I realize that a team that hasn't won consecutive games since last December shouldn't be talking about playing meaningful games this December. But it's a strange year, even by NFL standards, and Sunday's upending of the Super Bowl champs has folks thinking that more victories are on the way.
The ESPN Power Index gives the Cowboys a 30 percent chance of reaching the playoffs. I think it might be even higher. Let's go all the way to 32 percent. And we should also fix one myth about this team that may have been propagated from this very space.
Peeling back the curtain just a bit, we have two deadlines when we write stories about the Cowboys on night games. In the column I filed at 11:05 p.m. Sunday, roughly 40 minutes after the Eagles were stopped inside the 10-yard line, I said that at 4-5 the Cowboys already had forfeited their wild-card hopes, that their only playoff chance was based on winning the NFC East.
I said that, thinking more of the general rule, since only the 2016 Detroit Lions (9-7) have earned an NFC wild card since 2010 without at least 10 victories. In fact, over the past 10 years, 11 of the 20 NFC wild cards have had at least 11 victories.
You can occasionally win a downtrodden division with nine wins, but wild-card trips are rare.
But after a brief examination of the current situation, I removed that line from the column that was sent at 12:05. Right now, the Cowboys are two games behind Washington (6-3) for the NFC East lead. The two wild cards as of today would be Carolina (6-3) and Minnesota (5-3-1). The only other wild-card competitor with a better record than the Cowboys is Green Bay at 4-4-1.
Dallas' loss to 4-5 Seattle hurts, but we'll have to see what the Seahawks look like in December. Of the teams above Dallas, the Carolina Panthers seem like a team that could stumble down the stretch. They just got hit for 50 points by the Pittsburgh Steelers. They are 1-3 away from home. They haven't played the New Orleans Saints yet. I don't think anyone can look at Cam Newton's team, even with a recent history of reaching the playoffs, and say it's a lock for 10 wins.
I have fewer doubts about Minnesota because of Mike Zimmer's strong defense. But the Vikings haven't played their division leaders yet, so who knows what might happen in two games with the surprising Chicago Bears. Minnesota also has Green Bay coming up, along with trips to New England and Seattle.
All that says is that 2018 could be a year where nine wins gets you the second NFC wild-card spot. The next hurdle, of course, is getting the 4-5 Cowboys to that nine-win plateau, and it's not simple. The most popular line of thinking goes something like this: Dallas finds a path to split its next four games with Atlanta, Washington, New Orleans and Philadelphia. It seems doable given that the Falcons are the only road trip.
The idea is to get through that stretch with a split and then streak into the playoffs with the "easy" finish of Indianapolis, Tampa Bay and the New York Giants.
I'm not a total believer in this scenario. The Colts may not have caught much national attention, but their record is just as good as the Cowboys. Even Tampa Bay normally puts up a lot of points.
Attaching W's and L's to games six weeks out is borderline insane.
What we can say is the Cowboys have mostly played better football in the past four weeks. Even in the Tennessee loss, Dallas played a great first quarter that could have produced a 17-0 lead. The Titans then ran Tom Brady off the field Sunday in Nashville, Tenn.
Just embrace the knowledge there are multiple roads to playoff contention. Let's see if the Cowboys can win consecutive games and make further examination of the possibilities necessary.
Sports on 11/14/2018