Week 1 Sunday Night Football Betting Breakdown. Best Bets for Cowboys @ Giants.
Who among us has not been waiting all day for a Sunday night…and on Sunday, September 10th at around 8:15 p.m. EST, the wait will finally be over. Carrie Underwood will be back on your screen telling you that the Giants and Cowboys are ready to throw down in some sort of convoluted mannerism on a football field.
It’s hard to argue that these two teams don’t make for a great Sunday Night Football opener.
On the one side, you have the upstart Giants, who defied talent deficiencies last year and put together a solid 2022 season under first year head coach Brian Daboll, who won Coach of the Year for his efforts.
New York then made some major moves this offseason but remains a polarizing team. There are people who are ready to believe in Daniel Jones (#DannyDimesSZN), and there are those who remain skeptical and convinced that the Giants still don’t have what it takes to be competitive in the NFC.
On the other side, you have the Cowboys, who evoke an opinion from everyone. They started the offseason on a less positive note after they parted ways with revered offensive coordinator Kellen Moore. More Mike McCarthy may not be what most Dallas fans want to see, but it’s what they’re going to get in 2023.
Where are these teams headed in 2023, and how will this Week 1 matchup play out? We’re getting to the bottom of every angle (winner, loser, fantasy, moral victories, props, etc.) below.
Dallas Cowboys @ New York Giants
- Spread: Cowboys -3.5 (+105, BetMGM)
- Total: 45.5
- Moneylines: Cowboys -175 / Giants +145
There were few to zero injury concerns for this game until Friday, when Darren Waller and his pesky hamstring popped up as questionable on the final injury report.
Giants reporter Jordan Raanan did clarify, though, that the questionable tag was from “general tightness” and not necessarily a new injury in practice.
This puts Waller more on the probable side of things for Sunday night, but his status bears monitoring.
As our man Jonathan Fuller pointed out in the Fantasy Life Game Hub, Waller was a huge addition for the Giants this offseason, and they clearly have plans to make him a focal point of their passing game.
His 13.4 average depth of target (aDOT) from last season is head and shoulders above what any Giants pass-catcher was able to produce in 2022, and the addition of Waller gives New York's offense the potential to create bigger plays downfield in 2023.
Aug 1, 2023; East Rutherford, NJ, USA; New York Giants tight end Darren Waller (12) stretches during training camp at the Quest Diagnostics Training Facility. Mandatory Credit: Vincent Carchietta-USA TODAY Sports
Waller is a key, but he’s also not the only new face for New York.
Rookie WR Jalin Hyatt showed a legitimate Bo Jackson-esque Tecmo Bowl 99 burst in preseason when he got five yards behind a defender and grabbed a TD. Hyatt is listed as the third or fourth WR on the official depth chart, but don’t be shocked if the rookie is a bigger part of the game plan than many expect.
The Giants ranked ninth in expected points added (EPA) per play on offense in 2022, but Jones averaged just 6.8 yards per pass. With the new additions, I’d expect that number to increase dramatically in his second year under Daboll, much as it did for Josh Allen in Buffalo.
While the Cowboys are again expected to have an elite defense, the Dallas offense will be entering a new era with Mike McCarthy and new offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer in charge of play-calling.
The Cowboys also got rid of long-standing RB Ezekiel Elliot and are expected to lean heavily on Tony Pollard in the backfield.
Pollard broke off 31 runs of 10 or more yards in 2022 and will be the primary concern for New York’s front seven, though the Giants' addition of LB Bobby Okereke this offseason should be a big help in this regard. Okereke is a noted three-down LB who ranked 10th in tackles last year.
Spread Bet
The Cowboys opened at -2.0 back in May, but it didn’t take long for bettors to jump on the Dallas bandwagon and drive this line up to -3.5. The line has since stagnated and even moved down to 3.0 at some books, likely due to bettors seeing 3.5 points as too many for the home team given all the improvements the Giants made this offseason.
I tend to agree. The Giants at +3.5 are too hard to pass up.
Despite New York having been beaten twice by Dallas last season, they were 1-1 against the spread (ATS) against the Cowboys last year. In Daboll's first season as head coach in 2022 overall, the Giants also went 14-5 ATS.
Of course, past performance is no guarantee of future success. But at the same time, if I were grading the offseasons of both teams, I would give the Giants a discernible edge.
Dak Prescott is also coming off arguably his worst statistical year in the league, and yet there doesn’t seem to be much worry in Dallas about his ability to bounce back. It’s a little concerning given the departure of Moore and offensive coordinator change.
One final note is that McCarthy's teams have tended to start seasons slowly. The Cowboys are 0-3 straight up in Week 1 since he took over as head coach.
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Player Props
I mentioned Jones’s low aDOT above, and that’s a metric I expect to improve in 2023. The Giants went out of their way to provide him with better receiving options this offseason, and we have Josh Allen's history to look back on, who dramatically improved his passing numbers between Year 1 and Year 3 under Daboll.
With Waller now questionable, going over on Jones’s 206.5 passing yardage total isn’t my favorite prop of the week. Still, I'll be betting it assuming that Waller is active for this game. New York passed at a higher rate in the back half of 2022, and I’d expect that trend to continue into 2023.
Sticking with Jones, if you're playing the over on his passing yardage, you may also want to consider the under on his 34.5 rushing yardage total. Again, this prop gets dramatically more enticing if Waller is in the lineup, but even if he’s out, there are plenty of ways that Jones can go under a high rushing line of 34.5 yards.
Aug 26, 2023; East Rutherford, New Jersey, USA; New York Giants quarterback Daniel Jones (8) during pregame warmups for their game against the New York Jets at MetLife Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Ed Mulholland-USA TODAY Sports
The Giants have a lot of new toys to try out in the receiving game, and they may want to have Jones work more from inside the pocket and attack the Cowboys' CBs with speed. Even if Jones does scramble a few times, tackling machine Leighton Vander Esch is back in the lineup for Dallas at LB to potentially cap any big gains.
While I’d love to give you a bunch of great Cowboys player props, there just seems to be better opportunities on the Giants' side of the ball, especially with New York's WRs set up as a Chiefs-esque by-committee approach.
Darius Slayton under 2.5 receptions at +125 is a prop that we have up in bet tracker right now. Our head of betting, Matthew Freedman, placed that before Waller's hamstring went rogue. We also covered this prop on the Fantasy Life prop pod on Friday and agreed that Slayton’s role in this offense was too undefined and tertiary to pencil him in for three catches.
Even if Slayton does get more targets than Isaiah Hodgins and Waller for some reason, he’ll still have a tougher matchup with Stephon Gilmore or Trevon Diggs on the outside, which could really hurt Slayton's ability to actually catch those targets.
I did make one Cowboys bet early in the week when writing the weekly TD prop article, though.
Obviously, this one comes with the inherent risk.
Dallas will need to feature Jake Ferguson in a defined passing role and not rotate him out too much for the other three TEs on the roster, especially in the red zone.
That said, I’m trusting that Ferguson has done enough in camp and preseason to get the Dalton Schultz treatment, or at least be Dalton Schultz lite. Even if not, the odds are big enough to make this a low-risk, high-reward play.
Same-Game Parlays
Ok, it's time to get a little bit weird.
If you’re new to same-game parlays (SGPs), then make sure to first read the how-to guide by Matt LaMarca. SGPs offer a chance to win bigger payouts but are obviously more difficult to hit than a regular prop.
Strategies like correlating and knowing which categories offer us the best value can help make your bankroll last a little longer when you’re loading SGPs into your portfolio.
For our SGP picks this week, we are once again having to navigate around the fact that Waller's questionable tag has led to most, if not all, of the Giants' receiving props being taken off the board. With that being said, we can still build around a few of our initial premises:
- The improved Giants either win or make this a close game
- Daniel Jones has a solid night as a passer
- If Jones does pass more, his rush attempts should be lower.
Under those assumptions, here are some SGP options.
Okay, I get it. Some of you are probably looking at this and saying, “Geoff, this is the same-game parlay? The degeneracy here is only at about a 3 out of 10. I need you to step it up”.
For all you degenerates looking for more of an adrenaline rush, don't worry. I've got you covered.
I actually really like this one because if Jones throws a TD to Hyatt, it’s almost certainly going to come on a longer pass, which then also would help Jones hit his over-200 passing yardage prop. That’s potentially two legs taken care of on one play.
And finally, here's one more SGP for the true sickos, a 10 out of 10 on the degenerate scale.
Look, we’re probably not hitting this. But just imagine if this game were to start off with a 75-yard TD pass to Hyatt.
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Anyway, that’s all I have for this week. Hopefully, you enjoyed reading this and will win some money on Sunday night.
I’ll be back for more primetime game breakdowns in the future, but in the meantime, have a great time sweating Waller’s hamstring. Good luck!
