Can the Cowboys make a playoff run after their Week 11 blowout?

FRISCO, Texas — The Dallas Cowboys (4-5-1) enter Week 12 fresh off their best performance of the season: a 33-16 demolition of the Las Vegas Raiders (2-8) on “Monday Night Football.”

That breakthrough stemmed largely from their previously maligned defense finally matching the offense’s level. Dallas allowed a season-low 16 points and tied its season high with five sacks. All-Pro defensive newcomer Quinnen Williams immediately set the tone (1.5 sacks and a career-high five quarterback hits), while the season debuts of explosive linebacker DeMarvion Overshown and rangy third-round rookie cornerback Shavon Revel Jr. added juice across the unit.

That defensive performance, paired with quarterback Dak Prescott’s four-touchdown outing and wide receiver George Pickens’ 144-yard, one-touchdown night, has Prescott believing the Cowboys can beat any team in the NFL … when they play with that level of consistency. He acknowledged the opponent’s record but said it doesn’t lessen the value of what Dallas put on film.

“I hope we can take everything out of it, honestly. You know, it’s the NFL, and let’s not look at these records and understand that this is an NFL team, and this is more about us. We go in each and every game saying, ‘It’s about us.’ And tonight’s an example of that: it was a dominating win,” Prescott said postgame. “Sure, I understand that they’re struggling, right? But if we play that way, I don’t care who it is. The score might not be that big, margin might not be that way, but there’s no reason we can’t be confident and feel like we’re going to come out on top if we can play with that same intensity and effort and complement.” 

Head coach Brian Schottenheimer said prior to Week 11 that Prescott’s performance — and the team’s overall — would stabilize once they started getting more complementary support from the defense. They delivered Monday night. That’s why he declared the win in Las Vegas their most “poised” and consistent outing of the 2025 season.

“Last night was probably the most poised I’ve seen our team, in terms of ‘let’s go play.’ It’s 60 minutes, and they played free. We’ve talked about that for a while. I truly want these guys to go out there and play free and not get caught up in the score — whether we’re up 17-3 or whether we’re down 21-0, whatever it is,” Schottenheimer said Tuesday. 

“I think there’s a confidence we have in one another. There’s a belief we can find ways to win games, but the biggest thing we did last night was play our most consistent football in all three phases — offense, defense and special teams. Was it perfect? Nope, absolutely not. A lot of things we looked at were like, ‘Got to clean that up, got to tighten that up.’ But I use the word a lot in here because it’s real: we were the most consistent, probably, [in a] game that we played all season long.”

If the Cowboys can carry this caliber of play into the second half of the season, could they sneak into the NFC playoff picture? Doing so will be an uphill climb. At 4-5-1, SportsLine gives Dallas just a 8.5% chance to reach the postseason. Their next three games — against the defending Super Bowl LIX champion Philadelphia Eagles (8-2), the three-time defending AFC champion Kansas City Chiefs (5-5) and the Detroit Lions (6-4), last season’s top seed in the NFC — will be telling.

“Yeah, I think so. Yeah, starting with this one,” Schottenheimer said when asked if the upcoming three-game stretch will reveal a lot. “We’re playing a really good football team in Philly, one of the teams I really respect and respect the way they play. Very talented, they’re well coached, and so we look forward to this matchup. Then you play that one and then play another team that was matched up against them last year in February. … I want to play the good teams and find out where we truly are. … We’ll know a little bit more in the next 12 days, 11 days. I think we’ll answer that question in a very positive way.”