The Dallas Cowboys have never lost against the point spread in this situation.

In 2004, the National Football League initiated a season opening tradition of having the reigning Super Bowl Champion open the season at home on Thursday night. In the succeeding 21 years, they have not followed this formula twice.

In 2012, the Baltimore Ravens downed the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII. Their trip to winning it all included upsetting Peyton Manning and his Denver Broncos in the Mile High City during the Divisional Round. The Ravens were near double-digit underdogs in Denver and won the game in overtime, 38-35.

It was a stinging defeat for the home team, but they got revenge the following year in the opening game of the season.

Based on their championship, the Ravens should have opened the 2013 season at home on Thursday night. But a conflict with their stadium prevented them from opening at home that year. While the Ravens and baseball’s Baltimore Orioles play in different stadiums, they share a single parking lot for the two venues. The Orioles were scheduled to play a home game on the date the NFL season opened forcing the Ravens on the road for a game they rightfully should have hosted.

To make it worse for John Harbaugh’s team, the schedule makers gave Baltimore no breaks in where they would open the 2013 season. They sent them back to Denver to meet the same Broncos team at the same site they got their upset win the January before. There was no way the schedule makers could have given the Ravens a tougher opening game matchup, and that played true to form as Manning and company blew out the defending champs, 49-27, to open the 2013 season. A season, ironically, that ended with the Broncos getting blown out in the Super Bowl by the Seattle Seahawks, 43-8.

The only other year since 2004 that the defending champ hasn’t opened the season at home on Thursday night was 2019. That year, the NFL was celebrating their 100th year and in commemoration of this milestone the league opened while matching two teams that represent the oldest rivalry in the league, the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers.

But, if memory serves, I started this column with the statement that the Dallas Cowboys, who open the season tomorrow night in Philadelphia, have never lost in this situation. Allow me to explain.

The homesteading Super Bowl champs have done very well in these openers. Since 2004, the 19 matchups that saw them opening at home has seen the defending title holders win the games 15 times with a point spread record of 10-6-3. The first eight times the Super Bowl Champ hosted the Thursday night opener they won, then the Cowboys met the New York Giants on the road to open the 2012 campaign and upset the home team, 24-17.

In 2021, the Cowboys opened the season in Tampa to battle the defending champions who had downed the Kansas City Chiefs the prior January in Super Bowl LV, 31-9. The Cowboys gave the Buccaneers all they could handle before falling by two points, 31-29, while getting 9½ points on the spread.

So, while the Cowboys haven’t won a Super Bowl since the 1995 season, they have twice opened the season on the road in this curtain rising game. They were the first to upset a defending champ when they beat the Giants 13 years ago and got the wager victory with the narrow defeat to Tampa Bay while opening the 2021 season.

Now Dallas is getting another generous point spread when they visit Lincoln Financial Field to open the 2025 NFL season. The line on this game opened with the Eagles favored by seven points, a line the books edged up a half-point given the action on Philadelphia. Since the Cowboys traded defensive stud Micha Parsons to the Green Bay Packers, the betting on the Eagles has increased and the books have kicked the spread up another half point. The Eagles are currently favored by eight.

Too many points to give Dallas … who has never lost in this situation?

More on that tomorrow.