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Week 5 non-Eagles rooting guide

The Philadelphia Eagles will take on the Denver Broncos on Sunday at 1 p.m. That matchup aside, here we'll lay out a rooting guide for non-Eagles games on the NFL schedule for those of you on the fence while watching the other action around the league. And yes, I'm aware that most of the below is obvious. Ideal winners bolded.

NFC East

First, the NFC East standings:

NFC East Record Division GB

Eagles 4-0 1-0 -

Commanders 2-2 1-0 2

Cowboys 1-2-1 1-1 2.5

Giants 1-3 0-2 3

Inpredictable.com has the Eagles as 74 percent likely to win the division.

• Commanders at Chargers: The Eagles have a chance to go up three games on the Commanders if they win and the Commanders lose. Trust me, I did the math on that. But I guess the point here is that the Eagles have a decent chance of just running away with the division early in the season. Jayden Daniels will return for the Commanders in this game after missing the last two games.

• Cowboys at Jets: The Cowboys aren't much of a threat to the Eagles for the division, and they're already 2.5 games behind, but it's probably not the worst thing if they were to be buried further.

• Giants at Saints: Jaxson Dart got a win in his rookie starting debut last week. It would be ideal for the Eagles if the Giants lost to a bad Saints team Week 5, thus potentially killing their confidence ahead of their Week 6 Thursday night matchup at the Meadowlands.

The biggest threats in the NFC

• 49ers at Rams: The 49ers and Rams are both 3-1 heading into this matchup, but the Rams are very clearly the bigger threat to the Eagles this season, and the Niners can't stay healthy. A Niners win ideal. (This is the Thursday night game this week, by the way.)

• Buccaneers at Seahawks: The Bucs and Seahawks are also both 3-1. In my opinion the Bucs will be the bigger threat long-term, once they get a lot of their injured players back out on the field. The Seahawks are playing well, but ultimately, who trusts Sam Darnold in the playoffs?

• Lions at Bengals: The Lions are probably the Eagles' biggest threats in the conference, and the team best equipped to match their talent. A Bengals win is obviously the better outcome.

Other NFC playoff contenders

• Vikings at Browns: The Vikings aren't much of a threat to make a Super Bowl run with their quarterback situation, so if they somehow win the NFC North instead of the Packers or Lions, that would be a good outcome for playoff seeding.

• Titans at Cardinals: The Cardinals are perennial pretenders, but they have such an easy schedule that they are reasonable longshots to win the NFC West, which would be better than the Rams winning it.

For future reference

The following bolded teams play the Eagles this season, so they're just worth keeping an eye on:

Raiders at Colts

Patri*ts at Bills

The Eagles won't face the Raiders and Bills until December.

Irrelevant to the Eagles

Dolphins at Panthers

Texans at Ravens

Chiefs at Jaguars

The Chiefs game does have some small meaning, in that the Eagles' win over them could help in a "strength of wins" tiebreaker, if needed. The more games they win the rest of the season, the better the Eagles' "strength of wins" would be.