Buccaneers at Cowboys — Thursday, October 8 at 8:15 PM ET on Prime Video, AT&T Stadium in Arlington, TX. An in-conference (NFC) matchup with tiebreaker weight down the road; the league gave it the Thursday Night Football window. The Buccaneers arrive 1-4 (1-1 on the road); the Cowboys sit 2-3 (1-2 at home). FPI's season projection frames the stakes: the Cowboys at 9.0 wins with 62% playoff odds, the Buccaneers at 6.6 and 15%.
FPI makes the Cowboys the better team by 7.5 points on a neutral field — +2.3 (No. 8) against -5.2 (No. 29) for the Buccaneers. The unit matchups: when the Buccaneers have it, their No. 31 EPA offense meets a Cowboys defense ranked 30th; the Cowboys No. 3 offense draws a Buccaneers defense ranked 11th.
ThePredictionTracker aggregates 48 computer systems on this game, and their average says the Cowboys by 7.0. They don't agree with each other: the most Buccaneers-friendly system says Cowboys -0.0, the most Cowboys-friendly says Cowboys -24.4. Against the Vegas consensus of Cowboys -8.5 the gap is 1.5 points — real, but inside the noise band.
Blend the consensus with the ratings and the model's line is Cowboys -7.7, with the Cowboys winning 72% of the time. Nothing here clears the posting gate — the edge is inside the model's noise band, and passing is a position.
| Team | FPI | Off | Def | ST | Proj W-L | Playoffs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buccaneers | -5.2 (#29) | 31 | 11 | 6 | 6.6-10.4 | 15% |
| Cowboys | +2.3 (#8) | 3 | 30 | 5 | 9.0-8.0 | 62% |
Unit columns are EPA ranks among the 32 teams — lower is better.
| Snapshot (ET) | Book | Line | Odds | Model cover % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tue, 10/6, 10:04 AM | FanDuel | -9.5 | -104 | 57.0% |
| Tue, 10/6, 10:04 AM | DraftKings | -9.5 | -105 | 57.0% |
| Wed, 10/7, 6:00 PM | FanDuel | -8.5 | -112 | 50.1% |
| Wed, 10/7, 6:00 PM | DraftKings | -8.5 | -115 | 50.1% |
| Thu, 10/8, 6:09 PM | FanDuel | -8.5 | -115 | 49.9% |
| Thu, 10/8, 6:09 PM | DraftKings | -9.5 | -108 | 46.9% |
- · FPI +7.5 home
- · HFA +1.8
- · prediction tracker: 48 systems, mean home margin +7.0
- · no market total — sd_margin default 13.3
- · totals unmodeled in v0 — market total displayed, not priced