NFL Week 14 Betting – Shady Heads Back to Philly with the Bills

Buffalo Bills (-1.5, 46.5 o/u) at Philadelphia Eagles

Despite leading the NFL in rushing just two seasons ago, the Philadelphia Eagles (5-7, 2-3 Home) saw fit to deal running back LeSean McCoy to the Buffalo Bills (6-6, 3-3 Away) in the offseason. This Sunday, “Shady” will get a chance to put a dark cloud over his former team’s playoff hopes when the Bills travel to the Linc (1:00 PM Eastern).

Most of the league was stunned when Eagles head coach Chip Kelly dealt McCoy to Buffalo for linebacker Kiko Alonso. Shady got off to a slow start in Buffalo, and it briefly looked like the right move. But the former Pitt Panther has turned it up of late, rushing for 488 yards over the past five games while hitting the century mark three times. All told, McCoy has 792 yards on the ground and three TDs (while Alonso has struggled to stay on the field for Philly due to injuries).

After he was traded, McCoy didn’t mince words, saying he didn’t care for Kelly’s style of football.  He hasn’t backed away from those comments in the build up to the game.

“I’m not gonna change anything I said,” McCoy told 94WIP radio in Philadelphia on Tuesday. “I stand by everything I said before. And I don’t have no problems with Chip, no hatred. Nothing at all. Everything I said, I stand by it. I don’t take it back.

“One thing about myself, I would never take back nothing I say. I have my own reasons to feel how I felt. I think it’s the difference between me and other players — [that] other players will only say how they feel. I’m different. I’ll speak how I feel, but I really don’t want to relive that.”

If McCoy is going to get the win over his former team, he’ll need QB Tyrod Taylor to continue his strong play. The first-year starter has put in two of his best performances of the season over the past couple weeks, totaling six touchdowns and no picks. Sitting at 6-6 on the year, the Bills remain a game back in the AFC Wild Card chase.

The Eagles, meanwhile, are just 5-7 but are tied for first in the NFC East, inarguably the weakest division in the league. Philly was able to pull off a massive upset last weekend, downing the Patriots, 35-28, on the road. But the win came thanks to 14 points on special teams and another major by the defense. The Eagles still haven’t sorted their offensive woes. (The team sits middle-of-the-pack in both yards and scoring despite running the second most plays from scrimmage.)

DeMarco Murray, the man brought in to replace McCoy, has been an absolute disaster for most of the season. Murray has just 569 yards on the year and is averaging 3.5 yards per carry. The former Cowboy, who got just eight carries against the Pats, voiced his displeasure with his role in the offense this week (but don’t expect it to change much; Murray is a north-south runner who doesn’t fit well in Kelly’s system).

Relevant betting trends: the Bills are 3-1-1 ATS in their last five games, overall, while the Eagles are 0-7 ATS in their last seven as a home underdog and 1-4 ATS in their last five following an ATS win.

Pick: Bills -1.5.

(Photo credit: BenPhotos (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Photo has been cropped.)