If Eagles can get in, they’ll be very dangerous in playoffs

Nobody wants to face the Eagles in the playoffs.

If the Eagles beat the Redskins and the Bears beat the Vikings, the Eagles will go into the playoffs as one of the hottest teams in the NFL.

After a 4-6 start, they’ll have won five of their last six games, including wins over two playoff-bound first-place teams, and they’ll be entering the postseason with a roster stocked with playoff-savvy veterans with Super Bowl rings and a Super Bowl MVP at quarterback. Nelson Agholor sounds confident the Eagles can get there.

Oh, I like us. I like us a lot. I’m honestly going to be straight up with y’all. I like us. And at the end of the day, if we’re in? I LIKE us. That’s it. You know?

The agonizing thing is that the Eagles need help. If the Bears don’t beat the Vikings — and depending what’s happening in the 49ers-Rams game, they may not even try to — it won’t matter what the Eagles do in Landover against the Redskins.

• The Eagles have closed out a season 5-1 in their last six games 12 times and made the playoffs 11 of those times, all but 1991.

• The only times in the last 50 years the Eagles have had a winning record and not reached the playoffs are that same 1991 season and 2014, Chip Kelly’s second season, when they were 10-6 and fell short.

• The Eagles have never had a losing record after 10 games and made the playoffs. They were 5-4-1 in 2008 and went to the NFC Championship Game.

• Since the current playoff format went into effect in 1990, 157 teams have been 4-6 but only 12 of them (8 percent) have reached the postseason.

• Of that group, only six won a playoff game, only three reached a conference championship game (1996 Jaguars, 2009 Jets, 2016 Packers) and none made it to a Super Bowl.

The Eagles are looking to change all of that. But first they have to get into the tournament.

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“We're going to fight to the end," Agholor said. "It means a lot to see that you’re a part of something truly special. We’ve got a bunch of tough, resilient dudes. You’re never going to be undefeated. That rarely happens. Your schedule is tough. If you find a way to be in every game and fight, you put yourselves in position of being where we are, 4-1 (in our last five). So let’s finish up.”

Nobody in the NFL has a better record than the Eagles since Week 11.

And when you beat the Rams in L.A. and then the Texans in back-to-back weeks you’ve proven you can beat the best in the league.

The Eagles are 3-5 against teams with a winning record this year, but two of the losses were in overtime and two others were by two and seven points.

We feel like in the NFL you want to peak at the right time and we truly believe we’re peaking right now," Zach Ertz said. "This is the healthiest we’ve been the whole year. This is the best we’ve played on offense. We just feel like if we can get in we can be a dangerous team. We’ve got a lot of postseason experience obviously on this team and we’re definitely playing our best football right now. We’ve just got to find a way to get in. Hopefully the Bears will hold it down for us and we can go down to Washington and get a win.

If the Eagles don’t get in, it would be similar to 1991, when they opened up 3-5 and won seven of their last eight despite having to use four different quarterbacks to finish 10-6 and miss the postseason.

“We kind of dug ourselves this hole,” Ertz said. “We have no one to blame but ourselves if we weren’t to get in.”

So get ready for a day of scoreboard watching, a day of rooting for Mitch Trubisky and Nick Mullens, a day where there’ll be as many Bears fans in Philly as Eagles fans.

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