Denver Broncos vs. Dallas Cowboys
Saturday, August 18
7 p.m. CDT
Texas Stadium
Television: Blue Star Media
Radio: Dallas Cowboys Radio Network (click here to find a station)
Spread: Dallas favored by 5
Over/Under: 35 1/2
The Cowboys play their second and final home preseason game on Saturday against the Denver Broncos. According to the Dallas Morning News, starters are expected to play the entire first half. If nothing else, that should be good news for those looking at that over/under.
One of the more interesting aspects of this game is the comparison of the two young quarterbacks: Tony Romo and Jay Cutler. Both of them looked sharp in their preseason openers last week. Although the NFL copyright hounds have been earning their $350 an hour to remove NFL highlights from YouTube, at least the new NFL.com has some nice features. The videos there are actually very good quality. We can’t embed them, but at least we can make it look like we are:
Here is a link to highlights of Romo in last week’s win over the Colts:
And to compare, here are Cutler’s highlights from last Monday’s game between Denver and San Francisco:
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Some other news:
* Did you hear that Cowboys wide receiver Terrell Owens showed up late for practice? He did, by twenty minutes.
* Nick Eatman has a good piece about Cowboys cornerback Terence Newman wanting not only to become equal to Champ Bailey, but also to become better than the Denver cornerback.
* Hail to the Deadskins has a piece about this week’s game, including a prediction that the Cowboys and Broncos will meet in the Super Bowl. That is interesting. The odds of the Cowboys winning the NFC Championship are about 6 to 1. Denver’s odds are 12 to 1. The odds that either team wins the Super Bowl are about 20 to 1. I think it is bad luck to bet on the Cowboys, but I only need to look back at this post come February to realize that I could have made a pretty good return should both teams end up in Arizona.
Do you think Newman can become as good as Champ? I hate to say it, but I just don’t see that he’s been even close as dominating as Champ. I will hope this year is different.
Good question, Dan. I tend to agree with you. The key, I think, is for Dallas to produce more pressure so that quarterbacks make more mistakes. Newman was beat a few times last year, but often it was the result of the quarterback having more time than he should have had to go through his progressions. I doubt even Champ could have shut down receivers in some of those games, given that Dallas became so poor in the pass rush department.