Two of the better teams in the NFC from last season open up Week 2 of the NFL 2023 season in the Thursday Night Football as the Philadelphia Eagles play host to the Minnesota Vikings in a good looking matchup.
The Eagles ensured there would be no immediate Super Bowl hangover last week when they defeated the New England Patriots while the Vikings continued a tough pre-season with a loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Philadelphia Eagles
After putting together the season that they did last term, the Philadelphia Eagles would have been extremely disappointed not to win the Super Bowl. They put up a creditable performance in the big game but were unable to come away with the trophy. That should motivate them to go again this season and the early suggestions is that could well be the case. There was an element of fortune to their win in New England last week but any road win against the Patriots is a good one.
That said, they will not have been happen with their second half performance in particular at Foxboro last week. Their defence got exposed by a fairly limited Mac Jones offense and their own offense suddenly stalled after opening up a 16 point lead. With a short turnaround those are a couple of fixes which there might not have been time to rectify so the Eagles might need to rely on the talent within their roster to get the job done.
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Minnesota Vikings
Such is the weird nature of sport, Minnesota Vikings largely dominated the play against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers but came out of the match with a loss, something they will be looking to balance out over the course of the night. I guess the best way to describe the Minnesota display against Tampa Bay was untidy. A lot of what they did was very good but interceptions or a bad play at the wrong time proved costly so they will be looking to tidy their offensive play out.
The positive is that their skill players in the passing game looked good in that match. Justin Jefferson looked like the player of last season and Kirk Cousins was able to find him fairly often. The running game looked like it needed a bit of work but you would expect that when you consider they lost their star running back in the off season. Defensively Minnesota are a work in progress and they’ll need to make decent strides in that department if they are to stop Jalen Hurts and co.
Betting
We are still a little bit early in the season to be assessing these teams with any clarity and therefore going deep in the spreads or the various match lines and I’m often loathe to do that on a Thursday night anyway with the short turnaround. This one is the short turnaround I pay less attention to given how early it is in the season but even then I don’t really want to get too involved in the regular lines and markets.
One bet that I do like the look of though is the Kirk Cousins passing yards line. The line is 260.5 which looks like a fairly low line for a triggerman like Cousins anyway but when you factor in that the Eagles are around a touchdown favourites and therefore expected to win, and the Minnesota run game looked very ordinary last week, Cousins could be doing more passing than he might otherwise. Philadelphia could have a few injuries in the deeper defensive positions to hamper them so that over feels very much in range.
Tips
Back K.Cousins – Over 260.5 passing yards for a 3/10 stake at 1.90 with Coral
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