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ARLINGTON, Texas — In the Dallas Cowboys locker room, there was reason to feel disheartened at halftime. Had the club created a bingo card of things that could have gone wrong, multiple players would already have cashed out. 

A turnover on downs? Check. Penalties that sent the Philadelphia Eagles offense back on the field when they’d otherwise been stopped? Check. A lost fumble? Yep. And don’t forget to check off the red-zone interception.

The Cowboys had fallen into a 21-point hole early, even if a touchdown with 24 seconds to play before halftime reduced the gap to two scores.  This Dallas team hadn't won consecutive games all season, much less beat anyone with a winning record. So would they now upset the eight-win defending Super Bowl champions?

Oh, and the Eagles were set to receive the ball first in the second half.

Quarterback Dak Prescott entered that halftime locker room and thought about the resilience he embodies and addressed his teammates accordingly. He contributed his own share of challenges to the hole. But he told them nonetheless that he loved this.

Yes, he loved this 21-point hole.

“I love being down,” Prescott said. “I don’t know why and couldn’t tell you. Trust me, it’s fun when you’re up. You can laugh and joke. But when you’re down, it requires such a unique place that you have to get to in resilience, focus and taking it one play at a time.

“I love that.”

Stacy Revere via Getty Images

So the Cowboys tapped into the world of complementary football, and they began to answer. They’d still miss a field goal in the third quarter and turn over the ball on downs again in the fourth. But a previously maligned Cowboys defense denied the Eagles points on eight straight possessions. A Cowboys offense that struggled to find rhythm in the first half settled slowly but surely and then suddenly and explosively.

Prescott finished with 354 yards and two touchdowns passing in addition to a rushing score.

Scoring 24 unanswered points, the Cowboys rallied to upset one of the best teams in the NFC.

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Team owner Jerry Jones, who a week ago had acknowledged the Cowboys' season was sure to end before the playoffs, started to wonder if maybe his team still has a chance.

“Very, very much,” Jones said after the 24-21 win. “This game tonight, this was our season.”

Breaking record fueled Prescott, but not in way you might think

In the tides of emotion that characterized an at-least tipsy game, an early third-quarter display on the scoreboard bothered Prescott.

With a 9-yard completion to George Pickens, Prescott surpassed 13-year veteran Tony Romo’s 34,183 passing yards for the Cowboys’ all-time record.

Two plays after he broke the record, Eagles linebacker Nakobe Dean sacked Prescott and forced a punt. The Cowboys were still in a 14-point hole. Prescott shushed his teammates’ attempts at congratulations, telling them they could discuss any accolades after they win. And they would win, he believed.

“Initially when I looked up there and saw that, there was a little emotion that hit me that I damn sure wasn’t ready for and didn’t know would come,” Prescott said. “That’s why I countered that with anger. Like, ‘Let that go — we’ll celebrate it later.

“‘I don’t want to hear anything about that right now.’”

Late in the third quarter, Prescott went on a tear. No matter that CeeDee Lamb had dropped most of his seven missed targets on the day already, including a miss on second-and-5. With 3:02 left in the third quarter, facing third-and-5, Prescott dropped back and mailed a ball deep down the right sideline.

Lamb adjusted to catch it despite Eagles cornerback Cooper DeJean’s tight coverage. The Cowboys’ 2020 first-round draft pick hauled it in for 48 yards and a red-zone entry. Three plays later, Prescott found second-year undrafted tight end Brevyn Span-Ford for a touchdown.

Dallas’ defense contained Philadelphia to a 56-yard field-goal attempt, which they would miss. Prescott responded on the next play with another deep ball — this time to the other sideline, to his other top receiver.

George Pickens caught an airborne 50-yarder through double coverage from DeJean and Eagles safety Sidney Brown. Prescott scored the game-tying touchdown with his feet — well, except for when he left his feet to somersault into the end zone and tie the game.

“It was a play that is particularly drawn up to beat a man [coverage],” Prescott said. “You bring the motion for an indicator and I realized that it wasn’t man and I’m going to have to take a drop and allow for the play to develop. I did that and had a rush up the edge, and I just got out.”

Tight end Jake Ferguson blocked his defender, and Prescott evaded the rest of the visitors.

“I didn’t want to get hit in the knees, so I jumped and got a good roll,” he said. “After that, it was just electric.

“At that moment, I knew the game was going to be ours.”

Two Cowboys fumble recoveries and a Brandon Aubrey kick later, it was.

With Chiefs and Lions coming quickly, Cowboys will find answers to questions

Six days prior, the Cowboys had dismantled the Las Vegas Raiders on the road in a prime-time game. The Cowboys looked complete and confident as Prescott alternated between Lamb and Pickens as his poison of choice and the newly assembled Cowboys’ defensive front tore apart the Raiders’ offensive line.

But beating a team that has since fallen to 2-9 begged the question: What did the victory mean? Sure, it counted in the win column. But would Dallas ever beat a club with a winning record?

As they faced a 21-point hole early Sunday, the answer seemed trending clearly in one direction. When the currents reversed, a strong offense led by Pickens’ nine catches for 146 yards and a touchdown deserved credit. But the defense, Prescott emphasized, kept the team competitive until the offense belatedly awoke.

A defensive interior front of Osa Odighizuwa, August acquisition Kenny Clark and trade deadline acquisition Quinnen Williams frustrated an Eagles front that has weathered injuries including to star right tackle Lane Johnson.

The Cowboys hit Hurts six times and pressured him additionally. And, unusual for Cowboys defenses in recent years, they contained Barkley to 2.2 yards per rush (Barkley did catch seven passes for 52 yards atop his 22 rushing yards).

Eagles brass credited a five-man Cowboys front they weren’t expecting, Hurts referring to “how they’re built now given the three interior defenders they have” in explaining the defensive shift. Jones celebrated his deals and his ability to poach Williams after interest in the preseason didn’t materialize into a deal.

But everyone knew: Right now, the 5-5-1 Cowboys have the NFC’s 10th best record in a playoff format that will take just seven of them. More is necessary.

The Cowboys will have an imminent chance to ride this momentum on Thanksgiving Day against the defending AFC champion Kansas City Chiefs and then a week later, in prime time, against a Detroit Lions team that last season claimed the NFC’s top seed. The most daunting stretch of Dallas’ schedule has arrived. With it, the Cowboys can accurately gauge how much they’ve actually improved.

If the Cowboys upset both the Chiefs and Lions, their playoff chances will rise from 13% to 49%, according to The New York Times’ NFL playoff simulator.

Hopes are higher than they were a week and two weeks ago after the Cowboys’ first consecutive wins of the Brian Schottenheimer era. And yet — an observer of recent Cowboy history will fairly argue that the Cowboys upsetting their division rivals at home may not be the pivot point they need.

Sunday’s win improved Prescott to 22-2 against division teams at home in his career, the .917 record the highest division home winning clip of any quarterback since the NFL merger. Beating the Eagles is standard in the Prescott era. A deep playoff run is not yet.

Can Chiefs and Lions victories bring Dallas closer to the chance to change that?

The question is swirling in Cowboys’ players minds. And it’s a tick less outlandish than it felt a week ago.

“You just go out and take each championship opportunity as its own,” Schottenheimer said. “And when it’s all said and done, after 17 games, we’re going to either be in the playoffs or not.

“If we keep playing the way we’re playing right now, I like our chances.”

Prescott does, too. He declined to rank the victory among his favorites in 10 Dallas seasons, even as the Cowboys tied their record for largest deficit (21 points) before a comeback and Prescott claimed the franchise’s passing yards record.

Sure, he admitted, he told trainers he wanted to keep the jersey — a sentimentality he doesn’t often permit. But to rank this game among his favorites will hinge on the team’s performance the rest of the season. 

“Hopefully, I can look back and say this was the moment, this was the time, this game meant everything to this season,” Prescott said. “Right now, just staying where my feet are. Super thankful for this team, for the men, for this opportunity.

“It’s a game that I won’t forget.”

Turn it over to him.

Forget about the debate between the advanced analytics versus traditional stat lines. Forget that the Las Vegas Raiders have an offensive line that makes them an objectively terrible measuring stick when it comes to wins and losses. And forget that Shedeur Sanders’ first NFL touchdown was a screen pass 6 yards behind the line of scrimmage that running back Dylan Sampson turned into a 66-yard explosive play.

The Cleveland Browns’ offense was finally interesting on Sunday. And right now, that warrants a longer look at Sanders.

This won’t be the universal opinion, of course. There will be a segment of opinions that will point to any number of things to validate what they believe they saw in Cleveland’s 24-10 win over the Las Vegas Raiders. Some will point to the Browns’ defense racking up as many sacks (10) as the Raiders had points, and justifiably suggest that most quarterbacks would have won with that kind of performance. Some will point to the advanced analytics that say Sanders had the lowest success rate of any quarterback on Sunday, or that he registered a negative EPA per drop back. Others will strip out the 66-yard touchdown pass on a screen and say, “Well, what would his day look like if that play didn’t exist?”

Yes, just glancing at the box score and seeing Sanders’ stat line — 11 for 20 for 209 passing yards, with one touchdown and one interception — is a bit of simpleton analysis. There was good and bad inside it. But when you weigh those two realities against each other, it’s more than enough to be satisfied with a rookie starter with literally one week of practice under his belt with the starters. Especially when the result is a win. And lest we forget, Sanders wasn’t subbing in for a quality veteran starter who just needed a placeholder for a week. He was stepping in for rookie Dillon Gabriel, who also had his own struggles.

In reality, very few of the people poking holes in Sanders on Monday will be Browns fans. And there are multiple reasons for that. A Browns rookie quarterback finally won his first start; the fans have seen what the offense looks like under Gabriel and it hasn’t been good; and with the team sitting at 3-8, there’s nothing to lose in getting a long look at Sanders. These are valid reasons. Maybe Sanders won’t be the answer everyone is looking for, but after winning against the Raiders and showing a some flashes of downfield passing explosives, you can’t know what Sanders is (or isn’t) until you give him the runway to actually showcase it.

Maybe the feel would be different if Sanders had just absolutely cratered against Las Vegas. But he didn’t. If anything, he looked better on balance than he did in his second half of spot duty against the Baltimore Ravens. He looked fairly calm most of the game and gave up only one sack, throwing the ball away in appropriate spots. His 52-yard bomb to wide receiver Isaiah Bond — on a rollout that allowed the opportunity to unfold — was impressive. It was also the first time Bond’s true deep speed has been unlocked this entire season. That includes all of Gabriel’s six starts, which clearly featured less arm strength than Sanders has already shown in just six quarters of work. Being able to take advantage of a fellow rookie’s speed and help develop him heading into the offseason should be a priority, too.

And while Sampson’s 66-yard touchdown from Sanders is a bit of catch-and-run fool’s gold in the box score, it’s worth noting that Sanders did hit him accurately and in space where the running back could go to work setting up blocks. That isn’t nothing. Also, it’s not Sanders’ fault that Jerry Jeudy fumbled away what should have been an impressive 50-plus yard catch and run off another rollout.

Had that fumble not happened, Sanders almost certainly would have helped put more points on the board. Even the revived usage of running back Quinshon Judkins in a Wildcat formation, which was also featured in a win over the Miami Dolphins, was a welcome wrinkle that had Cleveland looking more creative on offense.

The bottom line, Sanders showed a calm demeanor and didn’t look like he’d been thrown in the ocean. And afterward, he made a cogent point about the results when speaking to CBS in a postgame interview.

“To win is crazy. It’s amazing, you know. After one week of practice, you know what I mean?” Sanders said. “This one week of practice. So imagine, you know, what a full offseason look like. It get dangerous. But this just in one week of practice, so I’m truly thankful that everything happened.”

Later, speaking to reporters, Sanders added: “A lot of people want to see me fail. It ain’t gonna happen, you know? It ain’t gonna happen.”

He’s not wrong on either point — both in regards to the practice and the fact that he has critics and doubters. But one thing is certain. It stands to reason that if head coach Kevin Stefanski makes the decision to stick with Sanders as the starter and gives him the same full-bore attention with first-team reps and starting opportunities, something will happen on the other side of it. Either Sanders will get a better mastery of the scheme, the speed of game and the chemistry with his teammates — or he’ll get exposed by all of it.

Either way, the Browns will head into the offseason with some knowledge about how Sanders stacks up with three scenarios: Weighing Sanders versus Gabriel in a similar number of starts; weighing both of those performances versus the option of signing or trading for a veteran quarterback in the offseason … or selecting another rookie in the first round of the 2026 NFL Draft.

All of that has steep importance on the future of the franchise and its quarterback spot. And you only limit your knowledge at this point if you send Sanders back to the bench. Which may still happen. After last week’s loss to the Ravens, Stefanski said Gabriel would get his starting job back after clearing the concussion protocol. He was less declarative about that after the Raiders win, when asked if Sanders would get an opportunity to run the offense against the San Francisco 49ers next week.

“I’m not going to get into that,” Stefanski said. “Obviously, proud of him and proud of this offense and there are a ton of things to learn from. But I’m just going to worry about today.”

Later, Stefanski said he was going to “take my time [with the decision] and do what’s best for the football team.”

What’s best for this team now is to actually know what it has at the quarterback spot. Gabriel has played in eight games and gotten six starts. Sanders needs his own thorough evaluation — whether that’s the rest of the season or until he plays well or poorly enough to render judgement. Only after the Browns commit to that, can the franchise move toward a decision that answers an endless quarterback question.