BY ADAM GREENE<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sunday Night Football takes the stage to open Week One with a match up of one of the greatest offensive minds in the NFL and a guy who\u2019s last greatest accomplishment was sticking his whole head into the chocolate fountain at the Golden Corral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, our Week One official opening day ends with the SNF match up between the Mike McCarthy-led Dallas Cowboys and Sean McVay\u2019s Los Angeles Rams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DALLAS COWBOYS AT LOS ANGELES RAMS (+3, O\/U: 51.5)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Location:<\/strong> SoFi Stadium, Inglewood, Calif.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kickoff:<\/strong> Sept. 13, 8:20 p.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Broadcast:<\/strong> NBC<\/p>\n\n\n\n THE HISTORY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Thanks to an embarrassing 44-21 blowout last season that likely kept the Rams out of the playoffs, Dallas owns an 18-17 edge in the overall series. While it has not been especially competitive or interesting in the new millennium, back in the 1970s and early 80s, this was a decent rivalry as both teams regularly won their division. They met in the playoffs seven times in that era, twice in the NFC Championship. Last year was the first time McVay has lost to the Cowboys, and that includes a playoff match up on Jan. 12, 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n DALLAS<\/strong> COWBOYS (0-0)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Here it is, Mike McCarthy\u2019s dream job and the only thing we can do now is figure out exactly how he\u2019s going to screw it up. He\u2019s been handed a Super Bowl caliber roster and some of the best offensive position players in the sport. What kind of magic can he do with his play design now that he\u2019s drawing it up for Dak Prescott, Ezekiel Elliott, Amari Cooper, Michael Gallup and CeeDee Lamb? Don\u2019t expect much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we look back at the most confusing aspects of an NFL offseason stymied by a global pandemic, the hiring of McCarthy by the Cowboys might turn out to be the craziest thing that occurred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Separately of the Sunday night game, it’s interesting to note that BetOnline has reported that 52.96% of the bets to win the NFC East<\/a> are on the Cowboys. <\/p>\n\n\n\n LOS ANGELES RAMS (0-0)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A funny thing happened on the way to writing the Los Angeles Rams\u2019 obituary under head coach Sean McVay. All offseason NFL punditry was down on their former golden boy after the team narrowly missed the playoffs in 2019 in spite of finishing 9-7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They were in love with the San Francisco 49ers as defending NFC Champions. Enamored with Russell Wilson, likely the second best quarterback in the league behind Patrick Mahomes, and the magic he could perform for the Seattle Seahawks. Enthralled by Kliff Kingsbury\u2019s own offensive playcalling prowess, his young offensive rookie of the year quarterback Kyler Murray and their exciting offseason acquisition of wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins. And it’s interesting to note that at BetOnline, the Rams have received the fewest bets to win the NFC West (13.73%)<\/a> of any of the four teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then HBO\u2019s Hard Knocks<\/em> premierd and everyone started to sober up. This Rams team still had two of the NFL\u2019s 10 best players in Aaron Donald and Jalen Ramsey. They still had one of the best wide receiver\/tight end groups in the league with Robert Woods, Cooper Kupp, Josh Reynolds, Tyler Higbee and Gerald Everett. And that McVay guy, he was still pretty smart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the contrast with the Rams, their coaches and players with the Chargers was striking. As the preseason previews started to roll in, suddenly it seemed that LA had averted disaster as the previous doom and gloom of 8-8 and maybe even a sub .500 finish was replaced with Wild Card berths across every publication. Weird how that works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, I was telling you that a month ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n THE PICK<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m bummed that this is Dallas\u2019 first game, because I would love to see Prescott come out and put forth a monster performance and shove it right in Skip Bayless\u2019 plastic mannequin face<\/a>. I just don\u2019t see it happening against the Rams. I feel like their defense will put on a show and QB Jared Goff begins the bounce back year that puts him into the upper echelon of NFL QBs. Plus, they\u2019re opening their new stadium and aren\u2019t being coached by the guy Aaron Rodgers once said had the lowest football IQ of anyone he\u2019d ever met<\/a>. Rams 34, Cowboys 23<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Follow our BetOnline Twitter accoun<\/a>t for the latest sports news and betting odds, and stay tuned on the Instagram feed<\/a> for more good information too.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BY ADAM GREENE Sunday Night Football takes the stage to open Week One with a match up of one of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":13393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13400,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13391\/revisions\/13400"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}