Bovada has set the Cowboys projected win total for the 2018 season at 8.5 This puts us in a classic over/under situation.
Where do you fall? Do you see the Cowboys matching 2017’s production as a floor, or will they regress and fall back to their 8-8 woes at best?
Eric Edholm took a stab at the idea over at Pro Football Weekly, and he’s a believer.
They went over with Elliott missing 38 percent of last season, and he’s enough, we think, to make up for the lack of passing-game weaponry. This offensive line — especially with second-rounder Connor Williams on board — should mash. The defense should be better. And the special teams were solid in 2017 and should be better with a healthy Bailey.
The Cowboys are expected to remain legitimate offensively even with Dez Bryant and Jason Witten gone. On the surface those are big names, but the disposition of the team’s offensive identity aren’t necessarily influenced by their departures, and Father Time had started catching up to both players.
Dallas has a tough schedule in 2018. Looking at their six division games, the NFC South, AFC South, Detroit Lions, and Seattle Seahawks, it’s not exactly easy finding nine wins.
Not that this is at all how they’ll shake out, but in June stacking nine wins together could look something like:
- Three NFC East wins (a .500 record seems plausible)
- Tampa Bay Buccaneers
- Carolina Panthers (the weakest of the Atlanta, New Orleans, and Carolina trio)
- Indianapolis Colts (Andrew Luck is still an enormous question mark)
- Tennessee Titans (that offense is hardly ridiculously exciting)
- Jacksonville Jaguars (a heavy dose of Zeke against that defense should outscore Bortles)
- Seattle Seahawks (Dallas won their last game in Seattle and has come close over their last two meetings)
It could wind up being any other sort of combination, but the point is that it definitely seems plausible. Nine wins looks and sounds like a lot, but in the 15 years since the Bill Parcells era began in Dallas (that point felt like a good starting one) they’ve only been more than one win below nine total wins three times, meaning they’ve been knocking on the door more often than not.
What say you, BTB? If the over/under is 8.5, where do you fall?