re: Why do the Saints always play at the Eagles?

If the two teams finish in the same place in their division’s standings this year, the game would be at New Orleans next year. And if the current schedule rotation stays the same, the Eagles will come to New Orleans in 2024, too, when the South plays the entire NFC East again.

In the current scheduling rotation, three years in a row at one site is the max. And each team is supposed to host each team in its conference at least once every 6 years and each team in the other conference once every 8 years. The international games can potentially mess that up when games such as Vikings-Saints or Patriots-Bucs and Saints-Dolphins in 2017 get moved to London.

The current format is much better than the old days when the divisions didn’t have the same amount of teams. The Saints once played at Dallas four times (1978, ‘82, ‘83 and ‘84) in between Cowboys visits to New Orleans in ‘76 and ‘88. The Bucs once came to New Orleans five years in a row (‘84-88) when they were in the NFC Central and the Saints were in the NFC West.

The worst example of the old format was Denver went from 1976-97 without playing in Miami even though both were in the AFC. Elway and Marino only met in the regular season twice (‘85 and ‘98) and just once in the playoffs (‘98).