Thursday Night Football picks and live discussion: Vikings at Eagles

See the game picks and join the live discussion for the Vikings and Eagles.

After a very entertaining Week 1 in the NFL, we are now ready for Week 2. That starts tonight with the Minnesota Vikings visiting the Philadelphia Eagles on Thursday Night Football. The Vikings are coming off a loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers while the Eagles won versus the New England Patriots.

DraftKings has the Eagles as 6.5 point favorites in this one. They are the home team, and they looked better in Week 1 than their opponent, but there is still room here for an upset debate.

This is an open thread for game chat.

Speaking of debate about the outcome, some of the BTB staff picked the game using Tallysight, and everyone is on board with the Eagles. Check out why in the blurbs below.

Dave Halprin: I’d like to make a case for the Vikings here, but it is really hard to do. They fell at home to a Baker Mayfield-led Bucs team that was expected to go nowhere this season. Sure, Philly didn’t look like world beaters against the Pats, but they still won, on the road. Take the Eagles to cover.

David Howman: This one is hard to decide. The Eagles probably should’ve lost last week, after being outgained by the Patriots by a wide margin. And the Vikings probably should’ve won last week, but turnovers did them in. On a short week, I’m going with the Eagles as the home team but it’ll be close. Something like the Eagles winning 28-24.

Matt Holleran: The Eagles are dealing with some key injuries coming into this Thursday night matchup, but I just don’t trust Kirk Cousins and the Vikings enough to pick them here. I see Philly’s defensive line getting consistent pressure on Cousins and making it a long night for Minnesota. I’ll take the Eagles to win and cover, 26-17.

OCC: I’m still not convinced the Eagles are the real deal this year, but I am pretty sure the Vikings are nowhere close to being any kind of deal, so the default pick goes to Philly on this one. Timo Riske of PFF has introduced a new metric called “noise-canceled score” which accounts for how efficiently offenses move the ball and de-emphasizes turnovers and special teams swings. By that metric the Vikings achieved 19 noise-canceled points (instead of 17 real points) in Week 1, while the Eagles got just 16 noise-canceled points (instead of 25 real points). So there is a chance of a Vikings upset win, I’m just not betting on it.

RJ Ochoa: Unlike most of the football world I really believed in the Vikings last year and maintained most of it coming in to 2023. Obviously I do not want to overreact to one week, but the opener did not exactly make me feel like I was going down the right path with Minnesota.

Philadelphia definitely looked vulnerable against the Patriots and like all of the regression talk was fair and substantiated. Still though the Eagles are the far superior team. I’ll take them to win 23-16.

Brian Martin: Jalen Hurts and the Eagles offense couldn’t really get anything going last week against the Patriots and their defensive mastermind Bill Belichick. I don’t foresee that being the case in this Thursday night matchup against the Minnesota Vikings though. I expect Philadelphia to rebound in a big way, both offensively and defensively, in front of their hometown crowd and win by at least two touchdowns.

Tom Ryle: I see Kirk Cousins and Jalen Hurts in a similar vein. They can win a lot of games if they have good support from the rest of the roster, but if things go bad, like receivers dropping balls or the defense getting porous, it gets a lot harder. So I think this one comes down to how well the defenses and rest of the offenses perform, and the always crucial turnovers. I do think Hurts is on a much better overall roster, and Cousins threw 14 picks last year to only 6 for Hurts. I think the Eagles win by something like 27-19.