2025 Eagles Thread
- Thread starter Tom McAndrew
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Eagles bye week looking even better if Dallas loses tonight. They’ll have a 3 game lead in the win column over the entire division after 8 games
Jaelan Phillips' addition helps Vic Fangio, Eagles defense cover up a different deficiency
By adding another strong edge rusher, Eagles DC Vic Fangio should be able to blitz less, play more zone coverage, and help his struggling CB2 spot.
www.phillyvoice.com
Unless something major happens (Injuries to key players) at this point at half way through the season I would say the Eagles have the division just about locked up. Basically 3 game lead with 9 games left. The conference race should start sorting itself out as the NFC West and North teams play head to head.
The loses this weekend by the Packers to the Panthers, and the Lions to the Vikings, did give the Birds a bit of a cushion.
The next two weeks will be interesting, as the Birds face the Packers and then the Lions. It will be interesting to see how the Birds perform after the recent moves they made, and whatever tweaks they have/will make over their break.
The back half of the schedule doesn't have a lot of easy games, but if Jayden Daniels is out then the Commanders games (2nd from the last game, and last game, respectively) don't look nearly as imposing.
After the aforementioned next two games, the Birds will face the Cowpokes in Dallas, then host the Bears, then head out to CA to face the Chargers, and then host the Raiders. And in between the two games with the Commanders at or near the end of the season, they head up to Buffalo to face the Bills.
In the NFC, I think the Buccaneers, the Rams, the Lions, and the Packers, in that order, are their biggest obstacles within the NFC. I'd like to see how those games play out before thinking about the division being locked up.
1 thing I didn't mention was the line on the Packers game this weekend. Packers are favored by 2.5 points. I was hoping to see the Eagles favored by a point or 1.5. Makes me a little worried about this game in Green Bay.
I believe the Birds opened as a favorite, at -1.5. However, that's been flipped around by the early betting, which now has it at the Packers at -2.5. I'll defer to @Grant Green or others on anything to do with betting, who can better explain what the game opened at, or why it's now Packers at -2.5
As to your last sentence, the Pack are always tough at home. Plus, I believe the long-range forecasts are for a turn to much colder weather by next week's game.
Yes temps will be in the mid 20s for the game but winds look calm. If you had told me at the beginning of the season would you take the Eagles at 6-2 after 8 games and everyone else in the division 3 games back I would have absolutely taken it. It's kinda been a crazy first half of the season, losing to the giants, offense struggling at times but I will take it. The Eagles schedule is difficult and to me being at this point I will gladly take where they are with half the regular season to go. Should be fun watching the 2nd half of the season.
Just back from my 3 week trip floating through the Grand Canyon so I'm not totally in tune with the sports betting world.
That said, my usual sources show that GB opened at -2.5/-3.
I'm not sure why there would be surprise at this. These two teams are power rated pretty evenly and GB gets the 2.5 point HFA.
If the Eagles were a 1.5 point favorite at GB, that would tell you that they are power rated at 3.5 to 4 points better than GB on a neutral. That is way too many points.
IMHO Really depends on who is doing the line and what your beliefs are.... Lots of research out there on HFA. Some believe 3 points for HFA. Others have the 3 points already baked into the line on the game not carrying the weight it used to. Some are splitting it now down to around 1.5 results show HFA is not what it used to be. Plus traveling is much easier than it was 20 years ago with private rented jets, meals, sleeping accomodations etc. For me its the moneyline on the Eagles.
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You are on the right track. HFA used to be assumed at about 3 pts for most teams. In the past 5-10 years, HFA has been reduced to more like 1 to 2.5 points (2.5 is about as high as it gets and that is warranted for a MNF at GB). This isn't my opinion. It comes straight from the lips of well know bookmakers such as the great Chris Andrews (Pittsburgh native and PSU fan). In the past, I've heard Chris say that he doesn't even give any HFA to teams like the Chargers and Rams (may have changed a bit for the Rams).
Let’s hope he plays. Smith was an odd case. There wasn’t much reported on his injury. It felt like an abundance of caution type of thing.
That gives me hope he’ll play. I’m more curious about Phillips and how he factors in next Monday.
Caution??? Idk iR is 4 weeks , last week was 5 n now the bye, that seems more then caution to me. But IDK
Smith no doubt tweaked the injury. But had it ruptured or been re-injured, then 5 weeks isn't going to heal it. So I think they yanked him to err on the side of caution.
6 words NFL GMs don't want to hear: Howie Roseman is on the line.
HR wants to package you Ande Dillard and Jalen Rager.
Upside? Almost nothing. A.J. is super elite, and when healthy, the best WR the Birds have. DeVonta is nearly as good (they are often called the 1A and 1B receivers on the team, in contrast to how most fans/analysts designation this-or-that WR as the #1 WR on the team), but A.J. has a unique combo of size, speed, & strength.
AJ's numbers have been way down this season. That seems to be mostly a function of the Birds' O being off in the early part of the season, as well as A.J. missing the last game due to injury.
There are his cryptic tweets, which seem to imply dissatisfaction with how he's being used. And he's not all that quick to clarify what the tweets are about. So, with two sports-talk stations in Philadelphia, and multiple newspapers and TV stations covering the team, A.J. and his tweets have become a big story, mostly from people inferring too much from the tweets, and then drawing negative conclusions about how much they affect the team, the locker room, Hurts, etc. And from all this, many had concluded that A.J. might/would be traded at the deadline.
The players don't seem too concerned by the tweets, so I lean more toward the side of the entire thing is overblown, and probably misunderstood. (The tweets this season are not the first cryptic indications that A.J. has been unhappy with how he's being used since joining the Birds, and there were some rumblings from Tennessee that he was a problem for similar reasons with the Titans -- though how much of that was him trying to get a contract extension are are to determine. So in that context, I acknowledge that those that conclude differently may not be wrong.)
So if they had traded him, I don't think it would have been tanking (they are all-in on this season). I would have seen it as more of them tiring of the situation, and also getting something in return that minimized how much of a loss it would have been to the O if A.J. was not on the team.
Just my 2 cents on a complicated issue, that is pretty confusing.
AJ is beyond super elite. He’s a BAMF. I don’t think there’s a better WR in the game for the Eagles offense. Part of that is their vanilla scheme.
