Silver and blue lining: Dallas Cowboys lost in Week 9 but picked up a lot of help across the NFL

Not everything went against the Cowboys on this past Sunday.

The Dallas Cowboys are coming off of a loss for only the second time this season, but it was a very embarrassing loss. Nobody is going to try and tell you that Dallas losing was a good thing. The positive to glean is that it can serve as a moment of humility so that this team remembers the important things that lie ahead. Super Bowls are not won in October.

Fortunately for the Cowboys, while they lost, they did not lose too much ground on their NFC opponents as far as potential playoff seeding is concerned. This is something that Tony Casillas and I discussed on the latest episode of The 75O on the Blogging The Boys podcast network. Make sure to subscribe to our network so you don’t miss any of our shows. Apple devices can subscribe here and Spotify users can subscribe here.

Many have noted this in the aftermath of Sunday’s whooping the NFL is weird and Week 9’s results support that it is weird for everyone, the Dallas Cowboys included.

The Dallas Cowboys did not lose much ground as far as the potential NFC seeding is concerned

While the Cowboys performance on Sunday had them looking like a bottom-tier team for this week, the reality is that they are still going to win the NFC East with relative ease. There is no need to overreact and suddenly not believe this to be true.

For a few weeks now, many fans have shifted their focus beyond the division and have been paying more attention to things relative to the playoff seeding that the Cowboys and some of the rest of the NFC teams are chasing.

If there is one thing that suffered on Sunday, it was the Cowboys’ chances of earning the top seed in the conference and subsequently the only first-round bye available. While we all would like for the Cowboys to have a week off at the beginning of the playoffs and that remains the ultimate goal, a smaller and more attainable goal is for them to be one of the top three seeds so that they do not draw the top Wildcard team in the first round which is what would be the case if the playoffs started today (spoiler, they don’t).

If you look back to our Week 9 rooting guide for Cowboys fans, you will see that a majority of things went Dallas’ way across all relevant games. They lost themselves and did so in humiliating fashion, but the importance of the other games is still real.

Our priority here is to ensure that Dallas is a top three seed and ideally number one overall. The Arizona Cardinals won and bolstered their own odds at securing the top seed, but thankfully the Green Bay Packers lost. With them now having two losses on the season and Tampa Bay sitting on bye with two themselves, the Cowboys did not lose pace in this regard.

It should be noted that the Buccaneers would have the tiebreaker over the Cowboys by way of beating them in the season opener so the opportunity for Dallas to put distance between themselves and Tampa would have been nice, likewise with Green Bay, but you can’t win them all. Losing sucks, but losing while not losing in every way is a softer way of landing.

Thankfully the Indianapolis Colts and Miami Dolphins (who’s first-round picks will both likely belong to the Philadelphia Eagles, Miami’s already does for certain) both won which helped worsen Philly’s future draft capital. The Chicago Bears lost which helped New York’s, but the Giants themselves won which was a victory in this capacity on its own.

Keep your chin up. It wasn’t all bad in Week 9.