Bettors banking on Eagles to soar past Redskins on ‘MNF’

The Eagles opened as 6½-point home favorites over the Redskins in their “Monday Night Football” matchup and the line dropped to 4½ before settling at 5½ points Monday afternoon at most Las Vegas sports books.

Philadelphia, the NFL’s only one-loss team at 5-1, is favored by 5 at a few books and the total ranges between 48 and 49.

“All the sports books will need the Redskins by the time the game starts,” Westgate sports book manager Ed Salmons said. “You’ll see a 6 somewhere as we get closer to game time. All the public bets will come in between 3 (p.m.) and 5:30 (p.m.). We’ll write more Eagles than Redskins.”

Washington (3-2) is coming off a 26-24 win over the 49ers in which it blew a 17-0 lead. Philadelphia is coming off a 28-23 win, its fourth straight, at Carolina, and beat the Redskins 30-17 in the season opener to snap a five-game series losing streak.

But Salmons, a Philadelphia native, said he’s in no hurry to lay the points with the Eagles.

“They’ve been winning but it’s not like they’re blowing teams out. They’ve been fairly close games,” he said. “The Redskins have played a lot better than I thought they would coming into the year.”

Washington is 8-2 against the spread in its last 10 games as road underdogs, with one of those losses coming in this season’s 29-20 defeat on “Monday Night Football” at Kansas City, which covered on a fluke fumble recovery return for a touchdown as time expired.

The Redskins have struggled in recent years on Monday night, going 3-11 ATS.

The Eagles are 7-3 ATS at home under quarterback Carson Wentz and 7-2 ATS in their last nine games overall.

Several trends support a play on the over, which is 9-2 in Philadelphia’s last 11 games vs. the NFC East, 12-3 in Washington’s last 15 games as an underdog and 13-3 in the Redskins’ last 16 road games.

More betting: Follow all of our sports betting coverage online at reviewjournal.com/betting and @RJ_Sports on Twitter.

Contact reporter Todd Dewey at tdewey@reviewjournal.com. Follow @tdewey33 on Twitter.