Survey results!!
There may be bigger games and higher peaks ahead for the 2024 Washington Commanders, but, right now, the Week 8 game against the Bears feels like the most critical point of the season to-date.
Washington is 5-2 and leading the NFC East. The Bears, while they are actually in last place in the NFC North, are 4-2; the two teams — Washington and Chicago — have had similar seasons, collecting wins against teams with sub-.500 records while losing to teams with winning records. This week feels like a game that should separate the contender from the pretender.
For Chicago, the toughest part of its regular season schedule is in the second half of the season, when they play every team in their division — each currently with 5 wins — twice each, along with games against the 4-3 Seahawks and a road trip to San Francisco. A loss this week could signal tough times ahead for the Bears.
Washington, of course, needs to keep winning to hold onto the lead in the NFC East and, hopefully, secure a strong playoff seeding. Amazingly, if the playoff seedings were to be decided on current records (they won’t be), then Washington would have the #2 seed in the NFC behind the Lions and would face the #7 team — the Bears — on Super Wildcard Weekend.
We all know that there has been intense national interest in this game because it features two winning teams, each led by rookie quarterbacks that were selected first & second overall in April’s draft. The excitement of that matchup has been somewhat blunted because of an injury that Washington’s QB Jayden Daniels suffered on the first play of last week’s game. He did not practice on Wednesday or Thursday, and the question of whether he plays or not could be a game-time decision.
If Daniels doesn’t play, Marcus Mariota will step in. Another Heisman trophy winner and former second-overall pick (2015), Mariota proved himself still capable of playing at a high level when he took over for Daniels early in the game last Sunday, leading the Commanders to a 40-7 victory that wasn’t as close as the score indicates.
We asked Hogs Haven readers this week to predict the outcome of Sunday’s home game against the Bears.
More than 6 out of 10 Hogs Haven readers who responded picked the Commanders to win no matter who starts at QB, with another 22% picking Washington if Jayden Daniels plays the game. Only 4% of respondents picked the Bears to win against Daniels, with another 10% seeing a Chicago victory in the cards if Marcus Mariota starts on Sunday.
This is pretty strong belief in a game where the oddsmakers have installed the Bears as road favorites.
But it is reflective of the confidence Commanders fans have been expressing in the direction of the team all season. This week’s confidence level was back up to 99%.
Fan confidence has been at 98% or 99% for five consecutive weeks, and the only time it has dipped below 92% this season was following the opening week road loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
As mentioned above, the Commanders need to keep winning to maintain control over the NFC East. But what opponents and odds are the Eagles, Cowboys and Giants facing this week?
National survey
SB Nation conducts weekly email surveys throughout the season, asking NFL fans of every team who have registered to participate in the surveys to predict game outcomes and answer other questions. In this week’s email survey, this broad sampling of NFL fans from across the league did not express much confidence in our NFC East rivals, all three of whom are road underdogs this week.
Only about half of those surveyed picked the Eagles when given 2.5 points. In the other two games, nearly 7 of 10 respondents picked the Niners to cover a 4.5-point spread against the underdog Cowboys, and close to 9 of 10 picked the Steelers to cover the spread against the Giants on Monday Night Football.
There seems to be a genuine opportunity in Week 8 for the Commanders to open up their lead in the division with a win.
So, what did the national email survey predict for the Bears-Commanders game?
Well, 71% backed Washington as home underdogs getting 2.5 points, but it’s hard to draw any strong conclusions from that. Perhaps on a smaller spread or a Pick’em, those same fans would have favored the Bears. It certainly does indicate that not many fans expect the Bears to win by a big margin at Northwest Stadium.
Don’t forget that this game — originally scheduled for the usual 1pm start — was flexed into the late-afternoon time slot at the request of the NFL’s broadcast partners. As a result, kickoff is scheduled for 4:25pm.
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