Eagles open as 2.5-point favorites over Saints, and ticket purchase information

The first NFL playoff point spreads are out, and the Eagles opened as 2.5 point favorites for Saturday night's wild card round game at home against the Saints. Here is how the rest of the lines look for the first weekend of playoff games (home team in CAPS).

The Eagles will play Saturday night, January 4th, at 8:10pm. For the third consecutive week, the game will be on NBC, and will be called by Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth.

Tickets for the Eagles-Saints game will go on sale to the general public on Tuesday, December 31 at noon. Fans interested in buying tickets can log onto ticketmaster.com, or call 1-800-745-3000. There is a limit of 4 tickets per household. As a word of advice, I would recommend not trying for 4 tickets. There are very few available chunks of tickets in 4's, but you can get them in 2's. In my pre-writing days, I always found that trying to get 2 tickets, and then circling back to try to get 2 more was the most effective method. I would also recommend having an account set up with Ticketmaster ahead of time (and be logged in already) when you start trying to get tickets at noon.

The Saints finished at 11-5 this season, but struggled on the road. They were undefeated at home, but went 3-5 away from the Superdome. The Eagles, on the other hand were 6-2 on the road, and just 4-4 at home, although they're 4-0 in their last 4 games at Lincoln Financial Field.