{"id":9596,"date":"2017-01-03T14:02:16","date_gmt":"2017-01-03T19:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonprofootball.com\/?p=9596"},"modified":"2017-01-03T14:02:55","modified_gmt":"2017-01-03T19:02:55","slug":"cowboys-patriots-super-bowl-favorites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2017\/01\/03\/cowboys-patriots-super-bowl-favorites\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas Cowboys and New England Patriots Are Early Super Bowl Favorites"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the first time in a long time, the Dallas Cowboys are actually favorites to make it to the Super Bowl. On the opposing side however, the New England Patriots are favored to make a return, and it will not be an easy game for any opponent. Even though this season has been particularly dominant for the Cowboys, they have yet to go up against the power house of a team that the Patriots are.<\/p>\n<h2>Dallas Cowboys and New England Patriots Are Early Super Bowl Favorites<\/h2>\n<h3>The Cowboys<\/h3>\n<p>The 13-3 Cowboys head into the playoffs after becoming the first team to clinch and gain home field advantage. As it currently stands, the Cowboys will end up playing either the Green Bay Packers,\u00a0Detroit Lions, or\u00a0New York Giants. Any Cowboys fan knows that they would not like to be facing off against the Giants as New York became the &#8220;Cowboys Killer&#8221; this year.<\/p>\n<p>Also, the Packers are looking scary right now and <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/R\/RodgAa00.htm?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aaron Rodgers<\/a><\/strong> has returned to his\u00a0MVP<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>ways lately as they have won their last\u00a0seven games. The best odds for the Cowboys would be to go up against the Detroit Lions. Any way the playoffs go, it will be a challenge for this Cowboys team making their way to the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n<h3>The Patriots<\/h3>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/B\/BradTo00.htm?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tom Brady<\/a><\/strong> is increasing his legacy as he gets older, yet still has not shown any signs of slowing down. Again he is a strong MVP candidate and the team has been almost just as dominant as the Dallas Cowboys. They are missing some key pieces, including <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/G\/GronRo00.htm?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rob Gronkowski<\/a><\/strong>. With Gronk out, the Patriots lose a big piece, but that does not mean <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/B\/BennMa00.htm?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Martellus Bennett<\/a><\/strong> hasn&#8217;t filled the role well enough.<\/p>\n<p>Standing in the Patriots&#8217; way in their first game will be the Houston Texans, Oakland Raiders, or Miami Dolphins. Of course the Patriots can beat any one of these teams, but the easiest opponent would likely come from the Raiders, who just lost their MVP candidate quarterback <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/C\/CarrDe02.htm?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Derek Carr<\/a><\/strong>. Each potential opponent has their share of key injuries, but the Patriots should come through pretty easily.<\/p>\n<h3>The Super Bowl<\/h3>\n<p>It is possible that these two teams meet for one great Super Bowl, but a lot has to fall in place for that to happen. Both the Patriots and Cowboys are very talented and should play tougher than they have all season. It will make for an interesting playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/462644654\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 68.350168% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"margin: 0px; left: 0px; top: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; display: inline-block; position: absolute;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/462644654?et=Nd5Lua8gS_92DM3z7EDW0g&amp;viewMoreLink=off&amp;sig=pK2KVheVwdCqcRFNaEeKYGNv-7djxQm4DJWsgjbbj0Q=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"406\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Dallas Cowboys and New England Patriots are Super Bowl favorites heading into the playoffs. Will they meet in the Super Bowl?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1739,"featured_media":9605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,54,5],"tags":[49,61,38,40,1010],"class_list":["post-9596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cowboys","category-editorials","category-patriots","tag-dallas-cowboys","tag-football","tag-new-england-patriots","tag-nfl","tag-super-bowl"],"modified_by":"David McCaffery","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1739"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}