Early NFL thoughts for the Divisional Round
With Dallas’s win over Tampa Bay, all four Divisional Round games are set. Lines were posted on Sunday night for three of them, but we had to wait until the Cowboys vs. Buccaneers game was completed for the full menu of betting options. As a result, this week’s “early lines” article isn’t exactly the same as it was in the regular season, since we’ve seen some settling of the other three games.
Here is one early line I’m following for the Divisional Round:
New York Giants at Philadelphia Eagles (-7.5, 48)
Brian Daboll and Mike Kafka drew up an incredible plan to exploit all of the Vikings’ deficiencies on defense. The Giants had 20 plays of 10 or more yards and had at least three 10+ yard plays on all but two of their drives per this excellent post-mortem tweet from Minneapolis sports anchor Chris Long.
This week, the Giants run into a top-five defense by EPA/play and one that recorded 70 sacks this season. The 2022 Eagles are third all-time in sacks in a season, though they did obviously play a 17th game. In the 48-22 win over the Giants during the regular season, Daniel Jones was sacked four times and only had four carries for 26 yards. He was 18-of-27 for 169 yards. This will be a much different matchup this week.