Morning Distribution for Wednesday, October 13, 2021

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Morning Distribution]( Wednesday, October 13, 2021 Your daily briefing from FiveThirtyEight --------------------------------------------------------------- The Morning Story [New York Giants v Dallas Cowboys]( [The Cowboys Are Putting It All Together. Is This Their Year?]( By [Neil Paine]( The 2021 NFL season marks the 26th since the Dallas Cowboys last made a Super Bowl, improbably giving a franchise known as “[America’s Team]( the league’s [11th-longest active drought](. Through [1995]( a Cowboys Super Bowl appearance happened once every 3.75 years on average … and sometimes even more frequently. (In its heyday, Dallas had two separate stretches — 1975 to 1978 and 1992 to 1995 — in which it made three Super Bowls in four years.) By contrast, the past two-and-a-half decades of Dallas football has largely revolved around [owner/general manager]( Jerry Jones’s futile fixation on [restoring the Cowboys]( to their former glory, [through a procession]( of seven different head coaches and 10 primary quarterbacks. All have seen similar results: sporadic playoff appearances, few playoff wins and zero Super Bowls. But — and stop me if you’ve heard this before — this year’s Cowboys might be the long-awaited group that ends the team’s absence from football’s biggest stage. After [easily handling]( the shorthanded New York Giants on Sunday afternoon, Dallas is 4-1 this season with the NFL’s [third-best]( points-per-game differential. It has been excelling on both sides of the ball — a rarity for this franchise in recent seasons — with quarterback Dak Prescott leading the NFL’s third-best offense by schedule-adjusted [expected points added]( (EPA) per game, and the defense rising to sixth-best in its first year under coordinator Dan Quinn. In the EPA era (since 2006), we haven’t seen a Cowboys team this complete, nor perhaps one with a path to the playoffs so clearly laid out. The big question now is whether Dallas can convert its early success into the postseason run it’s been craving for over a quarter-century. The Cowboys have had a few strong candidates to end their Super Bowl drought before (though none even made the conference championship game). The [2007 club]( started 12-1 on the strength of an elite offense — led by QB Tony Romo, WR Terrell Owens and TE Jason Witten — and a defense that featured dominating edge-rusher DeMarcus Ware, but Romo [was outplayed]( by Giants QB Eli Manning in the divisional round of the playoffs. Romo led similarly talented Dallas teams in [2009]( and [2014]( as well, but the former [was trounced]( in the playoffs by the Minnesota Vikings and the latter saw its season [end in Green Bay]( as WR Dez Bryant was [unable to hold onto]( a go-ahead touchdown catch in the final minutes. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Every Sport Is Out Of Control]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 47 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023.