Monday Night Football Best Bets
The last game of NFL Week 3 goes off tonight and we have a divisional matchup between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys. Each team is going into the matchup at 1-1. This will be Dallas’s home opener and Dak Prescott’s first game back in front of his home crowd since his injury. Let’s take a look at the game tonight and see if we can identify some bets to make.
The Eagles opened their season against the Falcons and played very well. The next week, they had to play against the 49ers at home and struggled to put anything effective on the offense. It wasn’t an embarrassing loss, but it was a loss, nonetheless. I’m curious to see how good Jalen Hurts can be over the course of this season. Can he consistently throw the ball? Or, will teams need to play him mostly for the run?
The Cowboys hung with Tampa Bay in the opener and then beat a good, but not great, Chargers team last week. The stat leaders for the Cowboys are not who you’d think they are. Amari Cooper had a great first game, but the team leader is CeeDee Lamb. Lamb is leading the team in receiving yards and targets, quickly becoming one of the best receivers in the division. For rushing, Tony Pollard has more yards on 11 fewer attempts than Ezekiel Elliot. Most of this is just for me to point out that this is a deep offense with very talented players.
I think the Cowboys have the better team offensively for sure, but on defense, they can struggle to stop good quarterbacks. So far, they’ve allowed 358 passing yards per game. In his only full game against Dallas last year, Hurts threw for 342 yards. Tonight, his total is 251.5. With the Cowboys only having two sacks on the season, I don’t think they will get enough pressure on Hurts (the Eagles have allowed three sacks this year) and Hurts will likely need to throw the ball to keep pace with Dallas. Play Hurts over 251.5 yards at -110.
I’m playing the first touchdown score as Ezekiel Elliot. I think that Dallas should get a stop or allow just a field goal to start the game (+380 if you want to play Philly with a field goal as the first score). After that, I think Dallas should be able to march downfield and score a touchdown. Elliot is the most likely one to score, at +750, I think there is a ton of value here.
As far as the overall game, I’m taking the Cowboys -3 at -118. The biggest risk to this play, in my opinion, is that the Eagles should be more likely to get a stop when needed. If Jalen Hurts is accurate, the Cowboys may have a hard time stopping the passing attack. DeVonta Smith should have a big game as well. The reason for taking the Cowboys is, that they have home-field advantage, their defense has another week together and should be better, and also that they can put up points on a decent Eagles defense. Play the Cowboys -3, but I wouldn’t be comfortable with 3.5.