The Eagles fell to the Seahawks, 17-9, as one-point home dogs in week 12. These same teams will meet Sunday in the wildcard round of the 2019-2020 season NFL playoffs. The spread opened at the same level as the closing line for the showdown six weeks ago, however, support appears to be coming down on the road favs. The Action Network reports a consensus spread of 1.5 as of the time of this writing, however Bovada is currently offering Eagles +2.5 -115.
We like the home dogs Sunday for several reasons. Foremost, our primary NFL handicapping framework makes the Eagles to be favorites of about 2-5 points at Lincoln Financial Field tomorrow.
Separately, we have observed that it has been extremely profitable to back short dogs in the NFL playoffs. Specifically, teams taking less than a field goal in the NFL playoffs are 17-7 ATS (71%!), including a 12-2 ATS (86%!) stint in the wildcard round.
Additionally, John Ewing, writing for The Action Network, recently looked at post-season competition between teams from different divisions that met during the regular season. Ewing observed that the team that took the first contest straight up struggled to beat the number in the rematch (43%). Similarly, the team that covered the first meeting is only about 41% ATS in the rematch. Further, the favorite in the do-over only beat the number about 44% of the time. And teams that won the regular season meeting and are expected to win the second clash have covered at only a 40% rate.
While the highlighted observations hint at fairly strong historical support for the Eagles ATS win, we note that the Ewing's work does not entirely square with the idea of the Philly cover. For instance, that Philly will host Seattle Sunday represents a modest drag on their chance of securing the cover (as the team with home field in the rematch beat the number about 48% of the time). However, teams are 53-33 SU from this spot, which more than offsets this slight negative (if the Eagles win, which this history hints is 62% likely, Philly--by definition--will also have covered the spread).
As another negative for the Eagles, again per Ewing's work, teams have struggled ATS in the second game when both contests were played in their building. Teams are 43% ATS against this circumstance. But here again, the contrasting 64% SU win rate from this position means that on most of these occasions the home team was favored--which, obviously, imposes a higher criteria for collecting the cover. Sunday, the Eagles need not worry about winning by a particular margin to collect the ATS victory...any manner of win will do for the slight dogs.
Bottom line: 1) The wide margin implied by our power rankings framework, 2) the tendency for short dogs to cover in the playoffs and 3) the favorable ATS history of post-season teams facing opposition that beat them in the regular season line us up squarely with the Eagles for the cover and likely the straight up win. Even the historical systems that look like negatives on the surface for Philly are rather benign upon closer inspection. As such, we are quite comfortable playing the Eagles -2.5 and even ML +110.
Happy betting!!