Week 1 of the NFL Preseason kicks off Thursday night, headlined by Buffalo visiting Cleveland on ESPN. Both teams suffered close defeats in their preseason openers, with Buffalo losing by a single point against Carolina, and the Browns falling by a field goal against Washington. Browns fourth-string quarterback Connor Shaw injured his thumb and will be out several weeks, but he wasn’t expected to see much action anyway. The first-string offense marched down the field and scored a touchdown, and the second-string offense looked pretty good with Johnny Manziel. The running game was awful, though, and will likely be the focal point on this matchup.
Seattle at Kansas City is the featured contest of two Friday night games, being carried on the NFL Network. Seattle had been a great team to back in the preseason the last few years, but they lost outright against Denver in their opener while KC had little issue getting past Arizona. The online sportsbooks opened the Seahawks as a small one-point road favorite due to their recent preseason success.
Saturday sees the most action with eight games scheduled. Two teams we are focusing on are Minnesota and Philadelphia. The Vikings are already off to a 2-0 start and are a perfect 6-0 straight up under head coach Mike Zimmer in preseason play. Philly led the NFL in preseason points scored last year, and they put up 36 points in their preseason opener last week vs. Indy. Both of those teams are favored to win again.
On Sunday there are three games, including a featured matchup of Dallas vs. the 49ers. Both clubs looked lost in their preseason openers, with Dallas falling 17-7 at San Diego and San Francisco losing 23-10 at Houston. Expect the offense to improve this time around, but with the backups seeing the bulk of the action that improvement might be limited.
The second week of the NFL Preseason concludes with a Monday Night matchup of Cincinnati vs. Tampa Bay. Winston looked good at times and bad at other times for Tampa Bay, looking much more comfortable when the Bucs went with a quicker tempo. Tampa is a small home favorite.
The teams we are looking to back this week include Atlanta, Philly, Houston, and Minnesota. This is because according to the latest news from sportsbook pay per head providers they will be the teams to watch.
We’ll be back next week to preview the third full week of NFL Preseason action.
