Offshore bookmakers are appalled – appalled, we say! – that Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Chris Long is donating the remainder of his 2017 season salary to charity. “We’re all lucky in this locker room to be lucky enough to make money playing a game,” Long said. “I’ve played a long time, so this year is even more fun for me. For a lot of reasons.” We can all agree on two things, though; one, the Eagles have been making people money, and could continue to do so against the Washington Redskins, and two, “A lot of the time, Twitter can really suck.” There is context to that Long quote, but it’s much funnier as a standalone non sequitur.
- Date: Monday, 23rd October
- Time: 8:35 PM
- Venue: Lincoln Financial Field
- Online Sportsbook Odds:
Redskins +5 (-113) 49 (-110) +184
Eagles -5 (-107) 49 (-110) -220
The Eagles snapped five-game SU and six-game ATS losing streaks against the Skins in week 1 of the 2017 regular season. Philly has, moreover, won their last four overall games and covered in the last three. There is no doubt that the Eagles are, as 247sports.com says QB Carson Wentz believes, something special. “You could just see it, even going back to OTAs,” Wentz said. “You could see the competitive nature, even in practice. You couldn’t wear pads. You couldn’t even press cover outside. And then through training camp, it just kept getting elevated even more. You could just see it from the leadership on down.” Monday’s game could be a case of history repeating, with Philadelphia beating Washington and covering the offshore bookmaker-made spread.
The only thing that has, as a matter of fact, changed since September 10th is that now we know what the Eagles, per Wentz’s comments, knew all along, and is that Philly is for real. If the season-opening game was the harbinger of things to come, the week 7 rematch should be the consolidation that Eagles are not just a, but the team in the NFC East division – and perhaps, with Aaron Rodgers out of commission, in the entire National Football Conference (and perhaps, with the Chiefs officially on a losing streak, in the entire NFL).
There’s a lot of pressure mounting on Philadelphia right now. “This is that time of year, we’re getting in that stretch of games — [Nos.] seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 — where teams begin to separate themselves. We can’t have any letdowns [or] setbacks. We got to just be full steam ahead,” head coach Doug Pederson said. “It’s about doing the little things now, meaning rest and hydration and extra study, or extra conditioning, things that sometimes you lose sight of in all the wins and the success that a team has had. Again, it falls back on my shoulders to make sure that the guys are doing those things at this time of the year.” A win over the Skins would bring the Eagles one step closer to the postseason, and this time, unlike last time, the offshore bookmaker-crafted total could go over, as it has in five of the Eagles’ last seven games with a closing total of 48½ or higher.