By just about every metric imaginable, the Arizona Cardinals are the better team on the field on Sunday Night Football against the Philadelphia Eagles. Both teams though, have the ability to go out and win their division by playing well these last three weeks of the season. That's why this game is tough to line, and it's even harder to try to figure out who is going to score the first touchdown of this game.
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Of all of the games we've had to handicap this year on who is going to score the first touchdown, this is by far the hardest. Go ahead and look at the raw stats and try to figure out who is going to get in the end zone first. There isn't a single man on either side with more than nine total touchdowns, and David Johnson's nine are aided just a bit by a kick return for a score early in the season.
Logic suggests that we start with Johnson, the rookie out of Northern Iowa. He's the bell cow for this Arizona offense now, carrying the ball a total of 41 times in his last two games since the injuries which put both Andre Ellington and Chris Johnson on the shelf. However, there's a lot of room for frustration here. Kerwynn Williams is eating into some of those carries, and the one rushing touchdown that Arizona has had in its last two games was scored by Williams, not Johnson.
Johnson is a real threat in the passing game as well, but he's not nearly Carson Palmer's only receiving threat. The Eagles have a secondary which can be and has been picked on a ton, and Palmer and his 4,003 yards and 31 TDs will probably look to strike early on.
But go ahead and figure out where the ball is being thrown to.
Larry Fitzgerald is a huge red zone threat, and he leads the team in receptions (96) and receiving yards (1,088). He hasn't found the end zone since Week 8, though.
John Brown is a deep threat capable of stretching the field on any given play, but his two total touchdowns in his last four games match that of J.J. Nelson, who only has 11 catches for the entire season.
Then there's Michael Floyd, a man who went on a four-game touchdown run in Weeks 6-10. He scored for the first time since then last Sunday against Minnesota as a part of his five catches and 102 yards.
Oh by the way, the Arizona tight ends have a total of seven touchdowns as well this year.
And forget about even trying to figure out who is going to be on the field for the Eagles if they score their first touchdown. Of late, their best scoring options have been returners more than anything else. Their offense has scored 27 TDs this season, and of those 27, there have been 10 different players find the end zone.
The team's leading touchdown producer, Ryan Mathews hasn't scored since Week 10, and the man who handled the goal line work last week was Darren Sproles, not either Kenjon Barner or DeMarco Murray.
However, it would be unwise to count out any of these players from getting that first score of this game.
The best option here is probably going to be to go with the field. The Eagles already have three defensive touchdowns this season, and though Sproles is going to be on the list of players to make that first TD, Josh Huff probably won't, and he's probably every bit as likely to score a TD on a return as Sproles is in this game.
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