Maybe Micah Parsons was selfish and egotistical as locker room reports indicate, but wouldn't you be a little big-headed if you were that awesome? Maybe long-term the Cowboys will use those first-round picks and Kenny Clark to be better off without Parsons, but they are not going to be better off defensively in Week 1. 

For that reason, I'm declaring these three Eagles Overs as Inside the Lines' Best Bets for Thursday Night's Week 1 opener between the Cowboys and Eagles in Philadelphia.

What makes a bet an "Inside the Lines Best Bet?" These are ones where:

1) Best Projection: Our SportsLine Model's projection shows clear value versus the line and we love certain statistical trends, X's and O's and subjective supporting data that supports our side but isn't directly factored into the model. For example, say we love a running back to go Over 14.5 carries and his backup is projected for 5.5 carries, but the backup is questionable and there's a chance he can be ruled out, which surely will change our projection to 16.5 (third-stringer gets 3.5) and the line would likely go from 12.5 to 15.5. If we have value on a side and the only unknown factors that will change are in our favor, we'll consider it our "Best Projection."

AND

2) Best Price: There is an outlier best price that we should take advantage of before it steams in "our direction." In most of these cases, the best-priced book is using "standard odds making logic" to set the line, but our team has identified a unique situation where standard odds rules don't apply. For example, maybe a player is -110 to throw an interception, but in his last three seasons he has averaged just 0.4 interceptions on the road compared to 0.7 at home because the team plays on a fast track at home and averages 5+ more pass attempts at home.

Step 1 provides greater accuracy and Step 2, especially when combined with a nice Profit Boost or Promotion, significantly lowers the bar for being profitable ... which is why we like to feature our best line sportsbooks offers. 

The SportsLine Projection Model was developed and powered by the Inside the Lines team. You can visit SportsLine for our model's main market bets (spread, total, money line) but if you are looking for our personal best bets for free, check out our recently launched Inside the Lines blog.   

Jalen Hurts Over 1.5 passing touchdowns (+134, FanDuel)

This line implies Jalen Hurts would average 1.2 touchdowns if they played the game 1,000 times, which is entirely understandable based on his 18 passing touchdowns in 15 regular season games last season. But what Hurts did in a six-week stretch from Sept. 16 to Oct. 27 (just six passing touchdowns) is irrelevant. The Eagles were in a funk to start the season before they began to rally after their bye.

Once they started riding Saquon Barkley down the field and stopped caring about A.J. Brown's moping, the Eagles and Hurts took off and dominated the league. Including the playoffs, Hurts finished with nine passing TDs in his last six games played and had Over 1.5 in four of the six. 

The SportsLine model (Inside the Lines' developed and operate it) projects Hurts for two passing touchdowns in Week 1 because there is no Parsons to disrupt him and the Eagles are projected to go Over the 27.5 team total. We are banking on four TDs and only one tush push, one Barkley rushing touchdown and two passing scores.

Saquon Barkley anytime touchdown (-165, BetMGM)

Barkley's -165 odds implies just a 62% chance of a touchdown, which is well under the -210 (68%) that FanDuel is charging. Our model gives Barkley a 62% chance of scoring a rushing touchdown Thursday. As a rookie, Barkley was a high-volume receiver with 921 receiving yards and four receiving touchdowns. He also had four receiving touchdowns in his last season with the Giants in 2023 (14 games). For a few different reasons, Barkley only had 33 receptions and two receiving touchdowns in 16 games with the Eagles.

As awesome as Philly is, the Eagles won't just run out the exact same playbook as last season, and I think using Barkley more in the receiving game is a no-brainer. You already saw some of this in the playoffs where he had four receptions for 27 yards versus the Rams and six for 40 yards in the Super Bowl. Barkley also only had 57 rushing yards in the Super Bowl.

If the Eagles can dominate the Chiefs with Barkley getting more than 40% of his yards through the air, that's got to be something new offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo makes a mental note of. Expect Barkley to average around 0.2 receiving touchdowns per game this season, which is where the value versus -165 is hit. 

DeVonta Smith anytime touchdown (+190, FanDuel)

DeVonta Smith accounts for 27% of his team's receptions when active, but 35% of the team's receiving TDs, which is just under the 36% that A.J. Brown accounts for. But Brown's line is in the +160s for this game, so we'll take the better value with Smith. This pick is obviously linked directly to our Hurts Over 1.5 passing touchdowns pick, so the logic above applies here as well.

The team added John Metchie, but his one career receiving touchdown doesn't scare me as a threat to Smith's usage. Our model not only has great value, but it would price him at -155 based on our projection.

While the -210 for Saquon ATD is higher than we'd like, the other two legs are best priced at FanDuel, so an SGP with FanDuel would pay off +902.

Game Cheat Sheet

We use our proprietary AI to review our projection vs our odds partners' best prices. This is a list of other good projection based bets for this game.

These are just a fraction of our best bets, which are all free on our new blog. We will be providing our team's personal best bets for every NFL game during the 2025 season.