We start Sunday’s games with the 2-1 Cleveland Browns facing off with the 1-2 Dallas Cowboys in a very intriguing game. The hype game for both these sides has been strong over the last couple of years but neither have come close to justifying it on their win/loss record. Which team will underperform more this week?
BetPat Betting:
Money line: Browns 9/5 Cowboys 9/20
Points Spread: Cowboys -4.5
Over/Under: 56.5
Nothing sticks out to me in the betting. CeeDee Lamb for first TD scorer at 11/1 is probably the best value I have seen in for this game and even that’s not great.
Fantasy Football:
QB’s
Expect Dak to have another strong outing. His protection might get more solid this week too with Tyron Smith in contention come back and with the prospect of facing Myles Garrett, that would be a welcome return. The receiver corps has a clean bill of health so no reason Dak can’t continue his excellent fantasy form.
Hard to know how to call it with Baker Mayfield though. On one hand his fantasy output hasn’t been great but on the other hand that Cowboys defense is there to be thrown on. And with weapons like Landry, OBJ and Hooper at his disposal, don’t count him out from being a top 10 fantasy QB this week.
RB’s
2 of the top RB’s in the league in this one. But both are up against good defensive lines. The small worry for Zeke is that if Cleveland start quickly and open up a lead, Dallas have a tendency to abandon the run game too quickly. I think Chubb will get a healthy workload either way, so I’d slightly favour him here, but you’re fairly solid if you have either.
WR’s
This game also sees 2 of the stronger receiving corps in the league go at it. The biggest difficulty is narrowing down where the volume of targets will go. Dallas have the 3 headed monster in Cooper, Lamb and Gallup all vying for a piece of the pie. And Cleveland’s receivers could be held back by a run centric game plan and erratic QB play.
TE’s
Neither tight End has produced much so far this season, but Austin Hooper has much higher potential, especially short term. If you are really stuck for a TE this week, he’s worth taking a chance on.
My Prediction:
As I said last week, the pattern with the Cowboys is that they walk all over the weak teams but don’t hold up against the stronger ones. A big question in this game is whether Cleveland are ready to show they’re a good team or are they still in that ‘wannabe’ phase? I was one of those who bought in to what they were doing before the season started and while I’m not ready to completely give up on them yet, they haven’t quite shown enough for me to pick them over the Cowboys
Cowboys by 5
