In the current pro football pantheon, there isn’t a team hotter than the Dallas Cowboys.
Ever since they got pantsed by San Francisco in early October, the Cowboys have gone on an absolute tear. They’ve won seven of eight games to vault themselves into prime position for the NFC East title and for a top-two seed in the NFC playoff picture. Perhaps more importantly, Dak Prescott is playing the most efficient football of his career and has a genuine MVP case as he tries to march the league’s marquee team back to postseason glory.
And yet, Dallas’s resume still pales compared to what the Ravens — easily the NFL’s most overlooked team — have accomplished. Even me detailing what the Cowboys have achieved in the last two months ironically felt like it glossed over the current favorite for the top playoff seed in the AFC.
Don’t believe me?
Let’s look at a tale of the tape:
- The Ravens have five wins over teams with winning records, while the Cowboys have one.
- According to FTN, Baltimore is fifth, second, and fifth in offensive, defensive, and special teams DVOA, respectively. By comparison, Dallas is sixth, sixth, and eighth in each of those categories. That suggests Baltimore plays a better brand of complementary football.
- The Ravens are fourth in scoring offense and second in scoring defense. The Cowboys are first in scoring offense and fourth in scoring defense.
- Baltimore’s coach is John Harbaugh, a man with a proven playoff pedigree accustomed to taking his team on deep runs through January. Dallas’s coach is Mike McCarthy, a supposedly changed man who usually sinks his team’s playoff chances without a second thought.
None of this is to diminish the Cowboys’ resume.
At the moment, even if they do fall short of the NFC East title because of the Philadelphia Eagles’ remaining cupcake schedule, I feel comfortable anointing Dallas as the No. 1 challenger to the San Francisco 49ers for the NFC’s crown. But the Ravens deserve a whole heck of a lot more respect because they’re beating better teams and in style. And they’ve been doing it all year. I mean, it took this team over two months to appear in a primetime game. That is egregious and completely unacceptable. It’s not the Ravens’ fault they don’t have an entire media market backing their every brush with success and drama.
The Cowboys and Ravens are understandably a touchy subject for Christian and me in For The Win‘s Week 15 NFL power rankings. As almost every other contender falls flat on its face, we’ve got a wrestling match of superpowers up top.