Wild Card dog is a favorite to cover spread in rematch

Sunday's Wild Card game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Seattle Seahawks is a rematch from the regular season.

The Eagles will look to avenge a 17-9 loss to the Seahawks when the teams played in Philadelphia in Week 12.

What can the regular-season results tell bettors about playoff matchups?

For this article we looked specifically at nondivisional playoff rematches, like Seahawks vs. Eagles. There are 86 games in our dataset going back to 2003.

The Seahawks won the first game. Since 2003, the team that won the first meeting has gone 51-35 straight up (SU) and 36-48-2 (42.9%) ATS when the teams take the field for a second time.

The team that won the first meeting is often favored in the rematch — 70.9% (61 of 86) of the teams that won the first game are favored in the second. The Seahawks are 1.5-point road favorites.

All favorites in the second meeting have gone 53-33 SU and 37-47-2 (44.0%) ATS, while the teams that won the first game and are favored in the second, like Seattle, have gone 4021 SU and 24-36-1 (40.0%) ATS.

The Wild Card rematch will be played in Philly. The team with homefield advantage in these rematches has gone 53-33 SU and 40-43-3 (48.2%) ATS.

Carson Wentz & Co. have the benefit of playing both matches at Lincoln Financial Field. Teams that played the rematch at home when the first game was also at home have gone 30-17 SU and 20-27 ATS.

Bottom line, winning and covering aren't the same thing in these playoff rematches. Teams that are favored and/or have home-field advantage are more likely to win, but in every example they have losing ATS records.