Eagles-Panthers Odds: Monday Night Spotlight

My picks record to date:

Line: 3 - 5

O/U: 4 - 4

Reader record:

Line: 4 - 4

O/U: 6 - 2

This week's lines:

Eagles -7 (-105)

Panthers +7 (-115)

Over 48 (-110)

Under 48 (-110)

Reviewing last week:

Nailed the score range for the second week in a row (I also pegged the Eagles for 27 points the game before that).  I had the Eagles at 30-32 points and the Texans at 20-23. Final score was 31-21.  Fortunately this time the line was off by enough to give us an easy win. Let's see if we can put a streak together here.

This week's game:

This is a BIG line.  Especially given that the Eagles are starting a backup QB and just lost their starting MLB and defensive play-caller.  So what gives?

The Panthers are 3-5-1, and have a point differential of -59 points.  That's bad (it ranks 26th in the league).  Since starting the season 2-0, and picking up a lot of hype in the process, Carolina has managed just 1 win, against the Bears at home.  Some attention has to be paid to the fact that the Panthers have had a very tough schedule.  Here are their losses:

Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Green Bay, Seattle, New Orleans

Those teams are a combined 25-17.    Of course, Carolina has lost those games by margins of 18, 28, 21, 4, and 18.  Basically, they've shown no indication they belong among the top half of the league.

Let's see what DVOA has to say.

Eagles Overall DVOA: 14% (6th)

Panthers Overall DVOA: -11.8% (26th)

Eagles Offense DVOA: -2.6% (18th)

Panthers Defense DVOA: 6.4% (24th)

Eagles Defense DVOA: -7.1% (8th)

Panthers Offense DVOA: -5.0% (20th)

The Eagles are still 1st in STs DVOA, the Panthers rank 18th.

As is clear from the numbers above, the Eagles are the MUCH better team by DVOA.  I'm not that excited to see Mark Sanchez start, but since he has to, this is a pretty good time to do it.  Opponent QBs have a rating of 97.4 against the Panthers this season.

Opponents in common- Unfortunately, the Eagles have not played any of the same teams as the Panthers. That means we're missing a valuable piece of information regarding relative strength.

Score Projection -

Out of the teams the Eagles have played, the Panthers defense ranks a little below Washington and the Giants, and a little above St. Louis.  Against those teams, the Eagles scored 37, 27, and 34 points.  That puts us around 32 points.  The Eagles are averaging 29.1 ppg thus far, so scoring a FG more than that against a bad defense isn't exactly a stretch.  Mark Sanchez worries me a bit, and not necessarily because I don't think he can play well.  Regardless of your feelings about him, there's no question he presents a major risk factor.  So 32 points seems reasonable, but with a backup QB, it's really hard to have a lot of confidence in the projection.

Of the Panthers' opponents, the Eagles rank a bit below the Bengals.  Against them, the Panthers allowed 37 points.  In fact, the Panthers have managed to hold their opponents below 24 points just 3 times this year: against the Bucs and Lions in the first two weeks, and against the Seahawks two weeks ago.  Overall, the Panthers are allowing an average of 26.2 ppg.  In other words, the Eagles should be able to score a fair amount.  However, I don't trust them to put up close to a full TD more than the Panthers are allowing on average (to a lot of really good teams).  Given that, I'm dialing the Eagles expectation back to 28 points.

From the other side, the Panthers offense ranks most similarly to the Giants, against whom the Eagles allowed 0 points.  The next closest opponents by DVOA are Washington (Carolina is a bit worse) and  San Francisco and Arizona (Carolina is a bit better).  Against those teams, the Eagles allowed 34, 26, and 24 points.  That puts us at 27-28 points.  However, the Panthers are averaging just 19.7 points per game overall.  The Eagles have a good defense.  Basically, I think DVOA is overrating the Panthers offense here.

If we view it from the other perspective, the Eagles defense ranks most similarly to Baltimore (a bit better), and is also close to Seattle (a little worse).  Against Baltimore, the panthers scored just 10 points.  Against Seattle, they scored just 9.  Now we have a problem.  Our two estimates are completely different.    On average, the Eagles are allowing 22.1 ppg, so I'm inclined to skew closer to that amount.  All told, I'm setting the Panthers expected output at 20-21 points.

That gives us a final projection of Eagles 28, Panthers 20-21.  The line is 7, so we're very close.  On balance, the Eagles look like the slightly better pick, but remember what I said about Sanchez.  Him playing puts a lot of additional expected variance in the game.  In other words, be careful with this one.

Even more bad news:  the Over/Under is 48, meaning we're right on target there as well.

The Eagles are hitting the over pretty consistently, so if I have to pick a side that's what I'm going with.  Just know there's not nearly as much opportunity in this game as there was last week.