Philadelphia Eagles (0-2-1) at San Francisco 49ers (2-1)

This has been an especially brutal year for injuries in the NFL, but it’s possible no team is as banged up on one side of the ball as the Eagles are on offense. On the offensive line, they were already without left tackle Andre Dillard, left guard Isaac Seumalo, and right guard Brandon Brooks and now they’ll also be without veteran Jason Peters, who was signed originally to replace Brooks at right guard and had been playing left tackle since Dillard went down. 

In the receiving corps, the Eagles are missing tight end Dallas Goedert and incredibly are without their top-4 wide receivers, leaving them with just two healthy wide receivers on the active roster (45 career catches between them), with the rest of the spots to be filled with practice squad players. The Eagles are much healthier on defense, but their offensive injuries are a major problem, especially since quarterback Carson Wentz is struggling independent of the problems around him. Overall, I have the Eagles just 26th in my roster rankings right now.

This week, the Eagles get to play a 49ers team that is also dealing with significant injury absences, including quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, running backs Tevin Coleman and Raheem Mostert, cornerbacks Richard Sherman, Akhello Witherspoon, and Emmanuel Mosley, linebacker Dre Greenlaw, and defensive ends Nick Bosa, Dee Ford, and Solomon Thomas, but the 49ers are still significantly more talented than the Eagles in their current state. They have one of the best backup quarterbacks in the league in Nick Mullens, fresh off an easy victory over the Giants in his first start of the season last week, and he’ll get a pair of valuable weapons back from injury this week in Deebo Samuel and George Kittle, though Samuel is expected to be limited. Overall, I have them 4.5 points better than the Eagles in my roster rankings.

Given that the 49ers are favored by a touchdown at home, where they’ll have minimal crowd noise, we aren’t really getting line value with them. The 49ers are in a much better spot though, for a couple reasons. For one, the Eagles could be exhausted after playing the Bengals to a tie last week and teams are understandably 9-17 ATS after a tie over the past thirty seasons. On top of that, while the Eagles have to turn around and go to Pittsburgh for another tough matchup next week, the 49ers have another easy game on deck at home against the Dolphins.

Favorites of 7+ are 102-59 ATS since 2012 before being favorites of 7+ again, while underdogs of 7+ are 55-90 ATS since 2012 before being underdogs of 7+ again. Combining the two, favorites of 7+ are 27-5 ATS since 2012 before being favorites of 7+ again when their opponent will be underdogs of 7+ again the following week. Good teams tend to take care of business against bad teams without upcoming distractions on their schedule, while bad teams tend to struggle to keep it close against good teams with another tough game on deck. All of those conditions should be true this week. There’s not quite enough here for the 49ers to be worth betting with this line being where it is, but they should be the right side.

San Francisco 49ers 21 Philadelphia Eagles 13

Pick against the spread: San Francisco -7

Confidence: Low