So much attention is paid to Lombardi Trophies and championship parades and the outsized nature of the modern Super Bowl rings that we sometimes forget how the NFL rewards its losers, too.
In the Cowboys’ case, they were granted three prizes for last year’s 7-10 record and already opened two of the boxes. Brian Schottenheimer popped out of one and Tyler Booker jumped out of the other. While a new head coach and a high first-round pick can potentially elevate a team for years — but only if a franchise makes the right calls — the third prize isn’t bad, either. It applies strictly to the 2025 season, however.
For Dallas, like every other club, 14 of their games were predetermined — two games each against division opponents and one game against the four teams from another AFC and NFC division. But the Cowboys get three games against third-place teams as a byproduct of their slot in the NFC East last year. Those games all take place over the next five weeks, starting with the New York Jets and Carolina Panthers the next two weeks and finishing with a home game against Arizona on Nov. 3 prior to the Cowboys’ bye week.
You want to have a decent record — 4-4-1 at least — going into that off week? Take advantage of your third-place rivals.
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I don’t want to get too far ahead of the situation and start talking about the Cowboys’ chances of catching Philadelphia (none) or wild-card hopes (slim). So let’s just see about getting to the .500 mark and perhaps climbing over it while trying to manage a 32nd-ranked defensive squad.
Road games against the Jets and Carolina the next two Sundays seem winnable, solely based on opponents’ records. Along with New Orleans and Tennessee, the Jets round out the list of winless clubs. If it makes a difference (and I think it does), New York has played closer games than the Titans and Saints. The Jets lost by two points to Pittsburgh, two points to Tampa Bay in the final seconds and six points to Miami. They have outscored 13 NFL teams, so the offense isn’t without hope.
And when you play Dallas, every offense has hope. In this case, it comes in the form of Justin Fields, who rivals Lamar Jackson as the league’s best running quarterback. In three games (Fields missed the Tampa Bay game), Fields has rushed for 178 yards and a 7.4 average per carry. He’s one yard behind the Eagles’ Jalen Hurts for most rushing yards this season by a quarterback, even while missing a game, and Hurts got 62 of his yards along with two touchdowns against Dallas.
Beyond that, though, Fields has proven in five years with Chicago, Pittsburgh and now New York to be not much of a passer, and that tends to override any concerns he generates with his legs. Fields is 14-33 as a starting quarterback and he has never averaged 200 yards passing per game for a season. That’s right … 200. The Jets are thinking they can get well against the Dallas defense, and that may be the case because none of us had the Bears scoring 31 points and cruising by the Cowboys two weeks ago. But Fields is unlikely to make a winning play unless it’s with his feet.
If the Cowboys are going to hang around the .500 mark this year, then they don’t have a choice but to win at least two out of three of these games with third-place teams. And going 3-for-3 is what’s really needed if they want to get to 9-8 (pardon me, 9-7-1), given the difficulties the schedule presents following the bye week.
For all clubs, these games against fellow third-place teams represent a golden opportunity to get back into the playoffs, all part of the NFL’s planned parity program. After going 6-10 in 2020, his first season as Cowboys head coach, Mike McCarthy got the Cowboys to 12-5 and the playoffs in 2021. The third-place games were no picnic — Dallas beat Carolina, 36-28, and New England in overtime and then lost in the penultimate game to Arizona, 25-22, extending Kyler Murray’s win streak at AT&T Stadium that dates to high school. With that loss, the Cowboys missed the opportunity to chase a bye into the divisional round and ended up losing to San Francisco at home in the wild-card round.
Again I’m not suggesting a playoff bid is on the line at noon Sunday at MetLife Stadium. A 1-2-1 team with a pass defense that has given up 300-yard passing days in three consecutive games (one of them was 450) can’t think about anything but one moment at a time. But if the Cowboys are to manage to brush up against respectability at some point this season, as their offense affords them the chance to do, then proving you’re not a third-place team by beating up on other third-place finishers from a year ago is the starting point for Dallas.
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