Where to watch Cowboys vs. Eagles: TV channel, live stream, kickoff time, odds, spread

The 2025 NFL season has finally arrived.The defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles host to the NFC East division rival Dallas Cowboys to kick off the campaign for a special NFL kickoff game edition of “Thursday Night Football,” and boy does this showdown look different than we thought it would just a week ago.

The Cowboys shocked the football world by trading star defender Micah Parsons to the Green Bay Packers for Kenny Clark and two first-round picks. Dallas, therefore, enters this game with a new-look defense that will try to slow down an offense featuring last season’s NFL Offensive Player of the Year and other stars who line up all across both sides of the team — from the offensive line to the receiving corps and the quarterback.

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The Eagles lost several players from their championship defense but return a significant portion of their core. They’ll be taking on a Cowboys offense that has a bunch of new faces — led by wide receiver George Pickens — as well, one that should look significantly different than it did a year ago. Beyond the personnel changes, Brian Schottenheimer steps in for ousted coach Mike McCarthy as the former offensive coordinator now gets to hold the primary whistle for America’s Team.

Before we break down the matchup, here’s a look at how you can watch the game.

Where to watch Cowboys vs. EaglesDate: Thursday, Sept. 4 | Time: 8:20 p.m. ETLocation: Lincoln Financial Field (Philadelphia)TV: NBC | Stream: Fubo (Try for free) Follow: CBS Sports AppOdds: Eagles -7.5; O/U 47.5 (via DraftKings Sportsbook)When the Cowboys have the ball

Dak Prescott was injured for both games against the Eagles last year, so we didn’t get to see what he looked like against this version of Vic Fangio’s defense. He’s faced a Fangio defense three times in his career, per Tru Media, going 58 of 95 for 733 yards, five touchdowns and an interception. He didn’t do well at all against the Fangio-led Broncos in 2021, but performed very well against the Bears in 2016 and the Dolphins in 2023. 

It’ll be fascinating to see them square off here, simply because Fangio’s style of defense seems so well constructed to play against this particular version of the Cowboys offense. Fangio tends to play light boxes and invite the opposing offense to run the football, confident that his front can handle that aspect of things, and then overload the deeper zones of the field with coverage defenders. 

This should work perfectly against Dallas, which essentially threw away the running back position again this year by rolling with Javonte Williams, Miles Sanders and fifth-round pick Jaydon Blue. Williams has been a shell of himself in his two seasons since returning from an ACL tear. Sanders got surpassed in Carolina by Chuba Hubbard. Blue is explosive but was injured on and off throughout training camp. It’s not an inspiring group unless Blue really breaks out. 

And the Dallas offensive line has some question marks, so we shouldn’t be sure they can clear the way for the run game anyway. Tyler Guyton missed almost all of camp with an injury. Terence Steele is coming off another down year. Tyler Booker will be playing his first NFL game. 

And they’ll all have to work against what is a very stout defensive front for Philadelphia. The interior of the line will have the biggest challenge against Jalen Carter and Co., but Nolan Smith, Jalyx Hunt, Azeez Ojulari and the rest of the edge group can potentially cause some problems for two questionable tackles as well — especially in the passing game. 

The Cowboys should have one of the NFL’s more explosive passing games this year, though. And despite Schottenheimer’s offseason proclamations, it should be one of the highest-volume passing games as well. (Again, they are not going to run the ball very well. And their defense is going to be … not good. They’re going to have to throw the ball a ton.) With not just CeeDee Lamb, but George Pickens on the outside and a healthy Jake Ferguson working the middle, the Cowboys should be able to threaten more areas of the field than they did a year ago. 

It’ll be interesting to see how these teams try to align against each other, and who tries to manipulate which passing-game matchups. Lamb does a lot of work in the slot, but will Dallas kick him outside, where the Eagles have a question mark across from Quinyon Mitchell, rather than having him work most often against Cooper DeJean? Will Philly have Mitchell follow Pickens around the field, follow Lamb when he works on the outside, or just play on one side of the formation and not worry too much about the matchups?

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When the Eagles have the ball

Despite what Jerry Jones may have told you during his media blitz following the Parsons trade, the Cowboys will not be better on defense after having traded arguably the best defensive player in football. As we wrote last week: The Cowboys were, by EPA per play, the NFL’s single-best defense in the snaps where Parsons was on the field during his four-year run in Dallas. In the snaps where he was off the field during that same span, Dallas ranked dead last in EPA per play.

The Eagles, meanwhile, are an offensive machine designed to ram the ball down their opponents’ throats. While Kenny Clark may improve the Dallas run defense, he is certainly not going to fix it single-handedly. There are minus run defenders elsewhere on the field, and Clark’s presence for something like 60-80% of the snaps is not going to alleviate the issues entirely. Philly’s offensive line is a group of maulers that should be expected to maul Dallas up front, clearing the way for Saquon Barkley and Jalen Hurts to do their thing.

Barkley had a muted performance in his first game against the Cowboys last year (14 carries for 66 yards in a blowout win), but torched them in the latter game (31 carries for 167 yards). Combined, he ran 45 times for 233 yards, which is about 5.2 yards a pop. If he comes close to that efficiency on Thursday night, it’s going to be a long evening for the Cowboys. 

Hurts found tremendous rushing success in that first game against the Cowboys (he didn’t play in the latter contest), with seven carries for 56 yards and two touchdowns. It’s notable that the Cowboys generally struggled to contain the quarterback run game over the last few years, yielding 4.6 yards per designed rush and 7.9 yards per scramble, via Tru Media. Matt Eberflus’ Bears defenses did a better job in that area (3.9 and 6.6 yards, respectively), but he now has Dallas’ personnel to work with. 

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The Cowboys will also need their suddenly-depleted front to come up with a pass rush, and that will be easier said than done. Without Parsons, the edge-rush group consists of Dante Fowler Jr., Marshawn Kneeland, Sam Williams, Donovan Ezeiruaku and James Houston. One way to generate more pass rush is by blitzing, but new defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus runs a system that sends blitzes at a below-average rate. During his three years in Chicago, the Bears blitzed at only the 23rd-highest rate in the NFL, and during his four-year stint as the Colts‘ defensive coordinator, they blitzed at the third-lowest rate in the league. So the idea that the Cowboys are going to send extra rushers to make up for Parsons’ absence doesn’t really pass the smell test. 

All of these factors point to it being wildly unlikely that the Cowboys will get much pressure on Hurts on Thursday night. The offensive line was going to be difficult to penetrate to begin with, and now Dallas is shorthanded compared with where we thought the defense would be heading into the matchup. 

And if Hurts has time to sit in the pocket and throw, things are not going to go well for Dallas, because the secondary is going to be heavily tested — and it isn’t in the best shape at the moment. Trevon Diggs is surprisingly going to play after spending the offseason rehabbing a serious knee injury, but he’ll likely be joined at outside corner by Bills cast-off Kaiir Elam. 

Those two will be the primary guys defending A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith, because $92 million man DaRon Bland is probably going to play the slot when the Cowboys are in nickel looks. (Brown went for eight receptions, 145 yards and a score against Dallas last year, while Smith ripped off eight catches for 134 and two trips to the end zone.) If and when they’re in base, then Bland will join Diggs on the outside. Eberflus often had his No. 1 corner in Chicago, Jaylon Johnson, shadow opposing No. 1s, but it would be a lot to ask for Diggs to do the same in his first game back, while having Bland do it would mean using someone else in the slot, where neither Diggs nor Elam has spent much time in their careers. 

Prediction

The Cowboys’ roster is simply not in the same class as that of the Eagles. That was true even before Dallas traded Parsons, and it is even more so now. Throw in the Cowboys not being 100% healthy and the Eagles playing at home in their first game as the defending Super Bowl champions, and this has the makings of a double-digit win.

Pick: Eagles 34, Cowboys 21 | Cowboys +8.5