NFL Picks: Philadelphia Eagles and 3 Road Teams Who Will Fall This Weekend

It's easy to overlook the importance of home-field advantage in the NFL, but sometimes the home team just has too much going for it—fans do give their sides a huge advantage, after all.

These three road teams will find that out in a painful way on Sunday:

Philadelphia Eagles (at Washington)

The Eagles’ slide can largely be chalked up to terrible run defense and mistakes by Michael Vick—not necessarily in that order. The Redskins aren’t the optimal team to take advantage of those gaffes, but they do have enough talent to exploit them frequently enough to make the Eagles pay.

Washington’s pass rush (15 sacks in four games) will keep Vick from getting comfortable in the pocket, encouraging the kind of poor decision-making that helped lead to four interceptions last week from the signal caller.

Meanwhile, a healthy Ryan Torain will give the Redskins enough weapons in the backfield to keep the ball moving on the ground (and reduce Rex Grossman’s chances for boneheaded game-breaking mistakes of his own).

Jacksonville Jaguars (at Pittsburgh)

It’s too early to tell whether Ben Roethlisberger’s offensive explosion last week was a mirage or simply the return of the old Big Ben. The Steelers hope it's the latter.

Whichever version is accurate, the Steelers’ problems aren’t severe enough to keep them from beating an undermanned Jaguars team at Heinz Field.

The Jaguars have one of the league’s weakest passing games, and Pittsburgh has the NFL’s top pass defense. Even if Maurice Jones-Drew plays his best game of the season, Jacksonville simply won’t score enough points to have a shot here.

 
Indianapolis Colts (at Cincinnati)

The league’s only 0-5 team is soon to become the only 0-6 team. At this rate, Peyton Manning could have demanded the moon in his contract, so vital is he to his team's success.

Cincinnati has had its own share of problems this season, but the Bengals’ weakness is facing an opponent that can outscore its anemic offense, and even with Curtis Painter under center, the Colts are not that opponent.

Joseph Addai’s injury will make it even tougher for the Colts to make a dent in a Cincy defense that’s ranked No. 1 in the league in total yards per game. Rookie quarterback Andy Dalton isn’t going to light up the scoreboard, but he’ll give the Bengals enough production to come away victorious, and improve to 4-2 on the season.