Not exactly ‘must see TV’ on Monday Night Football as the bumbling New York Giants travel to Philadelphia to take on the slumping Eagles. As sad as this matchup is it actually has playoff implications. You can thank the decrepit state of the NFC East for that. The Eagles are currently in second place in the division with a 5-7 record. A victory here would put them in a tie with Dallas at 6-7 though the Cowboys hold the tiebreaker. Not that this should provide any extra motivation for Philadelphia as the division has been there for the taking all year.
The Giants are awful at 2-10 SU/4-8 ATS. During the past couple of seasons they have been a dependable ATS play on the road going 10-3 against the number but are just 1-5 SU/3-3 ATS away from home this year. Interestingly, they’re on an 11-2 ATS run in games played on a natural grass field. New York has lost 8 straight games going 2-6 ATS during their downturn with the only covers coming on 10/27 at Detroit and 10/24 at Chicago.
The Eagles are on a pretty dismal run themselves. They’re off a humiliating 37-31 road loss at Miami as -10 point road favorites. Before that they lost back to back games to Seattle and New England and home scoring a total of 19 points in the process. They’ve lost 5 of 7 both SU and ATS and their decline from the Super Bowl win three years ago is shocking. There has been talk that head coach Doug Peterson might be on the ‘hot seat’ but he he’s got a 34-26 record as the Eagles head coach including two playoff berths in three years and a Super Bowl championship. He deserves–and probably will get–another season.
The big news for this game is that Eli Manning has been named the starter. Daniel Jones is reportedly nursing a sore ankle but there are conspiracy theories that the team is giving Manning a chance to showcase his skills to assist him in his efforts to find a new gig. The Giants have a fairly easy schedule the rest of the way though they way they’ve played no game can really be considered easy: they’re home against Miami, at Washington and will conclude their season at home in a rematch against these Eagles.
Philadelphia has nothing but divisional games the rest of the way. They play at Washington next week, home against Dallas on 12/22 and end the season on the road against the Giants. As bad as the Giants have played this year it’s tough to justify the Eagles as a -9.5 favorite against anyone at this juncture. Eagles have won 4 straight against the G-Men but New York covered three of those games. Eagles also 2-4 ATS as a favorite this year, 2-6 ATS in conference and 0-2 ATS against divisional rivals. We’d rather have Daniel Jones under center than the rusty Eli Manning but in a battle of underachieving divisional rivals we’ll take the points.
