LAS VEGAS — There are more than 85,000 hotel rooms on the Las Vegas Strip alone, and most of them come fully priced. So I made a quick trip early Tuesday morning to the sportsbook at Bellagio to see what the wise guys who helped build these marvelous hotels with our money were thinking about the Cowboys-Eagles game Sunday.
And there it was in those beautiful, tempting neon lights — Dallas, +3.5.
I couldn’t help but overhear the man in the tracksuit next to me placing a $10,000 bet — generally speaking, out of my price range by a little more than $9,800. And, sure enough, he was putting it all on …
Seattle against Tennessee.
Cowboys
He wasn’t much help to me, but I will go ahead and offer my services to you for the low, low price of whatever the DMN paywall is going for these days. And that is very simple. Don’t fall for the fool’s gold that the Cowboys represent.
I recognize it is tempting. Very tempting. More tempting than anticipated. The Eagles have to be the most indifferent-looking 8-2 team in the history of the National Football League. They were uninspired Sunday night in beating Detroit, 16-9. A week earlier they looked disengaged, after a 0-0 first half, in beating Green Bay, 10-7. As a matter of fact, the New York Giants are the only team the Eagles have beaten this season by more than seven points.
Now, the problem for the Cowboys is there’s a lot of winning to be discussed even when you are dissecting all of the Eagles’ woes. Wide receiver A.J. Brown recently advised fantasy players to get rid of him, that his big stat days weren’t coming. Jalen Hurts has thrown for fewer yards than the Raiders’ Geno Smith. Saquon Barkley shows the toll that last year’s 482 touches exacted (regular season and playoffs) on a weekly basis. He’s averaging 3.8 per carry, a full 2vyards below his 2024 numbers. No one on the Eagles’ defense has as many sacks as the Cowboys’ James Houston.
On and on. The Eagles only do two things really well. They Tush Push opponents to death for short gains and, occasionally, touchdowns (they even messed that up with penalties Sunday). And they win.
Maybe we should pay attention to the winning and forget all the rest. The Eagles went to the Super Bowl in 2022. They had a 10-1 record in November 2023. They won the Super Bowl in 2024. They are 8-2 in 2025. That’s an awful lot of sustained winning through four seasons, considering they have a fan base that is constantly freaking out over their weekly mishaps.
For their part, the Cowboys looked as good as they have all year Monday night in emerging from the dark clouds of a lost teammate during a long bye week. Coach Brian Schottenheimer talked about the team now being galvanized, motivated to continue to honor Marshawn Kneeland. If the league would let them play Pete Carroll’s Raiders week after week, I have no doubt they would do exactly that.
But even if this feels different, we have been here before. The Cowboys are coming off a victory over a really bad team. And that’s all they have on their résumé this season. At 3-8, Washington is the most decorated team Dallas has victimized. The rest of the losers are the Raiders and Jets at 2-8 and Giants at 2-9.
The Cowboys failed to come closer than 10 points against Arizona (3-7), Chicago (7-3) and Denver (9-2). Only the 24-20 loss to the Eagles, who, as I said, refuse to beat almost anyone by more than seven, and possibly a 30-27 defeat at Carolina fall under the category of “impressive losses.” And I‘m fairly certain that ”holding” Rico Dowdle to 183 yards rushing disqualifies the Cowboys from the land of the impressive.
Still, you think about Dak Prescott throwing to CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens. The Eagles still run Adoree’ Jackson out there on one corner. Very beatable. You think about a tackle-heavy front four for Dallas getting after Hurts with the Eagles playing without their leader, tackle Lane Johnson. Hurts has been sacked 26 times this season, roughly the same number the Raiders’ Smith had endured before being tossed around by Dallas on Monday night.
There are reasons to think this is going to be a real contest, much more so than would normally be the case when an 8-2 team comes up against a 4-5-1 squad. Even a Dallas upset doesn’t get the Cowboys back into the NFC East chase. They would still need three more Eagles’ defeats while … hard to even type this … running the table against the Chiefs, Lions, Chargers and the rest.
But I think the evidence points to the door being open for Eagles’ losses down the stretch. A few, anyway. Not as many as the Cowboys would need and not likely one to be engineered by a Dallas team that is finding new reasons to believe or to rededicate itself.
The Cowboys are coming in their own strange way. But they need a better notch in the belt than the Commanders to tell us they are ready to take down an Eagles team that misses the mark in more than a few areas but rarely leaves the field defeated.
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