IRVING, Texas - This much we know speeding towards Veterans Day.
The Cowboys are 5-4 with seven games left to play.
They are either, depending on how you interpret your glass, tied for third in the four-team NFC East or tied for last. And if you happen to subscribe to the glass half empty, then tell me this: If the Cowboys should beat the Redskins this Sunday and Philadelphia beats Cincinnati, and all three teams trailing the Giants are 6-4, does that make the Cowboys tied for second in the NFC East or tied for last?
The Cowboys currently are tied for the seventh-best record in the NFC, where four division champs and a total of six teams will qualify for the playoffs. At this current time, three of the six with better records lead their divisions, including the NFC East-leading New York Giants at 8-1, Carolina at 7-2 and Arizona at 5-3. Two of the three teams tied with the Cowboys at 5-4, Chicago and Minnesota, are also tied for their division lead.
The other three teams with better records than the Cowboys are 6-3, Washington, Tampa Bay and Atlanta, all just a game better.
So the Cowboys are tied for the seventh-best record in the NFC, a two-point loss and an overtime loss the difference between being where they are and tied for having the second best record in the conference. So close, but yet so far.
Life can be tough that way in the NFL. As you can see, the perceptive difference between being really good in this NFL and desperate for a victory is very narrow. The Cowboys now are the latter in this skin-tight NFC since they indeed lost that two-point game to the Redskins and the overtime game to Arizona.
But they are where they are, and as the veteran Zach Thomas will tell you, "There is no room for error."
For me, starting at 7:15 p.m. (CST) Sunday at FedExField, since the Cowboys already have lost to the Redskins, this will become one of those, well, look, it's hard to say must victories with seven games still to play and the conference so tightly wrapped, and it's probably a tad premature to say it's a win-or-else game, but . . . .
"This is as big a game as we've played this year," Jason Witten said Monday as the Cowboys returned to work after their off-weekend. "Got to be realistic with it. At this point, we realize there is little room for error."
So maybe we can say this is a really, really, really important game for the Cowboys to win, meaning this is a mus game if you will, just short of must.
Vitally important, but not totally definitive since there still are 26 games to be played among the teams in the NFC that stand between the 8-1 Giants and the 4-5 of New Orleans and Green Bay - meaning more losses to be had.
But at certain times during a season teams reach a seminal game, and for the Cowboys, in bad need of confidence with three injured starters expected to return
Sunday, including quarterback Tony Romo, this to me is one of those games - pivotal to the rest of the season, one way or another.
And during my time around the Cowboys, I've seen those games occur. There was the 1986 season, the 6-2 Cowboys vs. the 6-2 Giants at Giants Stadium. Danny White broke his wrist, yet the Cowboys, behind Steve Pelluer, made a gallant stand that day, only to fall short by three, 17-14. The Cowboys would win only one more game the rest of the season. The Giants, they would not lose another game to win their first Super Bowl title.
There was that 1991 season, the Cowboys still looking for their first winning season since 1985. They were 6-5, having lost their last two and three of the past four, and heading into Washington to meet the undefeated Redskins. The Cowboys would win that game against the eventual Super Bowl champs, and four more straight to finish 11-5 and qualify for the playoffs.
The 1993 season was one of streaks for the defending Super Bowl champs. They won seven straight after losing their first two. But then they lost two straight, standing 7-4 with five games to play. Jimmy Johnson told his club they would have to run the table to get home-field advantage in the playoffs. As it turned out, they had to do that to just to win the NFC East.
Then there was the 1997 season, the 6-5 Cowboys going into Green Bay to face the defending Super Bowl champion Packers, who were 8-3 at the time. The Cowboys knew they had to win or else cede home-field advantage to the Packers. The game was tied 10-10 at halftime. The Cowboys would lose, 45-17, and would lose every game thereafter that season.
So here come the 5-4 Cowboys to face the 6-3 Redskins. A Cowboys' victory would leave the two teams tied for no less than second place in the NFC East and at the end of the day no more than one game behind as many as two non-division leaders.
But a Cowboys' loss would leave the Cowboys 5-5, two games behind the Redskins, and worse, three games back when it comes to head-to-head tiebreakers.
A win would finally even their conference record at 4-4, always a prime tiebreaker when it comes to deciding playoff berths. But a loss would leave the Cowboys 3-5 in the NFC with four to play. No team in the NFC at this point with a winning record has more than three NFC losses.
So my drift here should be caught.
This be a mus win, and then so will be at least four more of the next six to reach the 10-win benchmark normally required to make the playoffs.
"It's too hard to look at it that way," Witten said of 10 victories being a must. "But if you win this game, it's a totally different situation than if you lose it."
Thomas, too understands this game's importance, but also realizes the slim difference between 5-4 and well, as he says, "Other cities (at 5-4), they are talking playoffs," Thomas suggests. "Like in Miami, they're talking playoffs.
"We have to get that same excitement going."
And when it was suggested the Cowboys have to win at least 10 to create that playoff excitement, Thomas was hesitant to put a number on it, saying, "Only way you can think like that, it's got to be 11.
"I've been 10-6 before and not made the playoffs. I guarantee you 11-5, I don't know if there has ever been any team 11-5 and hasn't. But I don't look at it like that. I just know we got to get to playing better . . . fast."
Yeah, like starting this Sunday, the Cowboys playing the first of five teams remaining among their final seven with a winning record - and three of those five are either in first place or currently tied for first place (Pittsburgh, the Giants and Baltimore).
Since the Cowboys first went to the playoffs in 1966 with a 10-3-1 record, they have never missed the playoffs when winning 10 games, not in a 14-game season and not in a 16-game season. All four 10-6 finishes in club history have earned the Cowboys a playoff spot, as did all four 10-4 finishes and the one 9-5.
But go 9-7, and things get dicey. Only once did 9-7 land the Cowboys in the playoffs, that occurring in 2006, while 9-7 in 1984 and 2005 earned them a big Heisman from the NFL. And two-games above .500 in the 14-game 1974 season (8-6) wasn't good enough to earn them a playoff spot either.
Yet get this, 8-8 in 1999 got them in, as would have 8-8 in 1990 if they could have won either of their final two games they didn't during that 7-9 season. In fact that year, they came within a 24-yard Morten Anderson field goal in the final two seconds from going to the playoffs at 7-9, the Saints beating the Rams in the absolute final NFL game of the season on Monday Night Football to claim the final spot at 8-8.
So with this record stuff, you just never know; too much football still to be played. But if you like playing the percentages, then the Cowboys got to get cuttin', and as Thomas said, "Fast!"
"If we get the sixth win against Washington, that's the one we're worried about," Cowboys head coach Wade Phillips said when asked about needing to win at least 10. "You don't know where the number is going to be . . . the only thing you can control is what you do, so we got to control it."
Starting Sunday . . . with the Redskins, by golly.
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Mickey Spagnola - 
