PHILADELPHIA -- Sunday's meeting with the Atlanta Falcons will mark the fourth consecutive game where the Philadelphia Eagles have played a team on extra rest.

The Falcons played and won last Thursday night, giving them a couple additional days to prep and recover. The previous three teams that the Eagles faced -- the Minnesota Vikings, Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants -- each were coming off a bye.

NFL Director of Broadcasting Michael North, one of the league's schedule-makers, calls the draw of playing three consecutive teams following their bye week "very rare," which would make the additional bonus team something a bit beyond that.

Creating an NFL schedule for 256 regular-season games is an involved process that uses 136 computers that spit out some 5.4 million different models. Why was this one accepted? In large part, it was a bill coming due.

"No schedule is ideal, but what we try to do is manage the imperfections so that the same ones don’t land on the same teams year after year," North explained. "For instance, in the three previous seasons the Eagles only played two games total against teams coming off their bye, and have only played 12 total over the past 10 years."

In the long-term view, then, hitting the Eagles with a few post-bye-week teams doesn't put the overall number out of whack relative to what other teams have done in recent seasons. And it will likely be some time before they'll be asked to pull extra weight in that department again.

As it so happens, another bill came due this year, creating a scheduling double-whammy for the 2016 Eagles.

They were also given the earliest-possible bye, in Week 4. That's typically viewed as the least desirable bye to have because of the long grind it sets up for the rest of the season. The reasoning, again, is that it was simply their turn.

"Same thing with the early bye," said North. "The Eagles’ bye week in recent seasons has been [Weeks] 8, 7, 12, 7, 7, and 8. So while it is unfortunate that both of those challenges landed on the Eagles schedule this season, they are unlikely to occur again in the immediate future.”

Teams coming off a bye have an 11-5 mark so far this year. That record is 78-82 over the last five seasons. Where the disadvantage really comes in is for teams that have to travel to play a team coming off its bye. The visiting team in those situations is 1-8 this year. Over a larger sample size, the league has found that a road team's chances of winning drops from around 45 percent under normal circumstances to about 38 percent when the home team was idle the week before. Two of the Eagles' three games against teams coming off a bye were on the road -- against the Cowboys and Giants -- both losses.

"It doesn't bother me," coach Doug Pederson said in the midst of that stretch. "You know, I don't make the schedule, but hey, listen, I would rather have continued to play 3-0 and not have a bye, either, so it kind of works the other way for us. But it is what it is at this point, and we just got to handle them one game at a time. For us, it's about just maintaining the momentum and just keep building off of last week and keep playing and fighting. You know, it's challenging because, again, three of these teams are coming off their break. But we don't put a lot of emphasis in that."

As for playing a team coming off a Thursday nighter: While logic suggests that's an advantage for the team with extra rest, the small sample size to date does not show much separation in wins and losses.

To help offset these "imperfections," the Eagles do have some perks over the second half: The Packers will be coming off a road Sunday night game the week before traveling to Philadelphia for their Monday night bout; they get Washington at home with the Redskins coming off road games in Dallas and Arizona; the Baltimore Ravens will be fresh off a Monday night game against the New England Patriots when they host the Eagles; and Philly will be coming off a Thursday nighter while Dallas plays on Monday night before their head-to-head in the regular-season finale. Perhaps most importantly, the Eagles don't get on a plane after the Bengals game on Dec. 4 and close with three of four at Lincoln Financial Field.

Whatever edge that provides they'll need: According to Football Outsiders, the Eagles have the most difficult schedule remaining out of the 32 teams.