The Dallas Cowboys still have work to do to earn a playoff spot in the NFC. Winners of three in a row, the Cowboys are peaking at the right time. They look like a team that can go toe-to-toe with anybody, they just beat the teams in last season’s Super Bowl in a span of five days, but an unfortunate reality is that their digging may be coming from too deep of a hole.
Two weeks ago the Cowboys were 3-5-1 and while they are now north of .500 at 6-5-1, the first time since Week 5 of last year that they have tasted air above those waters, they still have a lot of work to do. Unfortunately they need to do a lot of difficult work and pick up help across the rest of the NFC in terms of seeing teams fall, and they did not get any real help in that capacity on Sunday.
Of the teams listed here that are ahead of the Cowboys, only the Rams lost as far as those who played on Sunday. When it comes to Los Angeles they are arguably too far ahead of Dallas to matter with regards to any practical situation.
Thankfully for the Cowboys, the Lions lost on Thanksgiving Day and as they visit Detroit on Thursday night, they have a chance to leapfrog them for the first “in the hunt” position. Dallas would still have to see one of the current Wild Card holders implode down the stretch of the regular season to take one of those spots and that seems a bit unlikely. Crazier things have certainly happened, though.
An argument could be made that the most probable path to the playoffs for Dallas, presuming they keep doing the aforementioned hard work themselves, is as the NFC East winner. This idea is predicated on the fact they have closed the gap with the Eagles who have lost two in a row and appear to be spiraling. Again, you could argue that it is more likely they fail and Dallas leapfrogs them than any Wild Card scenario.
There are five weeks remaining in the regular season and therefore a lot of mathematical possibilities left. Time will tell what ultimately does and does not break in the Cowboys’ direction, but to their credit they are taking care of their own business which is all they can do at this point.
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