We have an NFC East showdown in Week 16 as the Washington Commanders play host to the Philadelphia Eagles in a game with a special Saturday evening kickoff.
Washington enters this game without starting quarterback Jayden Daniels and having captured a win last week under Marcus Mariota. The Commanders had previously losing eight in a row, backsliding tremendously after their remarkable season last year. They are now playing out the string and fighting for draft positioning down the stretch of the season.
Philadelphia, meanwhile, broke its own three-game losing streak with a win over the Raiders last week. The Eagles' playoff positioning is fairly safe thanks to their division lead and remaining schedule (which features two games against this Washington team in the final three weeks), but they surely want to get themselves fully back on track before they head into the postseason.
Will the Eagles make it back-to-back wins and wrap up the NFC East crown, or will the Commanders pull off a surprising upset? We'll find out soon enough. But before we break down some key storylines, here's a look at how you can watch the game.
Not the start that Philly wanted offensively. The Eagles got into a fourth-and-1 situation just outside their own 40-yard line and lined up like they were going to go for it, but instead just took a delay of game and punted the ball away.
The Commanders got down into the low red zone thanks to several successful runs but then went with a pass on both second- and third-and-goal from just outside the 2-yard line and came up empty both times. They settled for a field goal to take an early 3-0 lead.
The Eagles fumbled on the opening kickoff and Washington recovered deep in Philadelphia territory. The Commies had eight takeaways the entire season coming into this game -- second-fewest in the NFL. Mike Sainristil forced the fumble.
The Eagles dropped 387 yards, 27 first downs and 31 points on the Raiders last week. Considering they had been averaging 317.4 yards, 16.2 first downs and 16.2 points in their five games since their Week 9 bye, it was an extraordinarily welcome development. Lane Johnson remains out, but Landon Dickerson will play, and that should help them maintain some of what they were able to accomplish last week. Jalen Hurts, Saquon Barkley, A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith and Dallas Goedert should be able to feat on a weak Commanders defense here.
Daniels will miss his eighth game of the season here, giving way to Marcus Mariota once again. He's also out for the remainder of the year. After the way his rookie season went, everything that's happened this year has been depressing. It probably makes sense for Washington to hold him out, even with the injury being to his non-throwing elbow, but not being able to see him go up against this Eagles defense is a missed opportunity for football fans.
The Eagles are 9-5 and enter this game 2.5 games ahead of the Cowboys in the division race. In other words, the Eagles clinch the division if they come away with a win here. If they do clinch the division, it'd be the first time a team won back-to-back NFC East titles since the Eagles themselves did it from 2001 through 2004. They're also one game behind the Bears in the race for the No. 2 seed in the NFC, but they'll need to finish with a better record than Chicago in order to win that race because the Bears beat them a few weeks ago. That likely means the Eagles need to win out in order to move up from their current slot as the third seed in the conference.
No Jalen Carter or Lane Johnson, as expected.
Jayden Daniels is out, as expected.
