The NFL Preseason kicks off for a couple of teams on Friday night. The Super Bowl Champion New York Giants travel to take on the Jacksonville Jaguars and the game has a start time of 7:30 p.m. and it will be televised on NFL RedZone. Currently the odds for the game have the Jaguars favored by 2.5 points with the total for the game at 34.5 points.
Tom Coughlin and the New York Giants are no strangers to working hard and having depth at key positions. It's what has helped win them two Super Bowls in the past five seasons. This contest will be the opening of the 2012 season for both clubs, who will e looking to improve upon their regular season records from a year ago. The Giants obviously made the playoffs and won the Super Bowl, while the Jaguars finished with a dismal 5-11 record in the AFC South. However, they did finish with a better record than the Indianapolis Colts, who went on to draft Andrew Luck with the first overall pick in the NFL Draft.
The biggest problem last season for the Jaguars was their 1-7 record away from Jacksonville. Outside of that, they weren't terrible, going 4-4 at home. Tonight's game is in Jacksonville, so maybe that will account for something with this Jaguar team. The Giants last season were a pedestrian 9-7 overall, but they were good enough to win the NFC East as Dallas, Philadelphia and Washington all finished behind them.
Eli Manning will look to continue a strong start tonight, even though he probably won't see much of the field overall. It's clear that good, quality teams want to have their quarterbacks and superstars play a bit of football, but not risk the threat of injury. Take a look at Mike Vick from last night's game against the Steelers. He banged his throwing hand against a helmet from his own lineman and even though X-rays were negative, you never really know what's going to happen.
Free Pick: We really like the UNDER in this game as we don't think either of these clubs are going to score any points. We are expecting the Giants to play some tough defense as they always do, even with their reserves. The Jaguars struggled to score points last season and we're expecting more of the same at least for this game tonight. The total is only 34.5 points, but do we really expect each of these teams to get to 17 points? I didn't think so.
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