Editor's note: only the marquee game carries a line right now, pulled from a real sportsbook page. The rest of the slate runs without picks until our model ships. Live tiles for every game are at watch.uristocrat.com.
The NFL is back. Week 1 Sunday puts 13 games on the board, starting with seven 1:00 PM ET kicks and ending with a division rivalry in primetime. Baseball does not get out of the way for it either. All 15 MLB games are on today, and most of them start inside the football windows, with the Brewers, Rays and Dodgers all playing meaningful September innings.
Marquee: Dallas Cowboys at New York Giants, NFC East opener (8:20 PM ET, NBC)
John Harbaugh coaches his first regular season game for the Giants, and the league scheduled it against the team New York cannot beat. The Giants have gone 1-9 against Dallas over the past five seasons and won seven games total the last two years. Harbaugh left Baltimore after 18 seasons to fix that, and he inherits Jaxson Dart at quarterback coming off a rookie year that gave the roster something to build around. Dallas is the more finished team. Dak Prescott threw for 4,552 yards and 30 touchdowns last season with CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens outside, and the Cowboys are trying to reach the postseason for the first time in three years. The soft spot is up front: left guard Tyler Smith is on injured reserve with a thumb injury, which is exactly the kind of hole a Harbaugh defense goes looking for in September.
Vegas line: Cowboys -3, total 47.5, Cowboys -166 / Giants +140 (DraftKings via ESPN; full board at ESPN NFL odds and DraftKings).
Also today
- Washington Commanders at Philadelphia Eagles (4:25 PM ET, FOX). The best NFC East game of the day that is not in primetime. Philadelphia is a 6-point home favorite with the total at 44.5, the biggest number of any game we pulled today. If the Eagles cover, the division race is effectively a two-team argument by dinner.
- Green Bay Packers at Minnesota Vikings (4:25 PM ET, CBS). A road opener in a dome against a division rival is the hardest Week 1 assignment Green Bay could have drawn. The winner spends a week as the NFC North favorite.
- Buffalo Bills at Houston Texans (1:00 PM ET, CBS). Two AFC teams that expect to be playing in January, meeting in the first window of the season. Houston's pass rush against Buffalo's line is the matchup that decides it.
- Baltimore Ravens at Indianapolis Colts (1:00 PM ET, CBS). Baltimore's first game of the post-Harbaugh era, which is a sentence nobody expected to write. Watch how the sideline handles a close fourth quarter.
- Philadelphia Phillies at Atlanta Braves (1:35 PM ET, MLB.TV). Atlanta is 88-61 and Philadelphia is 82-67, so this is a division series with actual seeding on the line. It gets buried under football, which is the annual mid-September problem for baseball.
- San Diego Padres at San Francisco Giants (7:20 PM ET, Peacock). The only MLB night game today. San Diego is 80-68 and still has a wild card path. San Francisco is 62-87 and playing spoiler, which they enjoy more than they should.
- New York Mets at New York Yankees (1:35 PM ET, YES/SNY). The Yankees are 85-63 and chasing a bye. The Mets are 69-79 and out of it. The Subway Series still draws, and this is the last one of the year.
Every Week 1 team gets to claim the same record until 4pm, which is the whole appeal. By tonight the NFC East has already sorted two of its four teams, Philadelphia and Washington in the afternoon and Dallas and New York after dark, and baseball's contenders will have quietly played a full slate that decides more than any of today's football will.
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