Feelings about the 2025 Cowboys have yo-yoed between hope and despair, wreaking havoc on our rooting system. That\u2019s life with a team hovering around .500. At the very least, you wish Dallas would go hard in one direction or the other towards a playoff spot or a better 2026 draft pick. But we may be coasting on this roller right through December.<\/p>\n
At the very least, Sunday\u2019s big loss to Denver didn\u2019t drop Dallas any further in the NFC standings. They remain in 10th place and a couple of wins behind the last wild card team, just as they were before. But remaining hopes of surging toward a playoff spot depend mightily on this Monday\u2019s game against the Cardinals. The Broncos are an excellent team, while Arizona is far from it.<\/p>\n
Here are the current playoff standings for the NFC ahead of Week 9:<\/p>\n
It\u2019s still a steep climb, and now with one less week to help. But at least Carolina and Chicago both took losses last week as well, keeping them more manageable. Clearly, Dallas has to get hot now and sustain it to have any real shot.<\/p>\n
Of course, many of you are already out on this season and hoping for a better pick next April. As always, we\u2019ll address your concerns too as we move through this week\u2019s schedule.<\/p>\n
This would be a bittersweet win for draft-focused Dallas fans, further pushing the team away from a higher pick and strengthening the 2-5 Cardinals\u2019 position. But a win here puts the Cowboys at .500 both overall and in NFC play, and with eight games still to play. As we\u2019ve mentioned, this is essentially a must-win for Dallas to be taken seriously as a potential playoff team.<\/p>\n
While we don\u2019t like the idea of Washington finding momentum, Dallas can find other ways to deal with them. Seattle is neck-and-neck with the 49ers in the NFC West right now, meaning they still could easily end up as a wild card team. We need a chance at catching them.<\/p>\n
We can pretty much root for the Giants the rest of the way. It means a worse draft pick for them and hanging losses on teams, like San Francisco, whom Dallas needs to get in front of in the playoff race.<\/p>\n
A win does make Minnesota 4-4 but hangs a critical loss on the Lions, who are currently in a wild card spot. If Green Bay\u2019s going to win the NFC North, Dallas needs as many chances as possible of overtaking one of those three wild card teams. It\u2019s even more beneficial from the draft perspective, making the Vikings easier to move past in the order.<\/p>\n
Rooting for Green Bay feels icky all around, but Carolina is a clearer threat to Dallas\u2019 playoff hopes with a better record and a head-to-head tiebreaker. We\u2019re probably not going to get much more from the Packers\u2019 2026 first-round pick at this point, so at least there are other ways they can help us. And obviously, from the draft perspective, you\u2019re pulling for the Panthers here.<\/p>\n
A good result on both fronts, making Los Angeles easier to catch in the wild card race and weakening New Orleans\u2019 position in the draft.<\/p>\n
Easy one: a potentially worse draft pick for the 3-5 Bengals and a big loss for Chicago, who Dallas needs to get ahead of in the playoff race.<\/p>\n
Playoff-focused fans should root for the AFC team here, knocking 3-4 Atlanta further back from Dallas\u2019 heels. A win for the Falcons is only good from a draft perspective.<\/p>\n
These are mostly teams with worse records beating teams with better records, which serves Dallas\u2019 purposes in a couple of ways. One, and the most obvious, is making it easier to move up in the draft order. But it also helps if as many of these AFC teams as possible still feel competitive when they come across one of our NFC rivals. That potentially helps Dallas move up in the playoff race, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Feelings about the 2025 Cowboys have yo-yoed between hope and despair, wreaking havoc on our rooting system. That\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":346523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,1596,129353,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-346522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-dallas-cowboys-general","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-tx","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115471051919943638","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}