Week 10 rooting guide for Cowboys fans

It’s getting rough for Cowboys fans in 2024, but there are still things to hope for across the week as a whole.

Now at 3-5 and having lost QB Dak Prescott for multiple weeks, if not the rest of the season, the Cowboys’ chances in 2024 have all but evaporated. But as eyes turn away from the playoffs, we now focus on the 2025 NFL Draft and how high up the board Dallas could now land. That means, with adjusted priorities, we should still be very interested in how the rest of the league is doing from week to week.

Our rooting guides have previously focused on playoff contenders in the NFC. But as we turn our attention to the draft, the AFC becomes equally important. The Jaguars can just as easily trump the Cowboys for a higher pick as the Panthers, so we’ll be widening our scope for the rest of the season.

Of course, anything can happen with nine games still to play. If Dallas somehow gets back into the playoff picture then we’ll pivot again. But we’re keeping it real and going with what seems far more attainable for our struggling team.

Here are the current standings at the bottom of the NFL. As we get closer to Week 18 we’ll dive more into tiebreakers like strength of schedule and head-to-head wins. For now, we’ll just keep it simple with the overall records and hope for more clarity as the season goes.

Thanks to some teams having not had their bye weeks yet, the Cowboys are the only 3-5 team in the league. Several teams (Bengals, Bucs, Colts, Seahawks) are right behind them with 4-5 records, and we’ll pull them into the list if they start getting in Dallas’ way. But for now, the Cowboys would have the 11th pick in the 2025 Draft.

They’ll likely move up the board this week with the Eagles coming to town. Dallas would’ve been the underdogs even with Prescott, and now Cooper Rush is in the unenviable position of dealing with Philly in his first start since 2022. Even if Micah Parsons makes his return, the Cowboys still feel woefully outmatched in this one.

So with draft positioning now the focus, what should you root for in the rest of the Week 10 schedule?

Giants over Panthers

Both are 2-7, so why prefer New York winning over Carolina? The G-Men have an arguably tougher schedule the rest of the way, especially with Baltimore, Atlanta, Indianapolis, and Philadelphia making up their final four weeks. The Panthers do have some tough ones left themselves like Kansas City in Week 12, but they could easily snag a few more wins in a weak NFC South. If the goal is to get below both of these teams in the standings, a Giants win could give Dallas a better shot.

Buccaneers over 49ers

This one’s a little interesting because if 4-5 Tampa beats 4-4 San Francisco, that would flip things between them in terms of a .500 team and a losing team. Between them both, the Niners feel more likely to settle down and make a run in the back half of the season. Christian McCaffrey should be back soon and that will likely propel San Francisco away from the Cowboys.

Patriots over Bears
Dolphins over Rams
Bengals over Ravens
Colts over Bills
Saints over Falcons
Jaguars over Vikings
Jets over Cardinals
Titans over Chargers

These are all easy picks; losing teams getting upsets over opponents with .500 or better records. Some of the margins are slim, like those Patriots-Bears or Dolphins-Rams games, but it’s all about the standings math at this point. If the Cowboys are going to have a bad year, then all we can do is hope for some kind of reward for it through the draft.

There are three other games on the Week 10 schedule: Broncos @ Chiefs, Steelers @ Commanders, and Lions @ Texans. But with Denver at 5-4 and the rest even better, these outcomes feel irrelevant to the Cowboys.