Hawks Big Underdogs at Home

by: Michael Steffes

Wow. The Eagles/Hawks line opens up with the Hawks being 7 point underdogs. That is an awfully big number for a team that has put up a dominant record at home over the last few years. Consider this: winless Detroit was only a 7 point dog versus 5-2 Washington this weekend, and they weren't coming off a blowout win.

Part of this is that Vegas is trying to get action on both sides, and they realize that the average person believes Philly to be a dominant team, plus they believe that same hypothetical person didn't pay any attention to the Hawks this weekend. Giving the Hawks a one touchdown deficit at home would have seemed almost unthinkable a year ago. How the mighty have fallen. Oh well, this team plays better with a chip on its collective shoulder, or at least it used to.

Regardless of the line, I suspect this will be a tough game to figure out. The Eagles, who have been banged up, have played poorly on the road. They gave up, to quote Rich Eisen, a 40 burger in Dallas. They lost in Chicago. And in San Francisco, the Eagles had to count on a 4th quarter meltdown from J.T. "the turnover waiting to happen" O'Sullivan to prevail. It will be interesting to see how much their recent road woes were due to the loss of Westbrook or if they are simply a team not performing up to expectations. They needed another terrible call by NFL officials to put Atlanta away at home yesterday, and they lost to the surging Skins at The Link as well.

In my opinion, its a hard one to predict. Vegas sees it otherwise. ~END~