Houston Texans vs Dallas Cowboys

Dress rehearsal week

That term has been used for the 3rd week of the NFL preseason, with the majority of teams trying to get their starters ready for week 1, by playing them into the second half. But lately, more coaches are abandoning that trend and trying to do their own thing. Seems that one of them is Cowboys head coach - Jason Garrett. Last year, he sat out Dak Prescott and some of the other key players for the last two games of the preseason. This year, the snap count of his starting quarterback in weeks 1&2 was almost identical to those same weeks in 2018. Which is an indication that he's leaning toward sitting out his best players once again. Nothing official yet, but if it would be, you'll probably not have Texans at -110 available right now. On the other side, Bill O'Brien does things more traditionally. It's true that Deshaun Watson played only one series in week 3 of last preseason, but I'm guessing that was because of the hit he suffered at the end of the first drive by Ndamukong Suh. I expect him and the rest of the starters to get the first half of this game.

Backup plan

As I said, there is nothing official when it comes to starters playing time in the preseason. You gotta make an educated guess based on coaching tendencies, previous seasons and read between the lines from what was said in press conferences. I think there is where the value lies with this bet. But what if my assumption is incorrect? No worries, we're still alive. Depth of the rosters, especially at the QB position is often what decides these games in the preseason. Texans will probably use only two quarterbacks. Deshaun Watson and Joe Webb III. Projected backup AJ McCarron got injured early in the training camp, so they signed rookie Jordan Ta'amu on August 7th, but he threw only one pass in the second game and I doubt he'll get more playing time in this one. Webb played the entire game vs the Packers and most of it vs the Lions, averaging almost 240 passing yards and 30 rushing. He is a premier athlete, which is a great trait to have in the preseason at this position. Plays get broken more often and QB's need to create plays with their legs. He is really good at that.

Behind Prescott, Cowboys got Cooper Rush and Mike White. The latter struggled mightily so far this preseason, with completions percentage below 50% and shocking 3.5 yards per play. Rush was slightly better with 61% completion, but still had 5.4 yards per play. It means they are really struggling to get any explosive plays with their backups on offense. To compare, Webb has 7.3 in that same category.

Texans vs Cowboys best bet

After everything I wrote above, you probably know which way I'm leaning here. Houston should be the larger favorite in this situation. If Dallas continues with their trend, they will rest their key guys tonight, which is not factored into the line properly. And chances for their backup QB's to bail them out are very slim. They were not performing well in the first two games.