New Orleans Saints at Dallas Cowboys
Friday, August 28, 2026
8:00 PM ET, AT&T Stadium
Friday night’s preseason finale at AT&T Stadium has a matchup that pits the hottest preseason team in the league against the coldest one, and both directions of the recent line movement point in the same direction as the on-field data.
The Cowboys are 3.5-point home favorites over the Saints with a total sitting in the 37.5 to 38.5 range. This line opened at Cowboys -2.5, and sharp money has pushed it a full point toward Dallas. The situational and statistical factors both back up that movement, and the Cowboys’ story this preseason has been dominance in every phase.
Let’s start with what both teams have actually done in August.
Dallas is 2-0 with an emphatic 34-13 win over the Cardinals last Saturday. Prior to that, they beat the Seahawks 17-7 in Week 1. That’s an offense that has produced 51 points across two games and a defense that has allowed just 20. Brian Schottenheimer is in his second year as head coach, and he’s clearly built a roster that has significant depth — the backup rotations have been executing at a level that has generated real preseason results.
New Orleans is on the exact opposite trajectory. The Saints are 0-2 and coming off a game they’ll want to forget — a 34-0 shutout loss to the Rams last Saturday at SoFi Stadium. That’s a Saints offense that couldn’t score a single point across four quarters. Combined with their Week 1 loss to the Jaguars 24-20, New Orleans has averaged just 10 points per game in preseason — the 28th-ranked offense in the entire league.
The head-to-head stat comparison tells the whole story. Dallas has been allowing exactly 10 points per game defensively (4th-best in the league). New Orleans has been scoring exactly 10 points per game offensively (28th in the league). That’s a direct match of the Cowboys’ defensive strength against the Saints’ offensive weakness. When one team’s specific strength lines up perfectly with the other’s specific weakness, the market pricing usually undervalues the difference.
Now the joint practice angle.
The Saints and Cowboys held a joint practice on August 18 at River Ridge Playing Fields in Oxnard, California. That session became national news because of how physical and heated it got — described as “less than peaceful” in local reporting, with multiple altercations breaking out. Both teams walked away from that joint practice with a specific edge to prove against the other. But the Cowboys have carried their momentum forward into their game weeks, dominating the Cardinals. The Saints have gotten worse, culminating in the shutout at SoFi.
The quarterback picture also favors Dallas.
Tyler Shough is expected to finally see the field for the Saints. He’s been protected through both preseason games and will play “at least a couple of series” against the Cowboys with the starters. That’s a positive for New Orleans — Shough has been getting significant reps in training camp and Kellen Moore wants to see him execute against real competition before the regular season. But there’s a limit to how much a couple of series can accomplish, especially against a Cowboys defense that has been suffocating in preseason.
Dak Prescott, meanwhile, isn’t playing at all for the Cowboys. But it doesn’t matter — Dallas’s backup quarterback rotation has been executing well enough to lead the offense to 34 points against the Cardinals. Schottenheimer has clearly built a system where his backup QBs can produce consistent scoring against defenses playing conservative preseason coverages.
The 3.5-point spread makes sense given all of these factors — the momentum difference, the statistical mismatch, the home field advantage, and the direct comparison of Dallas’s defensive strength against Saints’ offensive weakness. Getting Dallas to keep rolling in the finale isn’t asking much.
I looked at the total too. It has drifted slightly downward, and 37.5 is defensible given both teams have shown they can produce low-scoring outings. Saints’ offense has averaged just 10 PPG in preseason, which suggests the Under could hit. There’s a case for it. But the side offers cleaner value given how aligned the situational and statistical factors are.
The Pick: Dallas Cowboys -3.5
