OK - I will make this brief because today's games are about to start and I don't want to miss any of the action :)
 
I will give a current assessment, all my opinions only of course, of the good and bad for this team going into the postseason and our overall chances.
 
First, let's start with the good...In the past I have said that good defensive play along with great quarterback play is what wins you championships. I won lots of money on the Giants Patriots Super Bowl following this theory - Manning was making great decisions and throwing the ball with unbelieveable accuracy down the stretch and that defense was peaking. Even though they were a wild card team it didn't matter - those two key elements were in place. I watched Brady make poor decisions against San Diego in the championship game, including throwing an interception in the end zone that almost cost them the game. I knew at that point which team had the edge in the Super Bowl...
 
Dallas as of right now has these two things going for it as well. The defense, finally at the end of the year, looks like they actually know their assignments. They are not only getting into position quickly but also jumping into their coverage schemes almost flawlessly. Phillips has also finally learned that just wildly blitzing on 3rd and long gets you burned a LOT so he has employed a nice mixture of flat out coverage, blitzes and even some nice zone blites to thoroughly confuse the opposing offense.  Also, the VERY nice thing about our defense is noone seems to be able to get a running game going on us consistently. While noone has reall talked much about this, our rushing defense is currently ranked 5th overall in the NFL which is outstanding. I watch teams time and time again waste downs trying to establish the run and it is a beautiful thing. The biggest additions by far that have solidified our run defense are Olshansky and Brooking...
 
So, in essence, our defense right now is Super Bowl caliber. Now on to Romo...he is finally learning to not force the action but instead to rely on his own ability to get out of trouble and make plays. Let the play come to you - do not try to force it into existence. Parcells was constantly on him about this and when he left there was a relapse for Tony but now the seasoning seems to have settled in.
 
Romo now had an explosive, great WR target in Miles Austin. He has a reliable 3rd down slot WR in Crayton and s superior TE in Jason Witten. These are the positives and again playing at Super Bowl caliber levels.  Couple that with the leagues 8th ranked rushing offense and you have the pieces in place to win it all. Also, finally it looks like we might have some consistent placekicking which as you know I really harp on. It took us way too long to make this move but now with Suisham we may have at least someone who can knock them down inside 45 yards consistently. Again, while noone was looking this guy is now 19 for 22 on the year well above the 80% mark which is the milestone for consistent kicking.
 
So those are the good things...now for the bad - the things that could cost us a chance at a championship.
 
Roy Williams right now not only looks like a bust based on what we gave up for him, he is actually playing like the worst WR in the league. I watch a LOT of football (thank you DirecTV NFL Sunday ticket) and noone right now is as consistently bad as him in so many aspects of the game. As Tim so correctly put in his article it is not a question of him helping the team anymore but how can we put him in positions to not hurt us?  If he only played at the goalline that might help. You can see that Romo has completely lost confidence in this guy so that will mean even more looks to Austin and Witten and more coverage rotated to both of those guys. So, Crayton and Williams will be the guys with single coverage and the guys that will have the opportunities for us in the playoffs to win games. Right now, I have no faith in either of them - I hope they change my mind.
 
Secondly, the short yardage play calling is laughable - and I mean literally.  The San Diego defenders actually said they were laughing at the goal line calls by the Cowboys when they stuffed them 4 straight times. In particular, they singled out the last play in that series where Barber was lined up at fullback - they knew he wasn't going to block so they knew the ball was going to him again.
 
It is stupid stuff like that that shows Garrett's weakness - basic common when it comes to personel usage and even formation alignment in short yardage. Last week, we tried 3 straight plays from the same formation (I Tight unbalanced left) all of which were stuffed.  When they came out in that formation I knew what they were going to do as well.
 
Here is a clue - change the formation - heck you can even come out in a spread formation to get some defenders off the line of scrimmage. If you spread WRs out in the flat they will have to put someone on them which takes a man out of the box. Power formations in the NFL are becoming more and more useless as I watch teams get stuffed time and time again on 4th down - it gives the defense the advantage of knowing exactly what you are going to do and allowing them to put EVERYONE in the box to stuff the run.
 
Anyway, now on to our chances. Based on the above assessments, the positives greatly outweigh the negatives right now and our problems are correctable (although I don't know how we can make Roy Williams a good NFL receiver at this point - he needs to go back to the basics - hopefully someone will do that with him soon).  If you assess our season as a whole, we did not lose any games to joke teams as we have done in recent years. Our losses were to San Diego, Green Bay, Giants (twice) and Denver. And, even in all these losses the game was EXTREMELY competitive.
 
Minnesota has lost recent games to Carolina and Chicago. Green Bay lost to Tampa Bay so did the Saints. Arizona has lost to Carolina, San Francisco (twice) and Tennessee.  So, right now Dallas is the only playoff team that has not lost a game to a team with a losing record. As Tim said - we have beaten the teams we have supposed to beat and either beaten the good teams or played them very hard with (many times) bad field goal kicking being a key difference.
 
With that assessment, you can say things look pretty good and you could make a case for Dallas being one of the most, if not the most consistent team in the playoffs right now.  So what does it come down to?
Today's game. I think if we win today it will give us the confidence and strategic advantage to do some real damage in the playoffs. If we lose today, we will just be another wild card team that will have to struggle through 3 rounds of playoff games (with possibly all of them on the road) to get where we want to get. We have played very well on the road this year but that is asking a lot. Not impossible of course but why not just win today to make it easier on ourselves.  Funny thing is - there is a team in Philadelphia saying the exact same thing today. This will be a great game...
 
So much for making it brief..oh well - Good luck and Go Cowboys!