagles vs. Jaguars
The Eagles and Jaguars get the standalone Sunday morning treatment. Their 9:30 a.m. ET kickoff will air locally on 6ABC and on the NFL Network. Dave Pasch has the play-by-play call while Jason Kelce and Kurt Warner are the analysts. Molly McGrath is the sideline reporter.
Merrill Reese and Mike Quick still have you covered on the radio broadcast on WIP (94.1-FM).
And just because the Eagles are playing a morning game doesn’t mean you have to stay home. Several area bars will be hosting brunch and showing the game on Sunday.
Final injury report
The Eagles will be without five of their 11 offensive starters from Week 1 when they play Sunday, and they’re also missing a backup-turned-starter in center Drew Kendall.
Lane Johnson announced his retirement on Tuesday. Cam Jurgens was traded on Wednesday. Saquon Barkley and DeVonta Smith have hamstring injuries. Landon Dickerson (knee) remains on injured reserve.
Want some good news? Dallas Goedert is slated to return from the knee injury that kept him out for two games.
Eagles
Out
RB Saquon Barkley, hamstring
WR Hollywood Brown, ankle
S Marcus Epps, groin
C Drew Kendall, knee
WR DeVonta Smith, hamstring
Questionable
EDGE Jonathan Greenard, ankle
Jaguars
Out
CB Jaylon Jones, hamstring
Doubtful
S Eric Murray, concussion
Storylines to watch
This week has been more about who isn’t here anymore than who is. Johnson and Jurgens no longer being with the team made for a changing of the guard at sorts on the offensive line.
At tackle, it means Markel Bell, a rookie third-round pick, is in line to start for the foreseeable future. At left guard, Willie Lampkin seems to be on track to start, at least until Landon Dickerson gets back. And Drew Kendall’s injury means Jake Majors seems to be in line to go from practice squad to starter.
“I just got to go out there and seize it,” Bell said Wednesday about his opportunity. “That’s all. I’m taking it head-on. I’m taking it full force. I just got to go out there and execute.”
There’s almost a foot between the two offensive linemen, but they’re driven by some of the same reasons.
Johnson had thought about retiring along with Jeff Stoutland. “I think it’s my sign,” he told a few confidants at the time. But after talking to the new offensive regime and other players around the league, he decided to come back to the Eagles. But the idea of retirement clearly never left Johnson’s mind.
With Johnson gone and Jurgens traded, Jeff McLane looked at the series of decisions and events that led to the current state of the offensive line — and wondered if the Eagles have strayed from their long-held philosophy of prioritizing the offensive line — on the latest episode of unCovering the Birds.
Johnson was still playing right tackle at an elite level, which will make it even more difficult for the offense to get back on track. Still, Sean Mannion has the same level of conviction in his ideas this week that he did when he interviewed in January. “We believe in the things that we’ve installed and that we’ve implemented,” Mannion said earlier this week.
Mannion’s offense piling up three-and-outs at a league-high rate means Vic Fangio’s defense is on the field far too often. It has been an issue in recent weeks, especially when the defense was forced to play more than 80 plays in Week 4. “I’m not going to insult your or anybody’s intelligence that, yeah, it has an effect, but we got to find a way to finish,” Fangio said.
Latest Week 5 odds
The Eagles were still 7½-point underdogs as of Friday afternoon at DraftKings. They have been touchdown underdogs in a regular-season game just once in the Sirianni era: Week 6 against Tampa Bay and Tom Brady in 2021, Sirianni’s first season.
The Eagles are on track to be underdogs for the third consecutive game for the first time since that 2021 season, when they opened the Sirianni era as underdogs in their first seven.
Check out more odds and player props for this week here.
Eagles-Jaguars predictions
For the second week in a row, we’re each picking the Eagles to lose by double digits.
Jeff McLane: Jaguars 27, Eagles 10
Jeff Neiburg: Jaguars 23, Eagles 13
Olivia Reiner: Jaguars 28, Eagles 17
Ryan Novozinsky: Jaguars 24, Eagles 7
Check out the reasoning behind our writers’ picks and McLane’s keys to the game.
Two numbers to know
15 and 4: The Eagles are the 15, and the Jaguars are the 4. The number being tracked here is the number of three-and-outs through four games.
The Eagles are the worst in the NFL, according to Next Gen Stats. The Jaguars are tied with four other teams with the fewest.
Here are a few more numbers worth paying attention to on Sunday.
What we’re saying about the Eagles
Here’s what our columnists are saying this week, starting with Marcus Hayes, who thinks the Eagles should treat Sunday as a scheduled loss.
Hayes: “If ever there was a moment for a scheduled loss in football, this is it. If they beat the Jaguars in London on Sunday, great, but there are more important concerns for the 2026 season. Sometimes, you’ve got to wave the white flag and accept the scheduled loss.” Read more.
David Murphy: “Do the Eagles no longer view themselves as a good team? At least, one that isn’t good enough to prioritize present value over future value? Are they tanking? Rebuilding? Packing it in? … There are different levels of ‘trying.’ And ‘trying’ is not something that a good organization can limit to one season.” Read more.
Mike Sielski: “Maybe he doesn’t have to suffer so much anymore. Maybe Lane Johnson can reflect on a career for which he deserves every honor, both for how he competed and for what he did just to allow himself to compete. The Eagles and their fans should be grateful and never let him forget they are.” Read more.
What the Jaguars are saying
There’s been a lot of distractions this week at the Eagles facility, and the Jaguars certainly know about all the personnel changes and injuries.
“We play their scheme, not their players,” linebacker Foye Oluokun said.
Jaguars coach Liam Coen on facing Vic Fangio: “You have to prepare for everything. He’s going to have his ‘gotchas’, right? Like, ‘Hey, I know when they’re doing this, this is what the percentages are. This is exactly what they’re going to do,’ and [then] he goes off those, and that’s what makes him such a good football coach.”
Read more about what the Jaguars are saying heading into Sunday’s game.
What else we’re reading and watching
