Both the Cowboys and Lions desperately needed a win Thursday night in order to stay relevant in the NFC playoff picture.<\/p>\n
The Cowboys stayed in the game with kicker Brandon Aubrey drilling three field goals of 55+ yards, and they even trimmed the deficit to three points in the fourth quarter. But Jahmyr Gibbs and the Lions\u2019 offense couldn\u2019t be stopped in the second half, and rolled to a 44\u201330 victory.<\/p>\n
The Lions improved to 8\u20135 with the win. They remain in third place in the crowded NFC North, but are now just one game back of the 49ers (9\u20134) for the NFC\u2019s final wild-card spot. Dallas, on the other hand, falls to 6\u20136\u20131 and will need a dramatic late-season run and some help in order to make the playoffs.<\/p>\n
Entering the night, the Lions and Cowboys were the first two teams on the outside looking in at the playoff picture. That\u2019s still the case following the Lions\u2019 victory, but both teams\u2019 chances to make the playoffs changed drastically with the Thursday Night Football result.<\/p>\n
According to Next Gen Stats, the Lions now have a 53% chance to make the playoffs. Had they lost, that number would\u2019ve dropped to 19%. The Cowboys\u2019 playoff chances look rather bleak at just 9%. If Dallas pulled out a win Thursday night, Next Gen Stats would\u2019ve given it a 39% chance to make the playoffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Both the Cowboys and Lions desperately needed a win Thursday night in order to stay relevant in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,932,104,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-78133","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-cowboys-news","10":"tag-dallas-headlines","11":"tag-dallas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}