Panthers HC Ron Rivera: ‘Disrespectful’ The Cowboys Favored In Week 12
USA Today
The Carolina Panthers are arguably the hottest team in the NFL right now. The New England Patriots may also be sporting a flawless record, but Cam Newton have gotten to 10-0 while battling the odds all season long.
On Monday, the odds for all three Thanksgiving Day games in the NFL were released with one of the matchups having a surprising twist regarding the odds. The Dallas Cowboys, currently a dismal 3-7 on the season, were favored (-1) over the undefeated Carolina Panthers (10-0).
Despite dominating the competition over the course of the first ten games of the season, Ron Rivera’s squad was the underdog on the road against a Cowboys team that has been manhandled on a weekly basis since veteran quarterback Tony Romo went down with a broken collarbone in Week 2.
Although Romo was finally back under center in Week 11 and led the Cowboys to a much-needed win over the Miami Dolphins, Dallas being favored heading into the Thanksgiving showdown in Texas is a bit of a headscratcher.
Rivera felt as if the Panthers were being disrespected once talk of the odds for the game started to circulate via Marc Sessler of NFL.com.
“It’s nothing that we haven’t seen before. You know we’ve had a better record in some of our other games where we were underdogs,” Rivera told the media Monday. “So we are going to take it in stride. As I said, we are going to play them one at a time and as far as we are concerned everybody is 0-0 and we’ll see how it comes out.
“It is a little disrespectful, I guess. But apparently they know something we don’t. We are just going to prepare and get ourselves ready for Thursday. We’ll show up.”
Although the Cowboys were initially favored to win the Week 12 matchup with the perfect Panthers, the odds have now swung in Carolina’s favor (-2), according to Bovada.lv.
It appears the oddsmakers did the Cowboys no favors by making them the favorites for Thursday’s game. Rivera and company will use this ‘disrespectful’ statement as fuel for the fire heading into their head-to-head showdown with Romo’s crew as they attempt to improve to 11-0 on the year.
