The Dallas Cowboys have just one path to the playoffs. With the Philadelphia Eagles clinching the NFC East, the Cowboys' only hope is to get in as a wild-card team.
In order to have any chance, the Cowboys know they must win out.
While 10-6 has not become their mantra, it is simply understood that if they want to make the postseason in back-to-back seasons for the first time in a decade, then they have to beat the Oakland Raiders on Sunday, the Seattle Seahawks on Dec. 24 and the Eagles on Dec. 31.
“I think we are a playoff team,” linebacker Sean Lee said after the 30-10 win against the New York Giants. “We’ve got to prove it and we’ve got to keep winning out. We know the margin for error is small, but I think with the type of team we are, the talent but more importantly the type of personalities we have on this football team, [we can do it]. But we know the margin for error is small.”
The win against the Giants on Sunday kept the Cowboys' slim playoff hopes alive, but they did not get the help they needed from the Minnesota Vikings, New Orleans Saints, Tampa Bay Buccaneers or Cleveland Browns.
The only thank-you note they can send would be to the Jacksonville Jaguars, who beat the Seahawks.
With three games to go, the Cowboys are 10th in the NFC. They lose head-to-head tiebreakers to the Packers and Falcons. If they win out, they will have an 8-4 conference record, which might help them in other tiebreakers against the Detroit Lions, Carolina Panthers or even the New Orleans Saints.
“Coach [Jason] Garrett talks about it all the time, that the only thing that matters is what we do now,” tight end Jason Witten said. “There’s a lot of truth to that. I mean, you don’t know how it’s all going to play out here in the next few weeks, but let’s give ourselves the best chance.”
Winning out will not guarantee the Cowboys anything but a 10-6 record. If they win 10 games and don’t make the playoffs, it would be the first time that would happen in franchise history. And they will have only themselves to blame.
Back-to-back losses at home, despite scoring 30 and 31 points, to the Los Angeles Rams and Green Bay Packers in October will be their death knell. Or it would be losing the first three games of Ezekiel Elliott's suspension while looking completely unprepared for the running back’s absence despite knowing it was a possibility back in the early part of training camp.
But before writing the epitaph on the season, the tiebreaker process needs to be studied, should the Cowboys win their last three. After head-to-head and conference record comes common opponents, strength of victory and strength of schedule.
Mathematically, the Cowboys would not be out of the playoffs with a loss in their final three games, but there is no use dreaming up scenarios without them finishing with 10 wins. As it is, they will need a lot of help to get to the playoffs.
It gets convoluted because the Cowboys will need one potential playoff contender -- say, the Carolina Panthers -- to win one week, like this week against the Packers, but lose their final two games, including their finale to the Falcons, provided the Falcons lose their other two.
The best bet is to have the Packers lose one of their final three but perhaps beat the Lions. Detroit has an easy schedule (Chicago and Cincinnati before playing Green Bay), but the Cowboys need the Lions to lose one of their final three games. They need Atlanta to lose two of their final three, which is possible since they close the season at the Saints and against Carolina.
“We just got to win ’em,” owner and general manager Jerry Jones said. “We just have to. We just got to win those three. We didn’t get much help today, but it’s certainly not over at all. But the main thing is they remember what you did in December in pro football.”
Dak Prescott said the playoffs actually started Nov. 30 for the Cowboys after beating the Washington Redskins.
“We know where we are,” Prescott said. “We know what we’ve got to do. We’re excited for it. … We’re hungry and motivated to keep going.”
But how long can they keep it going?