The guys over at Draftmetrics did a study on the teams who will be returning or have acquired the most players who started games in 2012. The Eagles, pending as Asante Samuel deal, will be returning the most starters of any team in the league next season.

1. Eagles 330 out of 352 games started

2. Lions 323

Jaguars 323

4. Falcons 320

5. 49ers 319

Bears 319



The obvious caveats are that Asante Samuel, who made 14 starts, probably won't be back and Jason Peters, who also made 14 starts, will technically be back but won't actually play next season. So while the amount of consistency is a bit overstated here, there's no doubt that consistency was the major theme of free agency for the Eagles this year.

The question this does beg though, is how important is consistency? After all, these starters did go 8-8 last year... Then again, you could argue that a reason for that 8-8 season was the decided lack of consistency in terms of personnel coming in to last season.