Injuries have a real way of derailing NFL prime-time games, and it appears that's the case this week with the Buccaneers visiting the Cowboys for Thursday Night Football in Week 5. Get a $55 bonus after $25 in trades by claiming the latest Kalshi promo code CBSSPORTS55 here: The Buccaneers are massive underdogs, and it makes sense with Baker Mayfield out and Jalon Daniels under centeer for Tampa Bay. Todd Bowles' squad is 0-4 in what is quickly becoming a disastrous season.
The Cowboys haven't been the perfect Super Bowl contender everyone expected quite yet because of their defense, but the offense is straight humming and a big prime-time win would go a long way toward their quest to win the division, which looks extremely winnable thanks to everything that's happened injury wise to the rest of the NFC East. Wager on the NFL with the latest FanDuel promo code and get up to $250 in bonus bets: Short week Overs are always a little dicey, but these prime-time Overs have been good to us the past few games and we're going right back to the well. I lean toward the Buccaneers against the spread, but I don't want to be in the extremely helpless position of praying that Daniels can storm through the back door or hoping Tampa doesn't give up some garbage-time bomb to Dak Prescott and this lethal Dallas offense.
Instead, we'll back the Over with a team in Dallas that is very good at scoring but has been very bad at stopping teams from scoring. We saw a backup in Marcus Mariota put on a show in the second half of a game just a few weeks ago, and Dallas has gone Over this number every single week so far this season. It's asking quite a bit from Daniels to produce, but the Bucs are desperate and I don't see them slowing down the Cowboys.
They've got to win by scoring here. This is NOT for the faint of heart, because Egbuka has been a significant disappointment this season after a hot start as a rookie last year. And now he's playing with Daniels under center and Joey Porter, Jr., in town, likely giving him at least some sort of shadow coverage.
Even off a brutal two-catch, 13-yard game last week with a backup throwing him the ball, I'm bullish enough on this number because of the game environment: the Cowboys are one of -- if not the -- best offenses in football and are going to score plenty of points. The Bucs will be forced to throw, and the volume should be there for Egbuka to get over this measly number. Maybe this backfires and we end up getting a big-time tight end game on Thursday night in Dallas.
But right now the volume simply isn't there for Ferguson, who has 15 total targets on the year. That's less than four a game, and we're just talking targets there, not even catches, folks. I wouldn't be shocked if he scored, because Ferguson has three touchdowns on his 12 catches for the season and is a major red-zone threat.
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