Inside The Star
After Week 9 of the season, the Philadelphia Eagles looked to be running away with the NFC East at 6-2. The Dallas Cowboys were three games back at 3-5-1. The Washington Commanders were 3-6 and the New York Giants were sitting at 2-7.
Being the first NFC East team to repeat as division champions since the 2001-2004 run by the Eagles, seemed to be a fait accompli.
That’s a highfalutin way to say it was almost a done deal, but in French to make it sound more highfalutin. Trust me, both of my French and English teachers are rolling in their graves right now.
Philadelphia had started the season off at 4-0, but all four wins were by one score or less. And the Eagles needed to catch a lot of breaks to get to 4-0.
Now that they have gone 4-4 since that start, Philadelphia has fallen back to the No. 3 seed. They’ve also let a surging NFC East rival back into the chase for the division.
It might come down to the very last week of the season after all.
In the previous 65 years that the Dallas Cowboys have played in the NFL, never in franchise history have the Cowboys been below .500 after 10 games and made the playoffs.
The closest they came was in 2018. After a 3-5 start, Dallas won the next two games to get to 5-5(.500) after 10 games.
They went on to win five of the next six and got in as a wildcard at 10-6 that year.
Dallas beat Seattle, 24-22, in the wildcard round, but Jared Goff and the Rams ended the Cowboys’ season with a 30-22 win in the Divisional game.
Enter this season, and a 3-5-1 start.
A win over the Raiders put Dallas at 4-5-1 (.450), below .500 after 10 games.
Back-to-back three-point wins over the Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs put the Cowboys over the .500 mark for the first time this year.
At 6-5-1, the playoffs are not an impossible dream. Winning four of the last five should get Dallas in as a wildcard. Two losses though and they probably miss out.
The Cowboys are still sitting in 9th in the NFC in the chase for the seven playoff spots. So winning the division might be the only way they make the postseason.
The way Philadelphia is imploding, a 10-6-1 record might win the NFC East and a home playoff game.
How unlikely did that seem after the Arizona loss? Even three wins and a 9-7-1 mark might just be enough, but they’d need a lot of help to get in with that record.
If they do make it, they’d be the first Cowboys team to come back from a losing record after 10 games.
Maybe something magical is brewing at AT&T Stadium after all.
Next Game: at Detroit Lions, Thursday, 7:15 p.m.
The Giants nearly upended the Lions in an overtime loss two...
