The Philadelphia Eagles have a big decision to make in Week 18.<\/p>\n
Should they play their starters against the Washington Commanders? Or should they rest them?<\/p>\n
Had the Chicago Bears defeated the San Francisco on Sunday night, resting the starters would\u2019ve been the easy call since the Birds would\u2019ve been locked in to the No. 3 seed in the NFC playoff picture.<\/p>\n
But the Bears\u2019 loss leaves the door open to the Eagles moving up to the No. 2 seed if 1) Philly beats Washington AND 2) Chicago loses to the Detroit Lions in the final week of the regular season.<\/p>\n
So, what should the Eagles do?<\/p>\n
Here are some thoughts on the matter with a conclusion to follow.<\/p>\n
There is significant value in the No. 2 seed.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not like the difference between No. 2 and No. 3 is irrelevant. We just saw the Eagles win the Super Bowl as the No. 2 seed last season.<\/p>\n
The No. 2 seed is guaranteed to host a second home playoff game if they can win their first home game in the Wild Card round. If the Eagles are able to move up to No. 2, they\u2019d be guaranteed a home game against the Green Bay Packers \u2026 a team they previously beat at Lambeau Field earlier this season. And a team that is now without Micah Parsons and might enter the playoffs on a four-game losing streak if Green Bay can\u2019t beat the Minnesota Vikings in Week 18.<\/p>\n
If the Eagles can beat the Packers and then win in the Divisional Round, they\u2019d be able to host the NFC Championship Game in Philly if the No. 1 seed loses their first playoff game. This obviously happened last year when the Detroit Lions lost to the Washington Commanders.<\/p>\n
The Eagles might not need to play starters to beat the Commanders.<\/p>\n
The Commanders are pretty bad. They might be starting 39-year-old Josh Johnson at quarterback.<\/p>\n
The Eagles\u2019 backups won a Week 18 game over the New York Giants\u2019 starters last year. That result doesn\u2019t guarantee it\u2019ll happen again in this spot. But there\u2019s some reason to feel that Tanner McKee could play well enough to lead the Birds to a win.<\/p>\n
Dan Quinn might be out to really spoil the Eagles\u2019 No. 2 seed hopes.<\/p>\n
Commanders players didn\u2019t seem to appreciate Nick Sirianni going for a two-point conversion late in the Eagles\u2019 win over Washington in Week 17. After the game, Commanders head coach Dan Quinn talked tough about how they\u2019ll see the Eagles again in Week 18.<\/p>\n
Seems like the Commanders could relish playing the Eagles tough. And maybe even playing dirty to try to sabotage their division rival.<\/p>\n
The Lions\u2019 motivation to beat the Bears is unclear.<\/p>\n
The Lions were officially eliminated from playoff contention by losing to the Minnesota Vikings on Christmas. They have nothing to play for but pride in Week 18.<\/p>\n
But do we really expect a Dan Campbell team to merely roll over? The Lions could finish their season on a positive note by beating the Bears to potentially knock Chicago down to the No. 3 seed.<\/p>\n
The Lions notably have a rest advantage in this matchup since they last played on the afternoon of December 25 while the Bears played a road game on the night of December 28.<\/p>\n
There are caveats to the Eagles resting players.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t have to be an all or nothing proposition. The Eagles can rest some players who aren\u2019t necessarily totally ready to play in Week 18, such as Lane Johnson. Or Nakobe Dean, who missed Week 17 with a hamstring injury.<\/p>\n
The Eagles can also monitor how the Lions-Bears game is going. If Chicago takes a big lead early on and it looks like they\u2019re going to win, the Eagles can pull their starters.<\/p>\n
If I\u2019m the Eagles, I\u2019m asking myself what I\u2019d regret more in this scenario.<\/p>\n
If I rest the starters in a loss to Washington and the Bears happen to lose, it would be really hard to live with not having tried to get the No. 2 seed.<\/p>\n
If I play the starters and someone gets hurt and the Eagles don\u2019t get the No. 2 seed, well, that sucks. But at least I knew I tried to get the No. 2 seed. I can live with that.<\/p>\n
And so I\u2019m of the belief that the Eagles should try to seriously pursue the No. 2 seed. Resting starters would be ideal but it\u2019s not like this team has been so great with extra rest this season. They won a six-point game against Carson Wentz\u2019s Minnesota Vikings coming off a mini-bye. They won a three-point game against the Green Bay Packers coming off their actual bye week. They lost to the Los Angeles Chargers coming off another mini-bye.<\/p>\n
Play the starters and feel good knowing you at least tried to get the No. 2 seed if you don\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Philadelphia Eagles have a big decision to make in Week 18. Should they play their starters against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2068],"tags":[25,7,6,242,109,5406,2476],"class_list":{"0":"post-637525","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-eagles","8":"tag-eagles","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-philadelphia-eagles","13":"tag-philadelphia-eagles-news","14":"tag-philadelphiaeagles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115802517445918974","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}