Greg Cote's Thursday night NFL pick

Greg Cote, Miami Herald on Sep 3, 2025

Published in Football

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The NFL’s 106th season is the 35th anniversary year for our picks in the Miami Herald, and also marks King Sport’s 20th season of kicking off in prime time on a Thursday. (Sadly, an even older tradition than the Thursday night game is the Dolphins’ NFL-long streak of consecutive seasons without a playoff win since the last in 2001.) Welcome back to longtime followers of our NFL picks and welcome aboard to newbies. We take our picks seriously but also like to have fun along the way. Watch for our Thursday night pick separately every Wednesday. Watch for all of the rest of the games in our main week’s picks out every Thursday. Let’s go!

COWBOYS (0-0) at EAGLES (0-0)

Line: PHI by 8 1/2.

Cote’s pick: PHI, 27-23.

TV: 8:20 p.m. Thursday, NBC/Peacock.

The lead float in the NFL’s ‘25 parade is a big one, a good one: Reigning Super Bowl champion Philadelphia hosting the ongoing dysfunction of division-rival Dallas and flailing owner Jerry Jones. Betting lines tend to be more conservative in Week 1 than they will become, but the Eagles are tied for the biggest favorite in opening week — bigger because the Cowboys stunned the league last week by trading star edge rusher Micah Parsons to Green Bay. (As Jalen Hurts surely celebrated.) The two first-round picks in return will help Dallas someday ... but not Thursday night in one of eight Week 1 division games, and not this season. OK, enough setup. Onto the game and the result: Philly is on a 5-1 run at home in this series and swept last year by a combined score of 75-13, while Dallas arrives off a dispiriting 7-10 season. But I like the Boys to cover, even as their fans (rightly) bemoan the Parsons trade. Matter of fact, an outright upset would be less than a seismic shock. Dallas is the team here with much to prove, the Cowboys are an NFL-best 41-23-1 in season openers, and QB Dak Prescott is a crazy-good 33-8 against the NFC East. Eagles defense is adjusting to several offseason changes and Dak, without much of a run game, should put up big numbers and at the least keep it tight.

(Note: Betting line courtesy ESPNBet as of Wednesday afternoon.)