October 16, 2022

Week 6 non-Eagles rooting guide

By Jimmy Kempski
PhillyVoice Staff

Evan Habeeb/USA TODAY Sports

The Eagles will hope that Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens take care of business in New Jersey against the Giants.

In past seasons, Philadelphia Eagles fans generally rooted for their own team, and kept an eye on the rest of the NFC East. Now that they might be Super Bowl contenders — especially in a bad NFC — it's probably worth paying attention to rest of the conference as well. There are also peripheral rooting interests for Birds fans this season, as they own an extra first-round draft pick in 2023.

And so, each week we'll lay out a rooting guide for non-Eagles games on the NFL schedule, and yes, I'm aware that most of the below is obvious. Ideal winners bolded.

NFC East

• Ravens at Giants (1:00 p.m.): Last week, we said that it would be a good thing if the Giants beat the Packers, on the premise that the Giants will eventually start losing games because they don't have a good roster, and the Packers are a bigger threat to the Eagles' chances of landing the highest playoff seed possible. Now that the Giants are 4-1, it's time to start rooting for them to lose games.

First-round draft pick watch

• Bengals at Saints (1:00 p.m.): If the season ended a week ago, the Saints would have finished 1-3, and their first-round pick, owned by the Eagles, would have been fourth overall. The Eagles would have also had the 1 seed. Unfortunately for the Eagles, however, the season didn't end last week. The Saints won Week 5, dropping them to ninth overall.

The Bengals are 1.5-point favorites in this matchup.

Other NFC contenders

A look at fivethirtyeight.com's updated 2022 predictions, sorted by teams' percentage chance of earning a first-round bye:

As you can see, the Eagles are the overwhelming favorites to earn the No. 1 seed in the NFC at the moment, at 49 (!) percent. The Cowboys are behind them at 18 percent, followed by the Buccaneers and Vikings, each at 9 percent, the 49ers at 7 percent, and the Packers at 4 percent.

So, you know, it's best if all of those teams lose:

Jets at Packers (1:00 p.m.)
49ers at Falcons (1:00 p.m.)
Vikings at Dolphins (1:00 p.m.)

Other NFC vs. NFC games

None of these teams below look like Super Bowl contenders so far this year, but certainly the Rams are more threatening than the Panthers, and I guess (?) the Cardinals are more of a threat than the Seahawks.

Panthers at Rams (4:05 p.m.)
Cardinals at Seahawks (4:05 p.m.)

For future reference

Teams that the Eagles play later this year in italics:

Jaguars at Colts (1:00 p.m.): The Eagles beat the Jaguars already, of course. They'll face what looks like a bad Colts team in Indianapolis Week 11.