Dallas Cowboys running back Javonte Williams (33) carries the ball up the middle during the second half against New York Giants safety Tyler Nubin (27) at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, September 13, 2026.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
The Cowboys took their act on the road and beat a 2-4 team Monday night. The Giants did the same thing Sunday in Houston. Yet somehow the Cowboys did the practical (it seems) while the Giants did the impossible.
That’s because Dallas was a 4.5-point favorite against an Eagles team running out of reinforcements at midseason. New York, however, was a 10.5-point underdog — a massive spread by NFL standards — and yet came out of Houston with its fourth win of the season. There’s a reason these two accomplishments that count exactly the same on the win-loss ledger are held in such opposite regard. And it’s the Cowboys’ problem moving forward as they try to rise from the ashes at 3-4 and get back into the NFL playoff picture.
I’m not trying to minimize a win in Philadelphia. They still had eight starters from the Super Bowl winners of two seasons ago. They still had some credibility on their home turf, and Saquon Barkley gave the home fans plenty of excitement on that initial drive but wasn’t healthy enough to sustain it.
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“I think it gets us right back into the hunt in the NFC,’’ coach Brian Schottenheimer said.
But the Giants were such a heavy underdog because no one really knew what to make of J.J. McCarthy’s wild fourth quarter a week ago against New Orleans. In that home loss to the Saints, McCarthy replaced the always erratic Jameis Winston and threw for 243 yards. In the fourth quarter. Who does that?
But it was against a bad Saints’ defense just trying to protect a huge lead as the game went from 34-10 to 34-27 with the Giants driving at the final gun. In his first start as a Giant, McCarthy was not quite as prolific — 252 yards over four quarters — but he completed 20 of 28 passes, made no mistakes and continued to get the ball downfield as New York won in overtime. In five quarters, McCarthy has thrown for 495 yards and given the Giants new life after all was lost in the wake of the Jaxson Dart injury.
As long as the Giants were forced to ride with Winston, you knew the crash was coming. Winston is like the loudest craps shooter in the casino. You know he’s going to generate roars from that side of the room, but the house odds are going to get him every time. Since 2022, with just under 700 passes thrown (basically one very full season), with New Orleans, Cleveland and New York, Winston has 28 touchdown passes and 27 interceptions.
With Jameis, it was only a matter of time. With J.J. … we really don’t know.
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He looked good enough to me when he was leading the Vikings to a 34-26 win at AT&T Stadium late last year, throwing for two touchdowns and running for another score. But one day after I did a fairly long radio interview in Minneapolis last spring, detailing how I would rather have McCarthy at quarterback than Kyler Murray, the Vikings somehow ignored this advice and signed the Allen product to be their starter. And in the wake of that, McCarthy was dispatched to New York.
Now Allen leads the unbeaten Vikings (keep in mind they were the unbeaten Vikings when Carson Wentz was quarterbacking, too) and McCarthy has the Giants thinking postseason. At the very least, the Giants have him in a Michigan-like run-heavy offense. At 1.5 games ahead of Dallas with 10 to play, New York is certainly catchable. But will it happen?
I think that unexpected fourth win at Houston was big because the Giants have two games left with the given-up-for-dead Eagles, a home game with Washington and a road trip to Indianapolis. Wins in those games can get them to 8-8-1 even if they lose everything else including that big Jan. 3 game in Dallas.
So even without giving the Giants a ray of hope against Cleveland, Detroit, Jacksonville, Seattle or San Francisco, Dallas needs to see a path to 9-8 to win this division.
Give the Cowboys similar wins against the Colts, the Cardinals, the Titans, Commanders and Eagles and that’s eight wins. That means — in addition to not stumbling like they did against a rookie quarterback and a winless Tampa Bay team — they need a win over the 49ers or the Seahawks or the Jaguars or the Rams.
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If those challenges fail, then they can still beat New York on Jan. 3. If McCarthy, the Giants’ third starting quarterback, can stay healthy that long, it could be quite a game. And if the Cowboys’ offense is rolling like it did Monday night — more than 200 yards rushing and receiving each against the Eagles — then this messy open to the season can be all but forgotten.
But to define, for the seventh week in a row, the Dallas defense as a “work in progress” feels tiresome. The Cowboys clearly weren’t ready for what Barkley hit them with on that opening drive, he just couldn’t sustain it as he said after the game he injured his back on that first 27-yard run. A healthy Barkley would have torched the Cowboys on Monday night. Even without him, the Eagles drove for more than nine minutes and a touchdown to open the third quarter. It was only late that the Cowboys finally got to Tanner McKee and helped the offense salt the game away.
Let’s see if this team really knows how to take care of business against an Arizona team that beat the Rams two weeks ago and a Colts team that’s on the ropes. That would get this team above .500 for the first time in 2026 and we could gaze down the road a bit without so many ifs.