The National Football League schedule makers rolled seven and elevens with their holiday matchups this year. Yesterday, they featured three games with intriguing teams and playoff implications and tonight, I don’t think they could have even hoped for their first Black Friday afternoon contest would feature a pair of first place teams. The host team today is the defending Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles and their competition is the Chicago Bears..
Oh, the league could have imagined that the Eagles might be heading up their NFC East Division coming into the Thanksgiving weekend, but the Bears towering over the likes of the Green Bay Packers, Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings … as the farmer in the movie The Account said in one scene, “In your dreams.”
But here we are, a dozen weeks into the 2025 campaign and the Chicago Bears, who have finished last in their division the previous three seasons, are now perched at the top of the talented quartet of NFC East teams. Tonight, perhaps not surprisingly given the generous seven point spread, the Bears are getting an equal amount of the wagering action as the homestanding defending champs.
The Eagles lead their division and hadn’t had any NFC East competition pushing their efforts until the Dallas Cowboys caught fire with three consecutive wins to pull within shouting distance of Nick Sirianni’s Eagles. With their victory over the Kansas City Chiefs yesterday, the Cowboys are now just two games back in their division race. Until the Cowboys won their last three games the Eagles were running away with this division like Secretariat did in the Belmont Stakes in the last leg of his triple crown win.
There is a problem with a team that has a huge bulge in their division race, they are not challenged to get better. It is worth noting that most Super Bowl winners emerge from a contested division race … My theory is that the competition prepares them for the playoff battles much better than a cakewalk into the postseason.
Do the Eagles hear the Cowboys footsteps now?