When you go on the road, to play the defending Super Bowl champs, in the customary season opening game at their place, you will almost certainly be an underdog. When you’re entering that scenario with questions about the full fitness of your starting quarterback, well, then you’ll be a substantial dog.
Such is the case with Dak Prescott and the Dallas Cowboys.
The best sports gambling sites in Arizona have “America’s Team” as about a touchdown, or slightly more underdogs to Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, when the 2021 NFL season kicks off in six days time. The Cowboys opened +6 and -105 on the money line, but expect the point spread to shift, given what further information comes out about Prescott’s health.
Dak Prescott is coming off a major ankle injury he suffered in a home game last October, and he’s also had to battle shoulder problems in preseason training camp.
How well did the Cowboys protect him this preseason?
Will he be rusty?
“When you come off an injury like that, you’re practicing and you feel good, but nothing can duplicate actually being in the game,” said Tony Romo, the lead Analyst for CBS Sports, at their media Zoom session on Wednesday.
“Ultimately, everyone is trying to get though the preseason healthy, trying to get to week one and survive the season- that’s the most important thing.
“I do think there will be a slight adjustment when the plays are difficult and everything doesn’t go perfect. I think Dak will be fine, it will just be a period of him adjusting himself and slowly getting back.”
Romo added that for him, when he was playing, he always wanted to get at least one series at home, and one series on the road, in the preseason.
Fellow analyst Phil Sims, another former Pro Bowl QB, weighed in as well.
“When Dak came up with this lat injury that he got throwing the football, I was not shocked,” Sims said.
“I actually went on Twitter and talked about it. When that plant leg is not feeling right for a quarterback, he had to make some adjustments to get power on the football, so he changed the way he threw the football.
“When you change, the body wasn’t ready for it, put too much pressure on it, and that’s what we saw. So I’m really interested to see. I watched “Hard Knocks” just to watch him throw during one of the practices. It looked okay, but I didn’t see him put any mustard on the football, no power at all.
“So it’s really something to watch, and fortunately he’s got maybe some time to really heal up, and when they start that first game against Tampa Bay, he can let the football go.”
The truth is, we just won’t know until we get there. No one really knows his true fitness levels and where Dak Prescott is at, other than Dak Prescott himself, and the Cowboys coaching and medical staff.
However, it won’t be long until the rest of find out as well.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank, partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” has regularly appeared in WGN, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune.
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