Dallas Cowboys fans are excited that their team is in the playoffs, but the annual angst is on the rise again as well, as a fan base that has gone 26 years without a Super Bowl and 30 years without a road playoff win has to root for its team away from home despite posting a 12-5 record on the season. Their first-round opponent, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, beat the Cowboys in Week 1, 19-3, a game that saw Dak Prescott go down for five weeks with a hand injury. The Buccaneers limped to an 8-9 record, only because of multiple last-minute comebacks, and they won the NFC South. Can the Cowboys beat Tampa Bay on the road, or will the Dallas road misery in the postseason continue? Read on to find our NFL Playoffs betting thoughts.
NFL Preview: AFC Wild Card Playoff (Monday, January 16)
Dallas Cowboys at Tampa Bay Buccaneers
When: Monday, January 16, 2023, 8:15 pm ET
Where: Raymond James Stadium, Tampa, FL
TV: ABC / ESPN
Radio: Westwood One
Live Stream: Sling TV
NFL Odds: Dallas -2.5 / O/U 45.5 / Tampa Bay +118 / Dallas -140
→ Why should you bet on the Cowboys?
The Buccaneers have managed to turn late-game deficits into wins, but those comebacks have happened against teams that did not make the playoffs, for the most part. The last Tampa Bay game against a playoff qualifier came in Week 15, when they led the Cincinnati Bengals, 17-3 at halftime, but ended up losing, 34-23, as Tom Brady threw two picks and fumbled it away twice, with all those turnovers coming in the second half.
Can the Cowboys pull off something similar? They had 34 takeaways in 2021 to lead the NFL, and they had 33 this year. When Brady gets under pressure, he makes more mistakes than he used to. One reason the Bengals were able to come back on a day when Joe Burrow only threw for 200 yards on 39 attempts was the short fields that those turnovers gave him. The Cowboys are struggling to run the ball right now, as Tony Pollard is averaging 3.4 yards per game in the last four contests, and Ezekiel Elliott is averaging 2.7 over that same stretch. With short fields, the Cowboys should be able to roll – and their defense is designed to bring pressure and take the ball away.
→ Why should you put your money on the Buccaneers?
Well, let’s go back to those Cowboys rushing statistics once again. Tony Pollard is headed to the Pro Bowl, but that’s based on his performance earlier in the year. Tyler Biadasz is set to come back at center, but that doesn’t mean the Cowboys’ running game will explode. The lack of effort against Washington is concerning, because that continued a trend of the Cowboys tending to play at or below the level of their competition. We also saw this in the losses to Green Bay and Jacksonville.
If you look at Dallas down the stretch, they lost in overtime to Jacksonville in a game that they led by 17. They lost to Washington because they didn’t think there was any way Philadephia would lose (which made the Week 18 outcome moot in terms of playoff seeding). They had to scramble late to come back and beat Houston, and the Colts’ win was tight until that crazy 33-point explosion in the fourth quarter. The last dominant game Dallas played was that 40-3 demolition of the Vikings up in Minnesota, and that feels like it happened three years ago. Brady remains ready to lead fourth-quarter drives to lead his team to victory. Can the Cowboys match that offensive intensity?
→ Final Score and Prediction
Dallas tends to respond poorly in the presence of anything resembling pressure, despite their elite level of talent. Playing on the road, in prime time, with expectations of a deep run in the playoffs on their shoulders, does not bode well, especially with a quarterback in Dak Prescott who leads the NFL in interceptions with 15, despite having missed five games. I predict a final score of Tampa Bay 20, Dallas 17.
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