How are you feeling about this matchup?
I’m 0-4 picking Philadelphia Eagles games this year, so, perhaps my confidence is misplaced.
But I truly feel like the Birds are going to beat the Cleveland Browns today.
If I’m wrong and they lose, I’m not going to regret forecasting a victory. There’s every reason they SHOULD win this game. I realize that much doesn’t necessarily guarantee that they will pull it off.
But there are so many factors working in Philly’s favor. The Eagles are healthy with A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Lane Johnson all returning. The Browns are significantly banged up.
Deshaun Watson has looked awful. I know there are those expecting him to suddenly look like his Houston Texans version once again against this Eagles defense. It’s hard to implicitly trust Vic Fangio’s side of the ball, I get it. His unit has one good performance in four tries so far. But there’s some hope the veteran defensive coordinator makes some adjustments coming out of the bye. Plus, Watson has the fifth-slowest average time to throw this year. There’s an opportunity for the Eagles’ pass rush to finally get something going against an injured Browns offensive line.
I was going to say it’s a “now-or-never” game for the pass rush but that sentiment really applies to Nick Sirianni and the entire team. If they can’t beat this time in this spot … who can they beat?
If there was ever a time for Jalen Hurts to stop giving the ball away, well, it’s overdue. But now would be as good of a time as ever since he shouldn’t need to be the hero for the Eagles to win this game. If he can just avoid the big mistakes, that should probably be enough to beat an inferior opponent.
Of course, barely just scraping by the Browns would not do much to improve the Eagles’ vibes. They could really afford to come out strong out of the gate in this one and beat the Browns comfortably. Again, it SHOULD be possible for them.
Let’s see if they can deliver.
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Suggested format:
Score prediction:
Bold prediction:
My predictions:
Score prediction: 35 to 13, Eagles win.
Bold prediction: Quinyon Mitchell pick six.
Your predictions:
Scroll down and leave your own score predictions in the comments.
