Week 11 Patriots vs Eagles: New England favored to win by a field goal

Before their bye week, the New England Patriots saw their win streak come to an end at the hands of the Baltimore Ravens. Sitting at 8-1 and still atop the AFC now, the team will face another big challenge coming out of its one-week break: the Patriots will travel to Philadelphia, to take on a 5-4 Eagles team that is fighting for the top spot in the NFC East and has won two straight games before its own Week 10 bye.

While they enter Sunday’s matchup with momentum on their side, the Eagles have been up and down this year: they did beat two playoff hopefuls — the Buffalo Bills and the Green Bay Packers — but failed to win against the Dallas Cowboys and Minnesota Vikings, all while also losing to the now 2-7 Atlanta Falcons. Add it all up and it is not hard to see why oddsmakers see the Patriots as the favorites heading into the game (via Oddsshark.com):

Odds: Patriots -3.5

Over/under: 44.5

For the tenth time this season, the Patriots enter a game as the favorites. Just like last week, however, they are not seen as the overwhelming choice to ultimately come away victoriously: after heading into the game against Baltimore as 3-point favorites on the road but losing with a final score of 37-20, the line this week has been set at 3.5 — basically predicting that the Patriots will beat Philadelphia by a field goal.

The win probability models used by advanced statistics website FiveThirtyEight come to a similar conclusion this week, and also favor the Patriots heading into the contest:

New England: 57%

Philadelphia: 43%

Patriots versus Eagles is seen as one of the tightest games of the weekend by FiveThirty Eight as only three of the 13 other games have a closer win probability. While the games are not played on paper or calculators, the general feeling entering Week 11 is the same no matter where you look: Philadelphia will be a tough challenge for a New England team that played its worst game of the season against the Ravens.