Playoff Preview
The Philadelphia Eagles have officially locked down home field advantage and a first round bye for the 22/23 season playoffs. What does this mean,who could we play,and will they win? These are all questions I hope to shed some light on in the coming paragraphs.
As we all know by now the road to the NFC runs through Lincoln Financial Field this season as the birds have locked down home field for the playoffs after their wild card round bye. This is something that certainly helped the Eagles in securing their last trip to the Super Bowl where they defeated Tom Brady, Bill Belicheck and the New England patriots in Super Bowl 52 (41-33).
Now what will that road look like? Well we are set to play the winner of a wildcard matchup this week between Dallas and Tampa. This begs the question who do the Eagles want to play. I mentioned Tom Brady earlier and say what you will about his performance in the regular season this year in that terrible NFC South division but he still scares me in the playoffs everyone has always said that Tom plays his best when the lights are brightest and that team still has a scary D-line and WR room. As for Dallas we split the season series with Dallas this year winning in Philly and losing on the road in Jerry World. Having already Played Dallas twice im sure they have a ton of tape on us and the different looks and matchups we like to throw at their specific team, also it is just generally harder to beat 1 team multiple times in a season as we saw in our season series against Washington.
Ultimately I feel confident regardless of who we draw for the Divisional round but it's never easy to win in the NFL especially in the playoffs when everyone has everything to play for and treats every play like their last. This won't be easy but as long as we can exploit weaknesses of our opposition like Tampa’s sub-par ground game and their inability to limit scoring on defense having allowed 41 touchdowns and only scoring 32 of their own. If we play Dallas I feel we can win as long as we continue to find ways to mitigate Micha Parsons and force Dak to throw picks as he has all season. Ultimately it is the Eagles conference to lose.
-Shawn Campbell- Sundays for the Birds/Olde City Sports Network
*Photo Credit- CBS Sports