Why Rich Thinks the Dallas Cowboys Will Make the Playoffs This Season

Rich has already done the full Kramer on the Dallas Cowboys. He slapped the money on the table and said he was out. And yet he still can't shake one stubborn feeling.

"I still, for some reason, and I don't know why, I cannot shake the sense that the Cowboys are still making the playoffs," Rich said.

It started with a listener question. Manny in El Paso asked TJ how many more Cowboys losses it would take before he closed up shop and started rooting for the Sixers. Rich pointed out it was an odd thing to ask a guy right after his team won.

Rich owns his disappointment. He had Dallas in his top five in his "way way way too soon" power rankings, then again in every version that followed, through the preseason. The team has not lived up to it. But the talent keeps pulling him back.

"I just think Dak and CeeDee Lamb and Pickens and Javonte Williams are just too damn good," he said. "And defensively, it's just got to get better because of how talented they are."

TJ noted there are still 10 games left. Rich laid out the path. Dallas would either have to win the division or win enough down the stretch to grab a wild card. He penciled in a home win over the Cardinals to get the Cowboys to 4-4 at the halfway point, while warning that nobody should chalk that one up, since Dallas has lost to Arizona more often than not this decade.

The Giants, at 4-2-1, sit a game and a half ahead. Rich said the NFC East is going to shake out over the next three weeks, with New York facing a crucial stretch against the Commanders and the Eagles. Dallas, meanwhile, heads to Indianapolis, then gets San Francisco at home, then two winnable home games against Tennessee and Philadelphia before a difficult finishing stretch.

Even the wild card road isn't easy. Rich figured three teams might come out of the West, and if only two do, three are likely to come out of the North. He admitted it all runs against the evidence. "The numbers, the consistency don't match the spidey sense here," he said.

TJ, for his part, went game by game. He acknowledged Arizona has beaten Dallas four straight times but expects a win this time. The Colts, he said, are "basically waving the white flag," which makes that a winnable game. San Francisco is the one that worries him.

"I've always said since you put me behind this microphone, Rich, that the 9ers are the hurdle that Dallas just can't get over," TJ said. "So I'm looking at that as an L."

Run it out from there and the Cowboys would be 5-5 heading into the home games with Tennessee and Philadelphia, 7-5 coming out of the bye, and then the Rams. The crew also flagged a road game at Seattle on Monday night as one that will be tough.

TJ went even further than Rich. "I'm still down with Dallas winning the division," he said.

Rich wasn't buying that part. "I don't know, brother. The Giants are good," he said. He sketched out how New York could take control, going into Philadelphia off a bye and then coming home to beat a Commanders team Rich said they had beaten until a Skattebo fumble changed the game.

So the official count stands at one Cowboys fan holding out hope for the division and one host who says he's out but keeps sneaking back in. As for Manny's question, TJ made it clear he isn't tapping out. "We have to win this game against the Cardinals," he said.