Eagles fail to get help from Packers in Week 16 to help clinch home-field advantage early

The Philadelphia Eagles need to win one of their final two games to earn home-field advantage in the playoffs.

Even though the Philadelphia Eagles don’t play until Christmas night against the Oakland Raiders, Doug Pederson was hoping the team would receive some unexpected help over the weekend with the Green Bay Packers figuring out a way to defeat the Minnesota Vikings. At the moment, the Vikings appear to be the biggest threat when it comes to taking away home-field advantage from the Eagles, and a loss on Saturday night to the Packers would have resulted in Pederson’s team locking up the top seed before Monday’s game.

Unfortunately, it looks like Philadelphia’s starters will have to play a full game against Oakland instead of earning some early rest since Minnesota had little trouble getting by Green Bay during their 16-0 victory. Obviously, the outcome of this game most likely would have been much different with Aaron Rodgers in the game after the Packers decided to rest their beloved quarterback since they have already been eliminated from the postseason, and now the pressure is on the Eagles to come through against the Raiders in front of a national audience.

On paper, one would think Philadelphia should have little trouble defeating a team like Oakland at home when looking at how the two teams compare throughout the 2017 season. But also, if there was any key factor to takeaway from last weekend’s game against the New York Giants, it would be the Eagles’ defense needs to play a lot better against Oakland to give fans some much-needed confidence about their chances making a deep run in January.

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It was one thing to lose Carson Wentz for the season with a torn ACL, but one of the main reasons why they Philadelphia was still considered a serious threat was due to other key weapons on offense along with a reliable defense. Since the Packers failed to reward the Eagles with an early Christmas gift by defeating the Vikings, let’s hope that it ends up not even mattering due to a win on Monday against the Raiders. Otherwise, that regular-season finale against the Dallas Cowboys is going to become extremely important for Philadelphia, and their hopes of a No. 1 seed.