Morning Coffee: Can Packers, Bucs surprise in divisional playoffs?

We are less than 48 hours removed from the Philadelphia Eagles being eliminated from the NFL playoffs.

As far as I’m concerned, their collapse isn’t any less stunning now than it was at the conclusion of Monday night’s 32-9 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

How did a team with so much talent fall apart so quickly?

General manager Howie Roseman put together a deep roster that went to the Super Bowl last season and appeared set for another deep run following a 10-1 start this season.

However, Philadelphia lost five of its final six regular-season games, then went out with a complete no-show in Tampa Bay.

The Eagles will have their work cut out for them this off-season, and I firmly believe that the coaching staff will need to be overhauled as the main priority for an organization that needs to hit the reset button on both sides of the football.

In addition to their Bill Belichick’s next team market, FanDuel has added a market for the Seattle Seahawks next head coach.

At this point, I’d be surprised if we didn’t see an Eagles next head coach market up at FanDuel at some point in the near future.

This is the Morning Coffee for Wednesday Jan.17, 2023.

NFL divisional playoff line movement

As someone who was on the wrong side of wagers on the Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys to advance, I was obviously disappointed when both teams failed to show up over the weekend.

I’ll give the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Green Bay Packers full marks for their performances in upset wins.

At the same time, one of the biggest question marks for me moving forward is how much stock to put into their individual team performances versus the poor performances of their opponents.

The Packers just beat the Cowboys by 16 points on the road.

Now they’re getting 9.5 points against the San Francisco 49ers.

The Buccaneers just beat the Eagles by 23 points.

Now they’re getting 6.5 points against the Detroit Lions, which is a half-point up from Detroit 6 on Tuesday morning.

Meanwhile in the AFC, the Houston Texans cruised to a 45-15 win over Cleveland Browns as a small underdog.

The Baltimore Ravens opened -8.5 at FanDuel for their divisional playoff game versus Houston.

That number has already climbed to Baltimore -9.5, with the total ticking down from 45.5 to 43.5.

We have one game this weekend with a spread that is less than a field goal.

The Buffalo Bills are -2.5 against the Kansas City Chiefs.

The total for that game has ticked down from 46.5 to 45.5 at FanDuel.

Home teams and underdogs both went 4-2 against the spread in the Wild Card round.

We saw an even split on the totals at 3-3.

I’ll be back with my first FanDuel Best Bet for the NFL Divisional Playoff round in Thursday morning’s column.

Stay tuned.

Embiid’s MVP odds on the move at FanDuel

Joel Embiid could be found as high as +800 to win NBA regular season MVP at FanDuel on Tuesday.

After an MVP performance in a 126-121 win over the Denver Nuggets, Embiid is back down to +260 as the second choice to win that award at FanDuel this morning.

Only Nikola Jokic has shorter odds.

Embiid was the favourite to win MVP earlier this season, but the big question mark is whether or not he can stay healthy and play enough games to avoid being disqualified from the MVP conversation.

Last night, Embiid scored 41 points with 10 assists and seven rebounds in a win over Jokic’s Nuggets.

That was enough for the traders at FanDuel to make a major adjustment to his MVP odds.

There’s no question about Embiid’s talent and as long as he’s in the lineup, he should continue to put up MVP-calibre numbers for the 76ers.

It’s whether or not he can stay healthy that will ultimately determine whether or not he can challenge Jokic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for the MVP award.