Jeez, Dallas Cowboys ...
Last week was a week's worth of shows about whether you guys were in trouble because you struggled to beat the league-worst Houston Texans, and I was on your side. I talked about not denigrating victories, about how it's a good sign when you can win even though you don't play your best, about how Dak Prescott doesn't really have a history of throwing interceptions. "The Cowboys are fine," I said, over and over again. I had your back.
So how do you repay me? You lose in overtime to the Jacksonville Jaguars. On an interception!
So now I'm bracing for another week's worth of shows about what's wrong with the Cowboys and whether they can be expected to win in the playoffs if they don't stop playing down to their competition, and I'm not sure I can help you this time.
What I can do is use your loss to open up the Overreactions column, which has a theme this week: contender or pretender? We're picking teams that we're either sure or pretty sure will make the playoffs and asking whether they have what it takes to make a postseason run.
You won't find the Kansas City Chiefs here because we obviously know they can. You won't find the Cincinnati Bengals here because they did it last season. You won't find the Buffalo Bills or the Philadelphia Eagles, who'd currently be the top seeds and automatically advance to the second round. You won't find the New England Patriots because the final play of their game Sunday should be disqualifying. And you won't find the Tampa Bay Buccaneers because ... come on.
Just teams we think are interesting, asking the basic question about whether they're contenders or pretenders. And starting with those Cowboys.
The Cowboys are postseason PRETENDERS
Dallas can basically forget any chance of overtaking the Eagles for the division title and the No. 1 seed in the NFC now. Three games back with three to play? Even if the Cowboys manage to beat Philly next week, the 13-1 Eagles would still have to lose one of their last two games to give Dallas even a chance at catching them.
Dallas looks basically locked into the top wild-card spot, which means they'll almost definitely play the NFC South champion in the first round, which might well be against a sub-.500 team. But the wild card is a tough path, and winning three games that might all be on the road to get to the Super Bowl is not something many teams have done.
Verdict: OVERREACTION
I really do expect Prescott to stop throwing interceptions at some point. This isn't him. He has 11 interceptions this year, two short of his career high of 13, set in 2017. He played 16 games that year. He has played only nine this year. Something's wrong. This is a player who, entering Sunday, had a 1.9 career interception percentage. The only tenured quarterbacks in NFL history with a lower figure were Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady and Russell Wilson. He's just not an interception guy.
I also expect the defense, which was dominant early this year but blew a 17-point third-quarter lead and a three-point fourth-quarter lead on Sunday in an overtime loss to the Jaguars, to start playing like itself again. But guys, I'm holding on by a thread here. I really do think the Cowboys are a true NFC contender when they play their best. I just wish they would, you know, do that at some point soon so I stop feeling silly saying it.
The Minnesota Vikings are postseason PRETENDERS
The Vikings did something this week that no team in league history has ever done. They won a game in which they trailed by 33 points. The Indianapolis Colts led the Vikings 33-0 at halftime Saturday afternoon before Kirk Cousins, Justin Jefferson & Co. staged the biggest comeback in NFL history and won in overtime to clinch the NFC North.
The Vikings are 11-3, and 10 of their wins have been decided by one score. They seem somewhat expert in winning the types of close games they're sure to find themselves playing in the postseason. Maybe the experience of winning so many sets them up for success?
Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION
The Vikings are 11-3 and have outscored their opponents by two points for the whole year. Yes, they have scored 351 points and allowed 349. Which means they win, on average, by 0.14 points per game. That, folks, is simply not sustainable -- especially against the kind of competition they'll face in January. The Colts aren't going to be there, for example. The Eagles, Cowboys and maybe the Detroit Lions will be there, and their three losses are to those three teams by a combined score of 98-33.
Sure, they beat the Bills and the Miami Dolphins (and the Lions, the first time they played them), and those are good wins. I once watched Cousins beat a talented Drew Brees-led New Orleans Saints team in the postseason in the Superdome, so I'm not one of those people who thinks they can't win with Cousins. I think they're tough and resilient and could probably win a game against any team. But two or three of them against the best teams in the NFC? I don't see how the Vikings' margin for error survives the postseason gauntlet.
The Miami Dolphins are postseason CONTENDERS
First things first, of course. The Dolphins still have to make the playoffs to be any kind of threat. And their ill-timed losing streak, which reached three games Saturday night in Buffalo, is keeping them in borderline 6/7-seed territory at the moment. But they played a lot better in this game than they did in the previous two weeks against the San Francisco 49ers and the Los Angeles Chargers, and they could have come away with the upset and a season sweep of big, bad Buffalo if not for some late Josh Allen magic.
They went toe-to-toe with the AFC favorites in frigid temperatures and second-half snow after all we heard all week was how much the team from Florida would struggle in those conditions. Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa looked considerably sharper than he did in the two California games, and Miami was much more like its early-season self, in spite of the loss.
Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION
They are certainly not without their flaws. The 49ers and Chargers likely gave teams a blueprint for slowing down the Dolphins' offense. And a young quarterback with a first-year head coach is a combination that could, in theory, cost you in playoff matchups against more experienced coach/QB combinations, of which the AFC has plenty. But I don't know who's going to actually feel comfortable on defense when Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle are lined up just waiting to speed past everybody.
The Dolphins even showed the ability to run the ball Saturday night with the Bills clearly focused on stopping those dynamic playmakers in the passing game. I think the fact that they played the Bills tough in Buffalo in mid-December means they deserve this level of credit. Right now, would you rather play the division champion Tennessee Titans team on the road or the explosive Dolphins at home? It's at least a conversation. Again, assuming they get in.
The Los Angeles Chargers are postseason CONTENDERS
You tell me if you can figure out the Chargers. They were supposed to be good, right? Justin Herbert was touted in some circles as an MVP candidate on a roster that looked loaded on both sides of the ball. Yet they've had their usual fits-and-starts, injury-plagued season. They're 8-6, and if the playoffs started today, they'd be the No. 6 seed in the AFC. You could argue that their best two wins of the season, in terms of opponent quality, were the past two weeks against the Dolphins and the Titans.
They're getting healthier, and they finally have Herbert's top two receivers, Mike Williams and Keenan Allen, on the field together. And Herbert is healthier now than he was the first couple of months of the season when he was dealing with a rib injury. Is it possible the Chargers are peaking at the right time, ready to fulfill all that promise when it matters most?
Verdict: OVERREACTION
Betting on the Chargers to finally get it figured out isn't exactly like betting on the Washington Generals, but it isn't exactly not like that, either. If you don't like the Vikings' point differential (and you'll recall, we very much did not), get a load of the Chargers' point differential. They've actually been outscored by 28 points this season, which means they're an 8-6 team whose average game is a two-point loss. That's weird. And it's not good. They never win convincingly; their 34-24 victory over the Texans is the only game they've won by more than six points.
And while it's entirely possible they run the table against the Colts, Los Angeles Rams and Denver Broncos and finish an impressive 11-6, their season so far tells us all of those games are likely to be close and could go either way. If the Chargers end up in the postseason, they'll be one of the more inconsistent teams in the field. We just haven't seen enough from them this year to convince us they can string together the kind of quality efforts they'd need to cash in a postseason appearance with a run to a conference title game or a Super Bowl. I'd rather watch Herbert throw the ball than any other player in the league, but something always goes wrong with the Chargers, and this year's version just doesn't feel that much different from what we've seen from them in the past.
The New York Giants are postseason PRETENDERS
One of the most surprising stories of this season, the Giants had begun to fade after a 7-2 start. But Sunday night's victory over the Washington Commanders improved their odds of making the playoffs to better than 90%. So whatever you thought of the Giants before the season, or whether you thought they were playing over their heads in the first half of the season, it looks like we're going to have to get used to the idea of them in the postseason. But for obvious reasons, they will have their doubters.
Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION
Total respect for what Brian Daboll and his coaching staff have done here. There isn't a team in the league getting more out of what it has, player personnel-wise, than this one. The previous front office imagined a wide receiver group around Daniel Jones that included Kadarius Toney, Kenny Golladay and Sterling Shepard, and the new front office added rookie Wan'Dale Robinson to that mix. Well, Toney's on the Chiefs, Golladay is ... somewhere, I don't know, have you seen him? And Shepard and Robinson are done for the year with injuries. By the way, starting tight end Daniel Bellinger spent some time on the bench because of injury, as well.
This offense is Saquon Barkley and whatever magic Jones can make with the likes of Darius Slayton and Richie James. It's amazing it's worked as well as it has so far, but the Giants, who went 1-4-1 in the six games that preceded Sunday night, are likely closer to the real version than the one that started 7-2. It's hard to see this roster matching up with Philadelphia's, San Francisco's or even Dallas' in a playoff game. It's been a great season, but I don't see the potential for a deep run here.