While the Cowboys are clearly one of the elite teams in the NFL so far, they will not cover this spread at Arizona. Cash the Cardinals plus the points when they host Dallas.
Dallas is clearly one of the Top 3 teams in the NFL (along with the Giants and Redskins), but the Cowboys apply to a negative 22-57-2 ATS road favorite letdown situation this week while Arizona applies to a solid 54-20-5 ATS home underdog momentum situation.
Those angles are 8-1 ATS for the home dog when both apply to the same game and Arizona is certainly capable of competing in this game. However, the absence of star WR Anquan Boldin, who has 366 yards on 35 passes thrown to him, is tough to overcome even with Larry Fitzgerald still available for Kurt Warner to throw passes to. The problem is that teams can now simply double-cover Fitzgerald without having to worry about Boldin.
Arizona has been 1.5 yards per pass play better than average for the season (7.2 yppp against teams that would allow 5.6 yppp to an average team), but the Cardinals were just 0.1 yppp better than average last week against Buffalo without Boldin (6.1 yppp against a Bills defense that would allow 6.0 yppp on the road to an average team).
Arizona’s defense also hasn’t been as good without sack specialist Bertrand Berry the last two games (he had three sacks in the first three games) and my math model favors Dallas by eight points after adjusting for Boldin and Berry. I’ll still lean with Arizona based on the strong technical support.
Prediction: Dallas-27 Arizona-25
Free Pick: Cardinals +5 (-110)
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