Acme Packing Company
After the abysmal showing that the Green Bay Packers put forth on Sunday against the Carolina Panthers, it would be reasonable to expect the Packers to be underdogs when facing one of the top teams in the NFC this coming week. However, even though the 6-2 Philadelphia Eagles are coming to town for Monday Night Football in Week 10, the Packers have still opened up as favorites at home for the upcoming game.
According to FanDuel sportsbook, the Packers are 2.5-point favorites over the Eagles as of Tuesday morning.
Last week’s game was a rough one for Green Bay, but the Eagles’ record is overperforming their supporting numbers to this point. Philadelphia has a net point differential of just 23 points, and they are 5-1 in one-score games so far this year. That gives them a Pythagorean record of 4.6-3.4, suggesting that they are 1.5 wins ahead of where they theoretically “should” be. The Packers, meanwhile, are +40 on point differential with a theoretical record of 5-3, fairly close to their actual record.
With that said, the Eagles have a few advantages that could lead fans to skew towards Philadelphia in this game. First, they are coming off a bye and should be largely healthy this week. The Eagles had five players listed as out with various injuries in their Week 8 win over the New York Giants, including wide receiver A.J. Brown and center Cam Jurgens, and those two plus others could return on Monday night. Even with those players out, Philly’s running game got back on track in that last game, as the team recorded a season-high 276 yards on the ground after failing to reach 90 rushing yards in five straight games.
The Packers, however, have fared better when they have not been big favorites recently, and Matt LaFleur has been more aggressive with the passing game in games that are expected to be closer. Check out this data from Ben Solak of ESPN:
This clearly shows that LaFleur gets overly conservative in games when the Packers are favored highly, like last week. With Monday’s game expected to be a closer one, hopefully he will let Jordan Love cook a bit more, especially since the Packers’ run game could have a difficult matchup with the stout Eagles defensive line. Still, Philadelphia did allow more than 100 rushing yards in each of their first six games of the season, so there could be running room against them after all.
In either case, the books expect a relatively low-scoring contest, with the total points line set at just 44.5. Five of the Eagles’ eight games have gone over their total this season, while the over is 3-4-1 in the Packers’ games so far this season.
