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Will Cards see a better Eagles team this year?

The Birds were fortunate to escape with a win over Arizona last year.

Eagles head coach Chip Kelly. (Yong Kim/Staff Photographer)
Eagles head coach Chip Kelly. (Yong Kim/Staff Photographer)Read more

TODAY, JUST as they did last year, the Eagles return from their bye looking toward a date with the Arizona Cardinals.

Some things are the same, many things are different for two NFC teams that finished 10-6 last year, the Eagles winning a weak NFC East, the Cards shut out of the playoffs in the powerful NFC West. Had Arizona beaten the Birds last Dec. 1, instead of getting nipped, 24-21, after coming back from a 24-7 second-half deficit, the Cards would have gone to the 2013 playoffs. The Eagles still would have won their division at 9-7, assuming no other changes down the stretch.

That game ended with Arizona coach Bruce Arians sprinting toward a Lincoln Financial Field tunnel in pursuit of referee Tony Corrente and his crew, after what seemed to be a missed fourth-down pass-interference call on Eagles corner Bradley Fletcher with a minute and 51 seconds remaining. Arians had enlivened the week leading up to the game by asserting that the read-option was a "great college offense" that would expose an NFL quarterback to too much danger. The day after the loss, Arians vowed to send video of "about 15" calls to the NFL office.

We don't know if the league ever got back to Arians on that, but we do know that this time, the Eagles and the Cardinals are both 5-1 and expecting to make the postseason, one way or another. The NFL said yesterday that in 114 regular-season meetings between the former NFC East rivals, there was never one in which both teams were doing this well through 6 weeks.

Coming out of last season's bye, expectations remained modest for an Eagles team that had needed a three-game win streak to get to 6-5. The Cardinals, who entered that game 7-4, also were a pleasant surprise, in Arians' first year.

This year's Cardinals, 5-1 for the first time since 1976, when they lived in St. Louis, would seem to be in a much stronger position, with divisional foes Seattle and San Francisco struggling right now. The Eagles came into this season as the overwhelming favorites in the NFC East, but they have been eclipsed lately by a 6-1 Dallas team they haven't yet had a chance to face.

Are the Eagles who will visit Arizona this weekend better than the group that emerged from the bye week a year ago? They have a better record, sure, and players are more comfortable in the offensive and defensive schemes, but the answer might be trickier than you'd think.

Still no Evan Mathis (knee) or Jason Kelce (groin) at Arizona, so the offensive line isn't as good. (Though under the terms of his IR designation, Mathis can start practicing this week toward a Nov. 10 return. Kelce said yesterday he is not cleared to fully practice yet, but Mathis said on Comcast SportsNet that Kelce might return Nov. 2 at Houston.)

Patrick Peterson won't have DeSean Jackson to follow around this time. The Eagles have added Darren Sproles to their 2013 arsenal, but he almost certainly will sit with the MCL sprain suffered against the Giants. On the positive side, Jeremy Maclin (27 catches, 445 yards) wasn't in the lineup last year, and Zach Ertz was just a rookie.

But even though the 2013 start against Arizona was just the 12th of Nick Foles' NFL career, there is no guarantee the Cardinals will face a better Foles this Sunday than the one they saw a year ago. Foles completed 21 of 34 passes for 237 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions and a 112.0 passer rating against the Cards. It was his fourth game in a row with a plus-100 passer rating, making him the first Eagles quarterback to do that since Donovan McNabb in 2004. Foles ended that day riding a franchise-record 233 consecutive passes without an interception. This season, Foles has thrown seven interceptions in 237 pass attempts. His passer rating has topped 100 once, Sept. 21 against Washington.

Defensively, inside linebacker Mychal Kendricks blogged yesterday that he will practice this week, so if he doesn't have any sort of setback, the front seven definitely should be a stronger group than the one the Cards faced a year ago. The addition of Malcolm Jenkins makes the secondary better, but Fletcher and Cary Williams probably can't get away with as much, with the league cracking down on contact with receivers.

The Eagles' amazing 2014 special-teams performance is something the Cards didn't have to take into account last year.

And they're still running that "great college offense."

Kendricks ready?

Inside linebacker Mychal Kendricks has been sidelined since suffering a calf strain Week 2 at Indianapolis, but Kendricks posted on his website yesterday that he will practice this week. Kendricks did not give details, or assert that he definitely will play in Arizona, but if practice goes well, that would seem likely.

He talked mostly about the frustrations of being unable to help the team. He said he finally accepted that he couldn't play for a while, and "acceptance gave me a chance to look at the game as a coach. So I began observing more intently and taking advantage of seeing the game from this perspective."

Birdseed

Watching the full NBC "Turning Point" video with Chip Kelly and Nick Foles wearing microphones during the Giants game, it was interesting to hear Kelly saying, "We gotta get points here," late in the second quarter, just before Foles threw his first interception of the day. But the highlight, of course, was Foles' angry response to Markus Kuhn bending Darren Sproles backwards, causing his MCL sprain, at the end of a play, with Sproles already stopped. Foles not only gave the nearest official an earful, he stepped right up to Kuhn. "What the hell? Get off him! You can't bend the guy backwards" . . . Fox has protected both the Eagles' Nov. 16 game at Green Bay and their Dec. 7 home date with Seattle, meaning those games cannot be flexed.

Blog: ph.ly/Eagletarian