The Dallas Cowboys lost on Thursday night to the Detroit Lions. Losing in general is difficult to take, but doing so when your playoff lives are on the line makes it especially frustrating.
For all intents and purposes the Cowboys held a 23% chance of reaching the playoffs before Thursday night’s game. In losing their odds dropped to 9% which means you can use the gif from Dumb and Dumber to talk about it.
The New York Times playoff simulator gives the Cowboys a 41% chance of reaching the playoffs if they win out (Vikings, Chargers, at Commanders, and at Giants). Even winning out is below 50% which is why Thursday night was so critical.
Within that world the Cowboys would obviously need a ton of help. The TL;DR is that they would need the San Francisco 49ers, Green Bay Packers, and now Detroit Lions to all collapse and fall beneath them in the NFC Wild Card standings. To be clear only two of them need to do so as Dallas is currently the second team out, but again that underscores how tough this all is now.
An argument can be (and has been) made that the most probable (not that it is probable) path in as as the NFC East winner. In addition to winning out the Cowboys would need the Eagles to lose at least three of their remaining games (at Chargers, Raiders, at Commanders, at Bills, Commanders).
Have crazier things happened? Of course. But we were already asking for crazy before the loss to Detroit.
Now we are asking for CRAZY.
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