NFL Football Betting: Philadelphia Eagles at Pittsburgh Steelers

It’s the ‘Battle of Pennsylvania’ (well, the preseason version at least) as the Pittsburgh Steelers host the Philadelphia Eagles. The Steelers are coming off a 10-6 season and made the playoffs but were defeated by the eventual champion Denver Broncos 23-7 in the Divisional Round. The conventional wisdom is that the ‘Steelers are aging’ and clearly at some point they’ll have to think about a successor to 34 year old quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. For now, he’s still hanging in there despite a slew of injuries last season. He won’t get a lot of playing time during the preseason–in fact, he’s already been ruled out for this game along with Le’Veon Bell, Antonio Brown and DeAngelo Williams. They’re coming off a Week One loss to the Detroit Lions 30-17.

The Eagles are coming off a very disappointing season going 7-9 and costing head coach Chip Kelly his gig. Kelly landed on his feet in Philadelphia and hired former Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Doug Pederson which is as clear a symbol as anything that they’re going back to tradition. Pederson is about as opposite as you can get from the innovative Chip Kelly as you’ll find in the NFL. Philadelphia opened the preseason with a 17-9 home win over Tampa Bay giving Pederson a win in his first home game. Sam Bradford will be the starting quarterback for Philadelphia this year and given his track record of injuries don’t expect to see much of him during the preseason. The official word is that the offensive starters might ‘play into the second quarter’ here but there’s just no upside to playing Bradford much. I’ll be surprised if he sees the end of the first quarter.

At one point, there was no better preseason ‘investment’ than Mike Tomlin. Tomlin was named head coach of the Steelers in 2007 and through 2012 he went 19-6 straight up in preseason play. Since then, he’s 2-12 straight up in preseason action. Don’t expect that to improve this year. It’ll be Dustin Vaughan, Landry Jones and Bruce Gradowski at quarterback again this week and that’s not a group I want my money riding on. We’ll take the Eagles.

BET PHILADELPHIA EAGLES +3 OVER PITTSBURGH STEELERS