After every Cowboys game this season, we will try to post a playoff tracker in which we look at the Cowboys’ latest playoff chances. And we will continue doing this until a playoff berth is secured – or until they are eliminated from playoff contention.
With the season opener out of the way, the Giants are undefeated and the Cowboys are winless. Does that mean the Cowboys should immediately go into tank mode to secure the No. 1 draft pick? And should the undefeated Giants start resting their starters
for the playoffs?
Not so fast.
The NFL expanded the playoff field to 14 teams in 2020, with seven teams from each conference now qualifying. Since then, 84 teams have made the playoffs over six seasons.
More importantly for the Cowboys, 27% of teams that started 0-1 from 2020 through 2025 eventually made the playoffs. Teams that started 1-0 made the playoffs 61% of the time.
So all is not lost for the Cowboys. But their historical playoff rate certainly didn’t improve with Sunday’s loss.
The graphic below shows how often teams with each W/L record after each of their first nine games eventually made the playoffs from 2020 through 2025.
The numbers illustrate why an 0-1 start creates some urgency. The brevity of the NFL season means that if you follow up a season-opening loss with more losses, you’ll be out of the playoff race pretty fast.
In other words, next week’s game against Washington is already approaching must-win territory: Start the season 0-2 and your historical playoff rate drops to just 15%; three consecutive losses to start the season and that historical playoff rate drops to just 4%, and for all intents and purposes, your season is over.
The Cowboys lost their opener and are now looking at a 27% historical playoff rate. If they had won, they’d be sitting pretty with a 61% historical playoff rate.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
The good news is that getting back to .500 already changes the picture considerably. Historically, teams sitting at 1-1 after two games made the playoffs 43% of the time.
Win the next two, and the Cowboys would be 2-1 — a record that historically translated into a 62% playoff rate.
So there’s no reason to panic after one game. But there is reason to pay attention.
We’ll try to keep tracking the numbers every week. Hopefully, the next update starts with a 1-1 record.
