Eagles Mailbag: International expansion, the plan for Cole Payton and more

The national anthems are played prior to the International Series NFL match at Wembley Stadium, London. (Photo by Simon Cooper/PA Images via Getty Images) | PA Images via Getty Images

The NFL never stops! As the offseason continues on at a rollicking pace, I’m going to answer some mailbag questions from our loyal Bleeding Green Nation readers that were raised in The Feed.

Let’s get after it…

Two_Steps_Back: Instead of having all these international cities hosting games with American teams, would it be good for the NFL to just add eight new expansion teams? Adding one new team from another country to each division? What cities would make the cut? And how would that impact things like scheduling, roster quality, playoffs, profits, etc.?

Great question and one that will have serious repercussions for years to come with the sport.

The NHL has expanded from 30 to 32 teams recently. Expansion appears to be an inevitability in the NBA as well with teams coming sooner rather than later in Seattle and/or Las Vegas, to say nothing of their own ideas of growing globally. Major League Baseball has also been exploring this, too. I could not think of anything worse for the NFL, however, than expanding, especially with a massive jump from 32 to 40 teams.

If you think the Thursday Night Football action suffers now and that there aren’t 32 true starting-caliber quarterbacks around the league, that’s going to get even worse as the number of teams increases. The NFL is playing with fire as they tinker with a bulletproof product, seeing how far they can stretch the league’s presence as a monolithic force stateside and, ideally in their case, overseas.

A more realistic and palatable scenario, at least over the next decade or so, would be to move just a single team to Europe as a litmus test. The obvious candidate would be the Jaguars, as they continue to play across the pond more than anyone and their ownership seems all about it. They could split their schedule into chunks with four games in the United States, then four games back in London, a bye and then so on and so forth. If this were to happen, the organization, maybe in tandem with the league, would need to set the team up with a “home base” of sorts though if they’re spending a month here in spurts. That may prove difficult.

A larger issue to me that goes under the radar when it comes to international expansion across the four major sports leagues is how it affects the players themselves. It was only 25 years ago that the NBA moved the Grizzlies, less than a decade into their existence, from Vancouver to Memphis because of low local interest and some players’ displeasure with playing out of their U.S. That would only be heightened if players had to live for a while in the U.K.

I’m against the wild increase in overseas games that take away home games from the teams’ core fan bases, but it’s ultimately preferable to me to a colossal international expansion plan that would leave the league unable to put the toothpaste back into the tube, so to speak, if things go sideways.

Birds: Will Cole Payton get looks at other positions? He is, by all accounts, a great athlete. Is his path to making the roster solely at quarterback, or is there a path where he plays QB, fullback, special teams, etc. and becomes more of a utility player?

This is something I’ve wondered as well. Cole Payton has been compared to Taysom Hill as a strong, athletic quarterback who could maybe contribute at some point beyond simply being under center. I’m not much for one “gadget” players, particularly for an offense that is already trotting out the likes of Saquon Barkley, DeVonta Smith, Makai Lemon and Dallas Goedert, plus Jalen Hurts in short-yardage situations, but let’s marinate on it.

Even as a fifth-round pick, there’s no guarantee Payton makes the roster. Look no further than sixth-round quarterback Kyle McCord last year and fifth-round QB Clayton Thorson back in 2019. A larger question to me, one that I imagine we might not get more clarity on until August, is what the Eagles’ group of quarterbacks will actually look like this season. Hurts is obviously the guy. 38-year-old Andy Dalton was brought in via trade back in March. Well-regarded backup signal-caller Tanner McKee is here, too, but perhaps he could be a trade candidate. Then there’s Payton. They’re not going to carry all four guys.

For the sake of this hypothetical, let’s say McKee gets dealt to a QB-needy team during camp or Dalton is re-traded to someone desperate for help down the depth chart. If Payton is the QB3, he’s going to be inactive on gamedays, right? I’m not sure he’s going to have the chance to prove his non-QB abilities in that case.

Just my gut talking, if he’s going to make the roster as a rookie specifically, it will be because the organization sees enough of him as an NFL quarterback, not as a wobbly chess piece. If Payton does stick around as the calendar flips to 2027 and the rest of the QB group reshuffles, maybe he will have a chance to be a factor in unorthodox ways then.

Masked Man: Hey Shamus! Is it against league rules for Howie to help out with the Sixers too in his spare time? Asking for a friend of ours who owns the local 🏀 basketball team!

My half-joking take is that I would like to see Jeffrey Lurie buy the Sixers and then let Julian Lurie run the show for experience before the younger Lurie eventually takes over for his father with the city’s marquee sports franchise.

A more serious take is that I believe that Howie Roseman would be a top-five front office executive in any of the four major North American sports leagues.

Leo Bedio: Hi Shamus. I’ve never submitted a question before, believe it or not. My question is twofold: 1) Which player do you think is most likely to have a bounce-back season after underperforming last year? 2) Which player do you think is most likely to regress?

Welcome to the mailbag, Leo!

As for the first half of that question, I’m going to go with Nolan Smith. Sure, he missed some time last season due to injury, but that was an issue for him in college as well. Smith totaled three sacks in 12 games in 2025. After three years in the NFL, he hasn’t lived up to the billing of a first-round pick based on the regular season alone.

Where my equal parts disappointment about last season and optimism about the future stem from, however, is how he’s played in the postseason. Smith totaled four sacks in the Eagles’ three home playoff games on their run to the Lombardi Trophy two seasons ago. I can feel it in my bones that Smith has the ability to be that type of player over the course of a 17-game campaign.

As for the second part, it may come off as a boring answer, but the player that comes to mind for me immediately is Tank Bigsby. The Eagles honestly didn’t utilize Bigsby enough to spell Saquon Barkley down the stretch last season and I loved the juice he brought out there, but I don’t foresee him hitting 5.9 yards per carry again even under the assumption that the Birds’ offensive line is more dependable in 2026 than it was in 2025.