The Dallas Cowboys will do battle against the Cincinnati Bengals on Monday night, and as they do, they will be seeking their third win in a row. How the tides have turned.
It remains to be seen whether or not the Cowboys can pull off a win of this variety. They may have shocked the world from an underdog perspective (literally speaking, in terms of betting underdogs) when they won at Washington a few weeks back, but Dallas is almost a touchdown dog at home against a Bengals team that is 4-8 on the season. That says a lot.
Entering Week 14 the Bengals feature the league’s leading passer in Joe Burrow and receiver in Ja’Marr Chase. You can expect that they will perform rather well, and projections certainly suggest that for obvious reasons.
Each and every week we examine the projections that our friends at NFL Pro have for the Cowboys in their upcoming game and it is always worth pointing out how they did in the most recent game.
- Projected Cooper Rush vs. New York: 217.7 yards, 1.1 TD, 1 INT, 13 rush yards, 0.1 rush TD
Actual: 195 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT - Projected Rico Dowdle vs. New York: 46.1 yards, 0.3 TD, 2.1 rec, 15 rec yards, 0.1 rec TD
Actual: 112 yards, 1 TD, 3 rec, 11 rec yards - Projected CeeDee Lamb vs. New York: 6.6 rec, 67.6 yards, 0.4 TD
Actual: 2 rec, 39 yards - Projected Jalen Tolbert vs. New York: 2.4 rec, 28.7 yards, 0.2 TD
Actual: 2 rec, 41 yards - Projected Luke Schoonmaker vs. New York: 3.9 rec, 41 yards, 0.3 TD
Actual: 5 rec, 33 yards
Clearly it was not a day full of offensive explosions for the Cowboys as they had two total touchdowns that they were responsible for (DeMarvion Overshown made the other possible). We may be reaching the point where taking the under on CeeDee Lamb’s prop lines is the wise play, but he is such a talented player that you are doing that at your own risk given that he could go off at any given moment.
Will that moment come against the Bengals? Here are the projections for this week for both sides from NFL Pro.
There is a bit of an uptick in Rush’s passing here, but there is a bump down for Lamb from both a receptions and receiving yards standpoint. Maybe the model is getting shy.
You will note that Brandin Cooks is featured in projections for the first time in a while. Cooks obviously played last week, he caught Rush’s lone touchdown pass, but when the projections came out it was still unknown whether or not he would. Consider that the model does have Jake Ferguson listed but that injury reports will fluctuate until kickoff and he may or may not play.
As noted, this figures to be a challenging game for the Cowboys in many ways as the Bengals are a pretty stout team for holding a 4-8 record. Cincinnati has a right to be favored as NFL Pro’s advantages prove.
Given that Cincinnati has Burrow and Chase, they are going to be favored in the passing game against just about anyone. From a rushing standpoint, the Cowboys may be coming off of their most impressive game as a team (and from an individual perspective with Rico Dowdle) but their poor run (no pun intended) all the way up to that point really weighs them down in the collective.
