Without going all Bon Jovi, “woooaaaah, we’re halfway there…” and there’s just two more weeks of NFL preseason action to get through before the meaningful games get underway.
After sitting through some horrendously bad play in the first two weeks, a lot of teams will be giving their big guns extended action in week 3.
That at least means we can hope there will be a marked improvement in quality compared to the guys who will be making coffees or driving cars in a couple of weeks.
Perhaps the best strategy for betting on this weekend’s action is to find the guys who are still sitting out with a scratch or two (or something actually worth monitoring) and back against their teams.
We’ve found four plays and they are right here.
It’s a case of when not if Daniel Jones will take over from Eli Manning as the starting quarterback of the New York Giants. That time hasn’t come yet so that means we are going to get an extended run of Peyton’s brother running the Giants offence on Friday morning. That should already be setting unders alarms considering Eli just isn’t that good anymore and the Giants receivers will probably struggle to get open, even against the Bengals. As for Cincinnati’s offence… well it’s still Andy Dalton, make of that what you will.
For the second straight week, the Dolphins are involved in a Florida derby, this time it’s against their neighbours from the north of the state, Jacksonville. While the Jaguars have scored a grand total of 10 points in this preseason, you would have to hope with Nick Foles and other key players likely set for extended reps, that should help them at least get into the end zone once or twice. As for the Dolphins, well they have two quarterbacks competing for the Week 1 starting job, so you would hope that the combination of Josh Rosen and Ryan Fitzpatrick will be able to generate some points and the Dolphins can get over 20 points themselves.
Remarkably, the Bills are 2-0 this preseason beating the Colts and Panthers, while the Lions have lost their preseason outings against the Patriots and Texans. Of course the Lions haven’t let their starting quarterback Matthew Stafford take a single snap in either of those games apparently by a coaches decision rather than anything involving his health. If that is the case, you would expect him to at least take some live reps to acclimatise to the new offence of Darrell Bevell in a game situation. If he does they should be able to account for the Bills, even if there are still a few questions over their offensive line.
It’s been a rough preseason for the Colts without their star quarterback Andrew Luck who doesn’t seem to be able to overcome a niggling leg injury. It seems as though Luck is going to be shut down until Week 1 of the regular season at the earliest which makes the Bears an excellent value option here. No Luck, no Colts, let’s not over complicate things.