The bye week has come, and the 2015 Philadelphia Eagles are dead. They just don’t know it yet.

This team came into the season as a darling of media prognosticators and barstool pundits alike. The groundswell of Eagles support started as a contrarian, too-clever effort to get in on a team that had a puncher’s chance to make one look smart. But somewhere along the way, the Eagles began to pick up mainstream support. The theory went something like, “Chip Kelly is smart + 2014 rushing champ + multiple offense + pedigreed quarterback = Super Bowl”. But the theory was never really based on anything solid. Consequently, things went awry immediately. Sam Bradford is mediocre. The receivers have more drops than Avicii. DeMarco Murray is apparently not as good as Ryan Mathews. The offensive line, as it turns out, is an important part of a football team.

Putting aside any particular player’s production, the offense just looks logy and confused. The Eagles under Chip Kelly for the first two seasons moved the ball. Fast. They tended to spit the bit in the red zone, but they really were a thing of beauty moving the ball, even with an assortment of JAGs at quarterback. This season’s offense doesn’t resemble those teams at all. Announcers continue to talk about the Eagles’ “tempo” without realizing that even though they don’t huddle, the Eagles move at a glacial pace. Everyone looks like they just started playing football with each other yesterday, which actually has a grain of truth to it. The Eagles started the season with six new starters on offense. Either the offense hasn’t had a chance to jell yet and Bradford needs to knock the rust off, or Kelly replaced proven playmakers with players he felt fit his scheme better and he was wrong. Or both, even.

The Eagles defense is actually very good, and the one thing keeping them in games. The line is beastly, with Fletcher Cox and Bennie Logan deserving of All-Pro recognition. Despite being ravaged by injuries, the linebacking corps, led by rookie Jordan Hicks, is playing well. And the secondary is improved, the $63 million sinkhole at cornerback notwithstanding. The safety tandem of Malcolm Jenkins and Walter Thurmond is getting their hands on the ball constantly, and has solidified a position group that has been the Eagles’ weakest since Brian Dawkins left.

So with that giant preamble out of the way, let’s see where the Eagles stand. They are 3-4 overall, 1-2 in the division, 2-4 in the conference. They have people calling for a quarterback change, which, if it happened, would immediately trump everything else as the dumbest Chip Kelly move of the season. This is not a good football team. In a vacuum, this is not a playoff team. However, the Eagles don’t play in a vacuum; they play in the NFC East. Only the hottest of takes would have any of the four teams in the division eliminated at this point. An argument can be made for all of them:

Eagles – Best defense in the division, might stop dropping balls.
Cowboys – Romo & Dez ride in and save them.
[*Redacted] s – Can run and play defense, even if they ignore that and keep chucking it.
Giants – Good Eli & Odell Beckham.

Personally, I think the Cowboys win the division by two games unless this Greg Hardy thing starts unraveling them. But these four teams are all going to (and should) proceed like they have a chance. And this is where it all comes apart. The Eagles DO have a chance to win the division. But what would that accomplish? They’d host a Wild Card game, and they’d probably lose. If not, they’d certainly lose the next week on the road at Green Bay or Carolina or Arizona. So they’re alive, but the only thing uncertain about their demise is the time and place. They’re walking around and playing games like a team in the playoff hunt, but only because the vagaries of divison alignment say they are. They’re the NFL’s Walking Dead.