The Washington Commanders haven’t been to the Super Bowl since 1992, and before this season, hadn’t won a playoff game since 2005. Yet, Jayden Daniels, Dan Quinn, Kliff Kingsbury, and Adam Peters have this team humming offensively with a shot at glory.
Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Eagles have seen an absurd amount of return on investment from signing Saquon Barkley. He is soon to be the Offensive Player of the Year, he has given the Eagles an offensive floor that is still above average when Jalen Hurts is injured or not playing well, and he dominated the ground game en route to a Divisional Round victory over the Los Angeles Rams.
Washington Commanders vs. Philadelphia Eagles Betting Lines, Odds, Start Time, and More
- Spread
Eagles -6 - Moneyline
Eagles (-285); Commanders (+230) - Over/Under
47.5 total points - Game Time
3:00 p.m ET - Location
Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia
Commanders vs. Eagles Preview and Prediction
According to TruMedia, the Commanders rank fifth in offensive EPA (expected points added), fourth in success rate, 18th in explosive passing rate, and seventh in explosive rushing rate. With this matchup being between two divisional opponents, we can clearly look at tendencies from both teams to get an idea of how the NFC championship might play out.
Washington spent 49.23% of their plays in a neutral game script situation against Philadelphia in Week 11 and 26.15% in Week 16. Surprisingly, Washington spent 73.85% of their time in a negative game script situation in Week 16 despite winning that game. The main takeaway here is that the Commanders had a negative pass rate over expected in both neutral situations against Philly.
Importantly, Washington went from passing 9.35% below expectation in the first matchup to 7% above expectation in the second matchup when in negative game script situations. Whatever it is that Washington saw on tape, it led to them playing a much more analytically sound game of football.
This is vital for the Commanders’ success. The Commanders are 10-2 this season (including playoffs) when they have a positive pass rate over expectation (PROE). They are 4-3 with a negative PROE. They also average 30.58 points per game in the former 12 games versus 26.57 points per game in the other seven games.
Luckily for Washington, they have continued their trend of putting things in Daniels’ hands as they have had a positive PROE in every game since Week 13. This also happens to be two games after their first matchup with Philadelphia. It looks as if this game served as a turning point for the Washington offense. Not necessarily production-wise, as they have dominated before and after that, but in the style in which they do so.
Furthermore, the Commanders’ win in Week 16 also featured five total turnovers. They only have two other games this season with two or more turnovers and they rank fifth in the league in fewest EPA lost to turnovers this season. The Eagles rank 10th in EPA generated from turnovers defensively, going 4-1 in games where they forced two or more turnovers and 3-2 in games where they force zero turnovers.
The reason the focus of this game is on the Commanders’ offense vs. the Eagles’ defense is because that should be the deciding factor. Barkley and the Philadelphia offensive line dominated both games against the Commanders’ defense, going for 5.6 and 5.2 yards per carry and over 140 rushing yards in both matchups. On top of that, the Eagles as a whole rushed for over 200 yards against Washington both times.
According to PFN’s stats and insights team, the Washington offense was able to take advantage of a Detroit Lions defensive scheme that played right into Daniels and the offense’s strengths. Including the playoffs, Daniels ranks first in EPA per dropback when blitzed but only 13th against standard pass rushes. The Commanders’ offense also goes from second to seventh in EPA when facing man versus zone coverage.
Luckily for the Eagles, they blitz at the second-lowest rate in the league. This should be a valuable lesson learned from Philly, as they were gashed for 14.5 yards per attempt in the very few blitz attempts they had against Daniels this season. As a whole, the Eagles run the 10th-most zone coverage but rank first in man coverage and second in zone coverage so it really shouldn’t matter too much.
The key to this game will be how the Eagles do with a lead and how the Commanders do when trailing. As stated before, the Commanders’ win over the Eagles featured a whopping total of zero plays with a positive game script situation. Even in Week 11, the split was 26.15% negative, 49.23% neutral, and 24.62% positive.
To get an idea of how this stacks up to the rest of the season, Philadelphia and Washington rank third and fourth this season in percentage of plays in a positive game script at 46.91% and 46.53%, respectively. The fascinating part is that Philadelphia ranks second in the lowest percentage of time spent in a negative game script at just 7.98%.
This is very likely because of their offense’s ability to control the pace of the game with such a dominant and explosive rushing offense. Washington doesn’t have this floor, ranking 10th (still decent) at 18.03% in a negative situation. However, it just gets exacerbated in situations against teams with a strong run game.
In fact, in games with a top 10 offense in rushing EPA, the Commanders spent 27.35% of their plays in a negative game script (9.32% above their average), 42.54% in a neutral game script, and 30.10% in a positive game script (16.43% below their average). In the table below, you can see the numbers against weaker rushing offenses are much better. They jump up to 41.70% positive, 40.87% neutral, and only 17.44% negative.
Overall, Washington’s offense ranks fifth in EPA when trailing whereas Philly’s defense ranks first when leading. While I do believe Daniels and the offense have played a much more consistent and smart style of ball since the Week 16 matchup, I think the Eagles are just too dominant in the rushing game to let that be the deciding factor.
Even factoring in the injury to Hurts, the Kenny-Pickett-led Eagles were still within a field goal of winning and had the Commanders on the ropes before a very uncharacteristic drop from DeVonta Smith. I will still take the Commanders to cover, but the Eagles might be just too much to overcome.
My pick: Commanders +6 (-108); Eagles ML (-285)
