Sunday’s game could do a lot for the confidence of Dallas Cowboys fans

The Dallas Cowboys are getting set to play their biggest game of the season on Sunday when they visit the Washington Football Team (as 5-point favorites, according to DraftKings Sportsbook), and there is a lot on the line for them. With a win the Cowboys can all but end the conversation about who will win the NFC East Championship for the 2021 season. Winning puts them at 9-4 to Washington’s 6-7 with a game in hand against not just the Football Team, but all of their division rivals.

Things have been a bit rocky for Dallas since people’s Halloween candy started to go stale as Dallas went 1-3 in the month of November before squeaking out a victory over the New Orleans Saints last Thursday night. December is the most critical month of the regular season in the NFL, and thankfully for all of us, it is typically when Mike McCarthy is at his best. But the four weeks preceding New Orleans burned up the benefit of the doubt that McCarthy’s squad earned over the first half of the season.

Earlier this week McCarthy made “headlines” after “guaranteeing” a Dallas Cowboys win on Sunday. While the narrative was stretched to its ultimate length, the reality is that McCarthy is clearly aware of the heightened intensity surrounding this game. Should the Cowboys lose on Sunday we will all reason with ourselves to a certain degree about how Dallas still has a path to the NFC East crown; however, that is the mantra of Cowboys teams of old. We were led to believe that this season was different. That this team was different.

As you can see above, confidence among Cowboys fans dipped dramatically throughout the month of November and rebounded a bit after last week’s win. Securing victory on the road against the division rival that won this thing a year ago, particularly after any sort of guarantee, would obviously go a long way towards allowing people to believe that the Cowboys can do the things that they say they will.

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