The Eagles Are 2-5 and Priced Behind a 1-4-1 Team They Already Beat. The Board Is Pricing a Quarterback

The NFC East board after Monday night reads Dallas +115, the Giants +125, Washington +800 and Philadelphia +1500, according to ProFootballTalk's post-game odds, which do not name a book. Take the vig out and the four prices give the Eagles about a 5.8% chance of a third straight division title. Washington gets about 10.3%.

Washington is 1-4-1. Philadelphia is 2-5, and it beat Washington 24-22 in Week 1. The market has the team with the worse record and the head-to-head loss at nearly twice the Eagles' chance. That is not a mistake. It reflects who the two teams have at quarterback, and on Sunday night in Landover they play each other.

What Monday night showed

Dallas won 38-21 in Philadelphia and covered a 4.5-point spread at both bet365 and DraftKings by 12.5. The 59 points went over either book's total. It was closer than the score suggests for three quarters. Rookie Makai Lemon caught a 4-yard touchdown from Tanner McKee to give the Eagles a 21-20 lead in the third, and there were six lead changes. Dallas then scored 18 unanswered points. Javonte Williams carried 25 times for 155 yards, the first 150-yard game by a Cowboys back since Ezekiel Elliott in 2018. Dak Prescott needed only 27 passes for 212 yards and three touchdowns.

The Eagles' defense finished with no sacks, no tackles for loss and no quarterback hits, according to the team's own recap. "It's never just one thing when you give up a bunch of yards like that," Nick Sirianni said. That is accurate, and it is not reassuring.

Saquon Barkley, back from a hamstring injury, touched the ball on all nine of his snaps. He scored from 8 yards on the opening drive, hurt his back on a 29-yard run and left in the third quarter. "He's tough as heck," Sirianni said. DeVonta Smith and Dontayvion Wicks did not play. McKee went 23 of 35 for 211 yards, a touchdown and a fourth-quarter interception.

How the price got here

Before the season the Eagles were division favourites, at +122 in Fantasy Nerds' September 1 survey of the market. On October 19 the team and Jalen Hurts' agent announced deep vein thrombosis and clots in both lungs. Hurts is out for the season and faces at least three months on blood thinners, ESPN reported. The NFC East price went to +550 at DraftKings that day, per SI. A home loss to the Cowboys took it to +1500.

The base rate supports that number. NFL.com counted 163 teams that started 2-5 between 1990 and 2023, and 10 of them made the playoffs, which is 6.1%. The 2021 Eagles were one of the ten, and Sirianni brought that season up on Monday. A 5.8% division price for a 2-5 team without its quarterback is about where the history puts it.

Why the base rate fits less well this time

This division is unusually weak, and the base rate does not account for that. The Giants lead at 4-2-1. Dallas is 3-4 and the betting favourite. Philadelphia is two and a half games off the lead with ten to play, and still has both Giants games and the Dallas rematch on the schedule. Most of the 163 teams in NFL.com's count were chasing a 5-2 or 6-1 division leader, not one with a tie on its record.

The Eagles also have not been as bad as 2-5 sounds. Through seven games they have scored 127 points and allowed 175, a margin of -48. Four of the seven games were decided by four points or fewer: they beat Washington by two and Tennessee by four, and lost to the Rams by four and Jacksonville by two. Hurts played in that London loss the day after an ultrasound found what the team then called a superficial clot. Teams whose losses are mostly that close tend to win more of the rest of their games. Teams that lose by 20 every week usually do not.

The case for Washington, and why it mostly holds

The case for the board is Jayden Daniels. Washington is coming off its bye with 13 days to prepare, and its beat coverage at SI is building Sunday around getting him help from the running game. We have not seen an injury report for either team yet. Philadelphia will start McKee for the fifth time in his career, without Hurts, without A.J. Brown (traded to New England in June), and probably without one or two of its other receivers. Bookmakers price quarterbacks above every other position, and the gap between a starter and a backup is commonly worth a field goal or more. On Tuesday bet365 had Washington -4.5 at home, with the Eagles +175 on the moneyline.

We think that case is mostly right. A defense that let Dallas run for 204 yards without recording a sack does not come back quickly, and a 21-20 third-quarter lead says less about Philadelphia than the 18 points that followed it.

Where we part with the board is the gap. Washington's 10.3% depends on a team that is 1-4-1 winning a division it currently trails by three games. Philadelphia's 5.8% depends on a team that holds the tiebreaker over Washington and trails by two and a half. The market has already started to narrow the gap on Sunday's game. Covers says early money on the Eagles moved the spread from 4.5 to -4 and then -3.5, while bet365 was still dealing -4.5 on Tuesday. Bettors who think a backup quarterback is a little underrated against a 1-4-1 team took the points early. That is a reasonable view, and it could easily be wrong.

What Sunday settles

If Washington wins, it goes to 2-4-1 and the Eagles fall to 2-6, three games behind the Giants. The board will be right, +1500 will lengthen, and the two prices will move further apart. If Philadelphia wins, it is 3-5 with a sweep of Washington, and an 8-to-1 price on a team that is 1-5-1 will look badly wrong.

This is a price comparison, not a pick. We do not have a track record on NFL futures and we are not presenting one. What we can show from the numbers is that the gap between +800 and +1500 is a judgment about one position on each team, and Sunday night is the first test of it.

Before then, Sirianni has to answer for 204 rushing yards. "All that matters is we improve," he said on Monday. For a 2-5 team, he is right, and the next game is the one that counts.