How bad can the Eagles be? Well based on last week, they are terrible! They were home favorites of 7 and lost out right by 28! It is their second consecutive home loss. I bet they will enjoy some time on the road as these next two games are at Detroit then at New England. The Eagles gave up 283 yrds rushing and 238 passing to TB last week. The grand total was 521! They even allowed a rookie QB to get 5 TD passes!. Wow. It gets worse. They turned the ball over 4 times! So let's get this right, you can't stop anyone and you give them the ball! Not a winning formula.
Good thing there is a new week and a new opponent. The Eagles still rank 8th in total offense. They score 23 pts per game so they are no slouch. They are having to use their backup QB Sanchez as Bradford is injured (listed as questionable). They will be getting back a huge OL addition in Jason Peters this week. They are still banged up as RB Ryan Mathews and TE Zach Ertz will not play. The Detroit defense gives up 27.4 points per game and ranks 20th in total defense. The Eagles WILL move the ball up and down the field, which should minimally allow their offensive scoring average of 23 (23-30 seems right).
Now Detroit has been on a 2 game hot streak. They are 3-7 after winning @ Green Bay then home vs Oak. They only scored 18 points in each of those wins, so their defense stood tall. The O/U was 50 in each of the contests so the defense performance was unexpected. The Lions actually lost the yardage battle with the Packers. This brings up the problem with the Lions. They are one dimensional on offense and as a rule, do NOT have a defense to stand up to premiere offenses. The Lions are 32nd rushing (avg 71yrds per game). They HAVE to pass. They rank 8th. Keep in mind their scoring avg is 18.5. Seems like if they were able to run the ball, they could balance their attack allowing them to score more points. Surprisingly, the Eagles defense ranks 16th vs the pass.
I see this as an undervalued Eagle team getting to play an overvalued Lion team. The Lions are 3-8 on Thanksgiving . They are 1-8 off BB consecutive wins. They certainly need prep time as they are 10-23 with less than 6 days between games! The Eagles are 8-3 in November games and 4-2 off BB losses. Mark Sanchez has a 10-3 SUATS record (courtesy of Playbook) when facing an opponent off SU Dog win.
TAKE : PHI