Rich on What’s at Stake for the 2-4 Cowboys & the 2-4 Eagles on Monday Night Football in WK7

Two teams at 2-4 meet on Monday night, and Rich sees the stakes in plain terms. "This is it," he said. "Because you go to two and five, now you got a massive problem."

The one saving grace for both is the division. Nobody is running away with it, so a team that gets back on its feet could still string enough together, "one foot in front of the other," and make a run.

The Eagles at a crossroads

The more interesting fallout, in Rich's view, belongs to Philadelphia. If the Eagles fall to 2-5 with Saquon Barkley back, Tanner McKee at quarterback and the offensive line in its current state, the franchise faces a question it almost never has to ask.

Rich pointed to the Eagles defense and its championship quality. A team like that, he said, doesn't start pulling pieces apart just for draft position unless it is looking over the steering wheel and thinking, "Okay, if we wind up with five wins, we might as well get as much draft capital as possible."

"Howie Roseman and the Eagles are very rarely in that position," Rich said. "I don't remember the last time they were."

He framed it as a situation the Eagles didn't build for themselves, a team in deep win-loss trouble through no fault of how the roster was constructed.

Dallas holds the push

That is where the Cowboys come in. Rich said Dallas could be the team that pushes Philadelphia toward "that netherworld," which is exactly what the Cowboys would love to do while improving to 3-4 themselves and grabbing an opening in the division.

After Monday comes a Sunday night game with the Commanders. Rich believes all of this tension and drama is part of why that game was kept intact rather than flexed out.

There also weren't many terrific alternatives. Rich said the other options were games that had already been nationally televised earlier this season, including Cleveland and Pittsburgh, and you can't put two of those in the national window like that. A Minnesota and Detroit matchup is already set for Sunday Night Football later this year, so the league wasn't going to flex into that one either.

What to watch

The result Monday night will shape far more than one week. Rich said the Eagles' choice between making a run and tearing the team apart "is going to be in the ether over the next two to three weeks."

A win gets the Eagles back to 3-4 and keeps the run alive. A loss forces a conversation Philadelphia almost never has, and Dallas would be thrilled to be the team that started it.