The Dallas Cowboys’ season can realistically go one of three directions from this point forward. Path 1: The team shows some improvement on defense, steadies itself some and is able to win a handful of games. Path 2: The team craters, continues to let even the worst NFL offenses run over, through and past them and struggle to win more than one additional game. Path 3: Bubble up, figure things out and have the miracle of miracle runs despite more injuries than an an episode of M.A.S.H.
Stop laughing; we know Path 3 isn’t happening. Path 1 could happen and would lead Dallas to a draft pick somewhere in the low teens and would immediately begin the “I can’t believe they won that meaningless game” conversations about lost draft slot value. Path 2, however… that’s the interesting path many would like to see happen.
I’m the sort of person that, knowing what a crap shoot the NFL draft is, would rather have the surprise victory on a Sunday despite it hurting the draft slot. There are so few football games every year, and because I have to tune in, I’d rather there be some level of enjoyment for three hours, not to mention the hours of game-day prep work, hours of game-day post work and all the work in between game days.
Others, don’t care as much and would rather have the highest draft pick despite evidence the skill of the front office has far more impact on a team’s haul than positioning does.
This rooting guide is for those people. Normally, around midseason we break out the rooting guide to help carve a path through each week’s schedule to help Dallas get better playoff positioning. Since that’s ridiculously unrealistic, instead we will do the rooting guide for which team’s can help the Cowboys get the best draft pick at the end of the year. Here’s the Week 8 slate of action.