Week 7: Minnesota at Dallas

We’re not the best with the margin of victory thing, but even we knew that last week’s Patriots/Cowboys game wasn’t going to be close. The Cowboys are a good team with a lot of good players and a good coach, but the Patriots are much better and – much as it pains us to praise the festering ragehole that is Bill Belichick – much better coached. The positive side of last week’s embarrassing loss, for Cowboys fans, is that since Dallas gets to have its bounce-back game against a tomato can like Minnesota.

And yes, we say that knowing full well how tough the Vikings were in Chicago in Week 6, and that Adrian Peterson – he of the 224 yards rushing last week – may indeed be as good in the NFL as he was at Oklahoma. The Cowboys will be hard-pressed to keep Peterson and Chester Taylor – the two combined for over 300 yards rushing last week – totally in check, but they’ve been very good against the rush this season (79.6 yards-allowed per game) and…well, more broadly, we just don’t see the Vikings winning two road games in a row.

Not with a collection of wide receivers that gives the word “hump” a bad name. Not with Tarvaris Jackson, a raw quarterback who was written almost entirely out of the script against Chicago and wound up completing just eight passes all game. Winning that way twice in a row will be hard to repeat, especially considering that the Cowboys defense, from top to bottom, is filled with strong tacklers and big-time athletes.

That doesn’t mean they’ll have much success against the Vikings’ offensive line – few teams will, considering Minnesota’s all-pro left side of OT Bryant McKinnie and OG Steve Hutchinson – but it does mean they won’t give up 300 rushing yards. Also, the more Dallas forces Jackson and his doof-squad of receivers into the game plan, the more chances exist for their playmaking secondary to make plays. While the Vikes’ offense is clearly better than we’d anticipated, we’ll believe that they can score 34 points two weeks in a row when we see it.

And we think it will take something on that order to defeat Dallas in this game. The Vikings run defense is even better than the Cowboys – at 66.2 yards per game, it’s the second-best in the NFL – but Dallas isn’t a grind-it-out ground team, anyway. With Marion Barber every bit as dangerous catching passes as he is running with the ball, the Vikings linebackers will have their work cut out for them. And unless Tony Romo is subjected to unforeseen pressure – he has been sacked just eight times in six games, and the Vikings are at the middle of the pack in terms of pass rushing – he should be able to pick apart a Minnesota secondary that has been as weak against the pass as it has been strong against the run. Fresh off a week in which they allowed 381 yards passing to Brian Freaking Griese, the Vikes enter Week 7 as the NFL’s worst passing defense. The Cowboys are the league’s third-best passing offense. You don’t need to be a highly paid NFL writer type person to see something brewing there.

OK, so maybe we’ll take back that “tomato can” comment about the Vikings. No team with Adrian Peterson on it should be counted out – seriously, if you haven’t yet, you should YouTube his two touchdown runs against the Bears from last week – and they’ve been in every game but the opener. Still, Dallas is a better team, and coming off a painful loss. From where we’re sitting, that makes them that much more likely to dish one out this week. We don’t foresee this one being terribly close, but the days of us predicting 21-point wins are over. At least until New England plays Miami next.

Cowboys by 10