NFL - Giants v Cowboys

11 November 2007

Preview By Tipster CYellow (England)

Dallas Cowboys @ New York Giants

Tony Romo has led Dallas to a 7-1 record. This is a good sign for Cowboys fans, the other 9 times they have gone 7-1 they have made the playoffs every time. It would be a very brave man to bet against that becoming 10 this year.

The Cowboys look the class of the NFC altho once again it looks by far weaker than the powerhouses the AFC has in its artillery. They are favourites to be the NFCs Superbowl representitive and rightly so.

Staistically on offense the Cowboys favour almost every category, scored more points, average more yards, covert more 3rd downs by % and total.

Defensively there is very little between the two, neither is particularly good but neither having any glaring holes so are best described as average at best.

The two teams met in week 1 with the Cowboys coming out on top 45-35. Romo had a big game which kind of set the signal for the rest of the year to date with the Cowboys throwing often and scoring heavily. They have thrown the ball more than run it in 6 of their 8 games.

So what can we expect to see? The Cowboys will throw the ball more than they run once again as TO and Witten look to pad their recieving stats while the Giants will look to replicate the Blitzurgh defense and get a lot of pressure on Romo. The Dallas offensive line has looked after Romo very well and i expect that trend to continue. The Giants only sacked Romo once in week 1 which is very low for a team that blitzes as often as NY do.

On the other side of the ball i expect the Giants will look to establish the run as their offense is a little more balanced. Plaxico Burress did not practice midweek (ankle injury) and his absense would be a massive boost for this pick as he is a genuine deep threat for the Giants altho i expect he will play.

The big reason i like Dallas is because i dont think New York are a genuine 6-2 side. Sure they have won those 6 games in a row but it has come against teams with a combined record of 13-36. They are going to have to play so much better than their previous outing, a laboured win against the hopeless Dolphins at Wembley. Meanwhile Dallas warmed up for this with a mightly impressive 38-17 win in Philadelphia last week.

As always you can disect an NFL game to the nth degree but at the end of the day sometimes i comes down to gut feel. As discussed on the forums i tend to ignore the handicap/point spread bets and just bet on the outrights. Dallas are a marginal favourite and in a game that looks tough to call that appears about right.

However with my reservations about just how good the Giants are and the fact that the Cowboys offense is so much better with the 2 defenses being equal i fancy the Cowboys to win this matchup and go on to bigger and better things in the post season.