Eagles vs. Giants preview, prediction: Can Philly fix its offense — and is Jaxson Dart ready for prime time?

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In the Week 6 edition of “Thursday Night Football,” the New York Giants play host to their division rival Philadelphia Eagles.

New York lost a dispiriting game to the New Orleans Saints in Week 5, turning the ball over five times. The Giants had captured their first win of the season the week before in what was Jaxson Dart’s first-ever start, so it was particularly disheartening to fall back and lose to a winless Saints team.

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Philadelphia, meanwhile, took its first loss of the season in Week 5, blowing a two-touchdown lead against the Broncos. The Eagles had won each of their first four games by one score, toeing a narrow line rather than blowing teams out in the way they did last year. Against Denver, not fully putting the opponent away finally came back to bite them.

Will the Eagles get back in the win column, or will the Giants hand them a second consecutive defeat? We’ll find out soon enough. But before we break down the matchup, here’s a look at how you can watch the game.

Where to watch Eagles vs. Giants live

When the Eagles have the ball

CBS Sports NFL Analyst J.P. Acosta did an excellent job earlier this week of breaking down some of the Eagles’ issues on offense:

In an era of teams playing more two-high shells, the foundation of the Eagles’ offense is simple: they force teams out of two-high shells via the most punishing run game on early downs and against light boxes (six or fewer players in the tackle box). They have the best offensive line in the NFL and a built-in run threat in Jalen Hurts, who forces teams into moving a safety into the tackle box, and that’s when they take their shots throwing to A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith on the outside.

The Eagles forced teams to play the World’s Hardest Game, and just like when I actually played that game online as a kid, many teams failed. But in 2025, there seems to be more answers to stopping the Eagles’ offense, and it has to do with their personnel. Left guard Landon Dickerson has been dealing with knee and back injuries since the preseason and left the Broncos game with an injury. Saquon Barkley is also nursing a knee injury, although he should be ready to go for Thursday’s tilt against the Giants. It was already going to be difficult to replace the impact of Mekhi Becton in the run game, but with Dickerson less than 100%, it has made the formula for the Eagles’ offense turn sour. 

Philadelphia still wants to run the ball on early downs; through five games this season, its early-down pass rate of 52.6% is almost in lockstep with their early-down pass rate of 51.2% in 2024. However, it had an EPA per carry of 0.057 on early downs last season, absolutely mowing teams down in the run game even without Hurts using his legs. 

This season? The Eagles have dropped to -0.051, a drastic difference in how explosive they are on the ground on first and second down. Per Sports Information Solutions, their Positive Play Rate on these early-down runs has dropped from 43.2% to 38.6%, a precipitous fall in one offseason. This is also compounded by their inability to punish light boxes like they did last season. If you tried to defend the Eagles with six or fewer in the tackle box in 2024, you were asking to get run over; their 5.9 yards per carry and 0.16 EPA per carry against light boxes through the first five games of 2024 were the engine of a dominant offense. In 2025, that’s gone down to 3.9 yards per carry (tied with the Cleveland Browns for second-worst in the NFL) and -0.02 EPA per carry. They’ve simply been a poor rushing team this season, and when your identity is compromised, it makes everything else fall apart.

What was on display Sunday against the Broncos was a team trying to figure out who they are against one of the best defenses in the NFL. As their run game floundered, the RPOs that were working in the first half got cut short by a Broncos defense that sent more zone coverage at the Eagles than they expected. Hurts on those zone coverage plays: 14 of 23 for 138 yards, with six sacks taken. 

This is also another issue for the Eagles’ offense: they simply are not good when teams play zone against them in passing situations. In 2025, Hurts is 33rd among all QBs with 50 attempts against zone in success rate, compared to ninth against man coverage. This isn’t just a 2025 thing, however: Hurts was 22nd in success rate vs. zone compared to second vs. man in 2024. It’s not just throwing zone at the Eagles that clutters their pass game plan, however. Simulated pressures have been an issue for Hurts and the Eagles this season, bringing guys from depth while still getting four into the pass rush. These plays for the Eagles’ passing offense have been all over their tape this season: a lack of answers against zone and a quarterback who isn’t working quickly enough to help mitigate those.

For the most part, the Philadelphia offense has operated too far at the extreme ends of the spectrum. 

The Eagles have either gone absurdly run heavy and conservative with their passing game, like they did for 3.5 of the first four games of the year, or they have fully unleashed the passing attack and barely showed interest in the run, like they did in the second half of their game against the Rams and then again in their game against the Broncos. You can’t consistently operate at those extremes and be as effective as the Eagles were for most of last season. 

It hasn’t helped that, as Acosta noted, the run game hasn’t been as effective this year. Part of that is the offensive line. Part of it is Barkley not being as explosive this year. Part of it is that Hurts hasn’t been used in the designed run game nearly as often as in years past. The passing game also hasn’t been as effective, specifically because of the struggles against zone, and part of that may be affected by the fact that Brown has not been open quite as often as in years past. Part of it may also be affected by the line. And part of it is that Hurts isn’t playing fast enough or pushing the ball downfield often enough.

How this all works against the Giants’ defense will be interesting to watch. New York has an incredibly talented defensive line, and it dominated the game against the Chargers two weeks ago. But that line has also looked ordinary at times this season. 

The matchup between that group and Philly’s offensive line likely decides how the matchup goes on this side of the ball, because opportunities should be there for the Eagles to take if they can block things up along the front. The Giants are 31st in the NFL in rushing success rate allowed, per Tru Media, and they’ve already given up 14 explosive runs. Barkley will have chances to rip off long runs if the Eagles can get him to the second level.

The Giants are 12th in EPA allowed per dropback and have specifically done a good job of limiting explosives. But they play more man coverage than almost any team in the league, on 38.1% of opponent dropbacks. It’ll be interesting to see if they abandon that strategy to play more zone and lean into what has been an Eagles weakness to date.

An identity crisis in Philadelphia: Eagles’ offense showing major flaws, can Philly fix them?

JP Acosta

When the Giants have the ball

We wrote a big story last week about the ways the Giants’ offense looked different with Jaxson Dart under center than it did with Russell Wilson at the controls. Much of that stayed the same in Dart’s second start against New Orleans, though there were some things that changed.

• Quarterback run game: Dart has 17 carries in his two starts. He’s both getting more designed runs than Wilson and especially scrambling away from pressure much more often than his predecessor did. 
• Short and quick passing game: In Dart’s first start, 62.5% of his passes were thrown within 2.5 seconds of the snap, and he has an average depth of throw of just 6.3 yards, per Tru Media. In his second start, those numbers shifted pretty significantly to 40.0% and 8.2 air yards per attempt. Those figures were much more in line with where Wilson was during his time as the starter, and it’s probably not a coincidence that Dart didn’t look quite as comfortable as he did in his first action — even while playing against an inferior defense to the one he faced in that debut start.
• Limited true dropbacks: In his first start, 62% of Dart’s passing plays were considered “true” dropbacks by Tru Media. That means passing plays that contained no play action and were not either screens or run-pass options. In Week 5, that number was down even further, to 51% of dropbacks. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s an attempt to give a rookie quarterback easy answers and limit the possibility of mistakes. His two picks against the Saints both came on “true” dropbacks. Two of his three touchdown passes so far have come on either play-action or shovel passes. 
• Sacks and hits: Dart got battered and bruised in his first action against the Chargers, but he and the Giants did a better job limiting the volume of hits he took against the Saints. 

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Now Dart runs into one of the best defenses in the NFL. The Eagles are tied for ninth in opponents’ EPA per play — coincidentally tied with the Chargers — per Tru Media.

The ways you want to attack the Eagles, though, are probably the ways the Giants want to attack offensively. Because Philly plays so much zone coverage (73.8% of opponent dropbacks) and so many light boxes, the best way to attack the defense is to run the ball and throw the ball into the underneath areas of the field. That’s what the Giants want to do to begin with, with Dart under center.

Cam Skattebo has a chance to get on track if the Giants’ offensive line can hold up. Philadelphia has yielded an average of 2.01 yards before contact per rush, according to Tru Media, which ranks 29th in the NFL. The thing the Eagles do better than most defenses is limit yards after contact, but Skattebo is great at creating those yards — that’s probably his biggest strength as a player. It’ll be fascinating to see if he can do it against a defense designed to limit that aspect of opposing run games.

It could prove more difficult to move the ball through the air. Without Malik Nabers, the Giants’ perimeter weapons were already limited. Now they’ll be without Darius Slayton due to a hamstring injury. It’s really hard to move the ball down the field with underneath passes to Wan’Dale Robinson and Theo Johnson, especially against a team that rallies to underneath passes and limits yards after the catch. It’s especially difficult if the line can’t keep him well-protected and if he keeps taking hits like he did in that first game against Los Angeles.

Eagles vs. Giants prediction

The Eagles have been cutting things close throughout the entire season, but they are still among the most talented teams in the NFL. Even going on the road against a division rival, that talent should shine through. The Giants might be able to keep it relatively close, but we like the Eagles to bounce back from their first loss.

Pick: Eagles 23, Giants 14 | Eagles -7, under 40.5

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