Welcome to Monday Night Football
Sunday Night Football is back this week to offer Panthers fans a preview of their Week 15 opponent. The Dallas Cowboys are hosting the Cincinnati Bengals before traveling to Charlotte on a short week to face the Carolina Panthers. All Monday Night Football games kick off at 8:15 ET on ESPN.
As always in our brave new world of expansive sports gambling, it is now easier to bet on games than to watch them. You can catch current odds on all NFL games for Week 13 here on FanDuel.
The theme of mid December for the Cowboy is apparently facing cat mascot teams that are playing well above their record. The 4-8 Bengals had lofty expectations for the 2024 season and have suffered from questionable coaching and bad bounces. Theirs is a different story from the season-long soul searching that the Panthers have been occupied with, but the results for the Cowboys are the same: they are underdogs to two teams with worse records than their own.
The game tonight is going to be a classic prime time match between a stoppable force and a moveable object. The Cowboys offense has been injury and mistake prone, leaving Cooper Rush to try to cobble together what’s left of a disappointing season at quarterback. The Bengals defense, however, has been handing out feel good performances to opposing offenses for too much of this season.
This is where the comparison to the Panthers comes back to relevance: the Bengals are entering tonight’s game on a three game skid with close losses to three strong playoff bound teams. They have been playing well against good teams and it is time for them to put it together and knock off a bad team. That’s why I’d take the Cincinnati Bengals tonight.
As always, use this space to talk about the action as it unfolds.
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