Dallas City News

Somehow, some way, we have reached the end of the regular season. It flew by.

Thankfully the Dallas Cowboys have at least one more game promised and hopefully more beyond that. We are reaching a treacherous point of time where everything is on the line and all of our hopes and dreams rest on every moment of every game. What more can you ask for, really?

How fate ultimately unfolds for America’s Team this season remains to be seen but they can make it more appealing on the surface with a win on Sunday. Should the Cowboys defeat the Washington Commanders they will be the NFC East winners and the #2 seed in the conference which.

While Dallas is a big-time favorite against their division rivals, this is the NFL where anything can happen, something that generally rings more true in the final week of the regular season. In an effort to try and figure out how Sunday might unfold we ran a simulation through Madden 24 and the results were rather intense. Dallas won a wild one, 32-31.

Please note that this simulation was run prior to Friday’s news or injury announcements.

Notable Madden statistics

• Dak Prescott: 18/22, 347 passing yards, 2 passing touchdowns
• Tony Pollard: 17 carries, 68 yards, 2 rushing touchdowns
• CeeDee Lamb: 7 receptions, 146 yards
• Michael Gallup: 5 receptions, 129 yards, 1 touchdown
• Luke Schoonmaker: 3 receptions, 39 yards, 1 touchdown
• Micah Parsons and Damone Clark both had critical sacks

The Cowboys were actually trailing for most of the early part of this game and did not really make things close until midway through the third quarter. They did ultimately win but made many mistakes along the way.

In that third quarter Dallas scored a touchdown while trailing 28-20 and missed the two-point conversion that would have tied things which left them down by two at 28-26. Washington went on to kick a field goal and after Dallas managed to score to take the lead they failed on another two-point conversion on an attempt that would have made things a field goal game. That is where the 32-31 score ultimately came from.

Perhaps the biggest blunder by Dallas came in the final minutes of the game when they had the ball facing a 4th and 1 in Washington territory with their opponents having no timeouts left. Given that there was just over a minute remaining in the game the Cowboys went for it, but Tony Pollard was unsuccessful which gave Washington life and a chance to go win the game.

Thankfully Damone Clark stepped up and had a critical sack of Sam Howell on third down that pushed them out of anywhere near field goal range. Dallas held on for one more play and won.

All told the Madden simulations have been a bit all over the place this season, but it came really close to completely nailing last week’s game against the Detroit Lions.

Nobody wants to rehash what happened at the end of that game but when Donovan Wilson intercepted Jared Goff that should have been the end of things. If it had the final score would have been 17-13 which is exactly what the simulation called for, but obviously a bit more football happened and Dallas wound up winning 20-19.

Madden predictions this season and game result:

• Week 1: Madden predicted Cowboys win 23-20, Cowboys won 40-0
• Week 2: Madden predicted Cowboys win 27-14, Cowboys won 30-10
• Week 3: Madden predicted Cowboys win 14-7, Cowboys lost 28-16
• Week 4: Madden predicted Cowboys win 41-14, Cowboys won 38-3
• Week 5: Madden predicted Cowboys win, 27-19, Cowboys lost 42-10
• Week 6: Madden predicted Cowboys lose, 21-17, Cowboys won 20-17
• Week 8: Madden predicted Cowboys lose, 30-27, Cowboys won 43-20
• Week 9: Madden predicted Cowboys win, 28-10, Cowboys lost 28-23
• Week 10: Madden predicted Cowboys win, 31-3, Cowboys won 49-17
• Week 11: Madden predicted Cowboys lose, 34-31, Dallas won 33-10
• Week 12: Madden predicted Cowboys win, 20-17, Dallas won 45-10
• Week 13: Madden predicted Cowboys win, 23-20, Dallas won 41-35
• Week 14: Madden predicted Cowboys lose, 23-20, Dallas won 33-13
• Week 15: Madden predicted Cowboys win, 28-3, Dallas lost 31-10
• Week 16: Madden predicted Cowboys win, 31-10, Dallas lost 22-20
• Week 17: Madden predicted Cowboys win, 17-13, Dallas won 20-19
• Overall Madden Accuracy so far this season: 7-9

Hopefully the simulation is nowhere near accurate this week and the Cowboys win a very boring game that they are in control of from the very beginning!