You Can't Avert Your Eyes; Eagles Host Panthers

For those football fans out there who also enjoy train wrecks this week's edition of Monday Night Football offers up a treat as the 3-7 Philadelphia Eagles host the 2-8 Carolina Panthers (8:30 pm ET, ESPN).

For two teams with pre-season hopes of making the playoffs and maybe even contending for the NFC title, things have not gone quite as planned.

Philly started 3-1 this season, but troubles were apparent; the Eagles needed late scores to beat the Browns, Ravens and Giants, and got blown out by Arizona.

Philadelphia then began its current six-game losing streak with a late loss at Pittsburgh, then blew a lead and fell at home to Detroit. Since then it's almost looked like the Eagles have given up; last week they lost at Washington 31-6, as rookie Nick Foles, making his first-ever NFL start, went 21-for-46 passing with two interceptions.

Now it's just a matter of when Coach Reid will be canned, and how much housecleaning the Eagles will do with their on-field personnel over the off-season.

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Carolina, meanwhile, split its first two games this season, then lost its next five. But it's not exactly like the Panthers were getting blown out on a regular basis. Carolina lost to Atlanta by two points, to Seattle by four, to Dallas by five and by one point at Chicago.

Last week was fairly typical of Carolina's season. The Panthers led the Bucs by 11 points with five minutes to go, only to allow Tampa to tie the game with a TD and a 2-point conversion in the final half-minute. Carolina then lost the game in OT 27-21 on a Josh Freeman-to-Dallas Clark TD pass.

So these two teams ranks last and next-to-last in the NFC standings.

Not only is Philly playing a rookie at quarterback in place of the injured Michael Vick, they're also likely to be without RB LeSean McCoy, who suffered a concussion in last week's loss to the Redskins.

Carolina QB Cam Newton has struggled in this his sophomore season, but maybe he can find some success going against a porous Philadelphia pass defense.

As of Monday morning most NFL betting outlets were listing Carolina as a three-point road favorite for this game, with a total of 41.

So far this NFL betting season home dogs are 27-34 SU and 32-28-1 ATS.

Philly won the last meeting with Carolina, three seasons ago, by a score of 38-10. But these are two very different teams than the ones that played that day in Charlotte.