Rams at Eagles: Philadelphia's 2-1 Is Being Priced Like a Fraud
The thing about this line is that it argues with the standings.
Los Angeles Rams at Philadelphia Eagles, Week 4, 1 p.m. local at Lincoln Financial Field. The Rams are 1-2. The Eagles are 2-1. And the Rams are laying a point and a half.
The market's logic isn't crazy. Philadelphia has been outscored 69 to 55 this season, a minus-14 differential that sits next to its winning record like a typo. Los Angeles has scored 61 and allowed 63, a minus-2, and looks like the more honest team. So the Rams are favored on the road, priced at -1.5 with a total of 46.5 and moneylines of Eagles +110 / Rams -130, per ESPN's numbers captured Monday, September 28.
I'm taking the other side. Eagles and the points.
Here's where the consensus has it backwards. Philadelphia's minus-14 is one afternoon in Chicago wearing a season-long disguise. The Eagles beat Washington 24-22 at home. They won 24-20 at Tennessee. Then they lost 7-27 at the Bears, and that single game is carrying nearly all the weight in the number everyone keeps quoting. Two of their three outings were one-score wins. That's not a team getting exposed. That's a team with a bad Sunday.
Los Angeles has the same shape with a worse bottom line. The Rams were run out of their own building in Week 1, 7-27 by San Francisco. They answered with a 28-6 handling of the Giants. Then they lost 26-30 in Denver. Two of those three games say the Rams are exactly what their record says they are: a team that beats bad opponents and loses to anyone with a pulse. Their one road trip this season ended in a loss.
Philadelphia, meanwhile, has played exactly one home game, and won it.
The matchup that decides this is the Eagles' offense against a Rams defense that has already given up 27 and 30 in its two losses. Philadelphia has to get into the mid-20s. It has done that twice, scoring 24 in each win, and the number it needs to cover a point and a half is smaller than that. The concern is the other side of the ball: the Eagles have allowed at least 20 points in all three games. There will be no bailout. If Philadelphia covers, it covers by scoring.
The total is the shakier half of our card, and I'll say so. No team in this game has scored more than 28 points in a game this season, which is the case for the under, but a 46.5 number asks two generous defenses to behave, and the Rams' two losses both got away from them late. The side is the stronger bet. The under is the passenger.
Our published call is Rams 24, Eagles 22, with Philadelphia +1.5 and the under. It is a projection, not a guarantee, and the thing most likely to break it isn't Los Angeles at all. It's Philadelphia, if the offense that scraped together 7 points in Chicago is the real one and the two weeks before it were the fluke.
I don't buy that. I buy the home team, the two one-score wins, and a point and a half for the trouble. The Rams have been the better-looking team for two weeks out of three. The Eagles get the ball last.
Give me Philadelphia +1.5.
— The Contrarian
