FRISCO, Texas -- Forgive the Dallas Cowboys for feeling good Sunday. Forgive their dousing of quarterback Andy Dalton with water after he threw two touchdown passes in the 30-7 win against his former team, the Cincinnati Bengals. Forgive them for thinking they might still have a chance at making the playoffs.

As much as some fans and critics might want the Cowboys to lose to preserve the best possible 2021 NFL draft position, they want to win every time they play.

They want the feelings they had in the locker room Sunday.

"At the end of the day we won the football game," Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott said, "and those have been hard to come by this year."

It was a good Sunday for the Cowboys, considering it was their fourth win in 13 games, but it was not as good as perhaps they needed.

In a normal season, Dallas would be out of the playoffs by now, but with this being 2020, it isn't a normal season. The New York Giants' Week 14 loss to the Arizona Cardinals helped the Cowboys, but the Philadelphia Eagles (4-8-1) surprised the New Orleans Saints and the Washington Football Team (6-7) held on against the San Francisco 49ers.

Whether the Cowboys pull off an improbable finish to win the NFC East and host a playoff game, coach Mike McCarthy still understands the value of a team winning its games at the end of a season.

In 2006, his first season with the Green Bay Packers, McCarthy was 4-8 after 12 games -- one game better than he was with the Cowboys. Green Bay won its final four and finished 8-8. They did not make the playoffs, losing out on a wild-card spot on a tiebreaker, but McCarthy believes the fast close to the season set the tone for 2007.

"I made reference to it in a team meeting earlier this week. I thought that it was one of the foundation blocks for my time in Green Bay, those last four wins, because it was something that we built on, talked about and emphasized throughout the whole offseason," McCarthy said. "Then in [2007], we were an overtime loss away from being in the Super Bowl. So, I definitely do believe that success at the end of the season catapults you into your offseason program and can very well factor into next year because, let's be honest, if you start fast in this league you're at such an advantage as the season moves on. So, to accomplish [finishing 4-0], would say a lot about our football team, especially what we've gone through."

The Packers opened 10-1 in 2007, losing to the Cowboys in Week 13 that ultimately cost them home-field advantage, on their way to a 13-3 finish. They lost the NFC Championship Game to the Giants at Lambeau Field, but McCarthy's program was in place, starting a run that led to nine playoff appearances, four NFC Championship Games and a Super Bowl.

Nothing has been settled about his Cowboys' program, although other first-year coaches, such as Joe Judge with the Giants, Ron Rivera with Washington and Kevin Stefanski with the Cleveland Browns have been able to find incremental improvement or outright success.

The Cowboys have not been able to overcome injuries -- roughly $60 million of their 2020 salary cap is on the shelf -- play clean offensively or make stops defensively, which is why they are 4-9 with three games to play.

While a lot of the talk around the Cowboys after their disheartening loss to the Baltimore Ravens was about a lack of effort, especially after allowing 294 yards rushing, McCarthy kept coming back to former Cowboys coach Jason Garrett's maxim: finish.

It was a tacit acknowledgement, at least, that he wasn't pleased with his players, but it was also a way to discuss the finish to the season.

In 2006, the Packers' 4-0 finish was against three sub-.500 teams (San Francisco, Detroit and Minnesota) and the eventual NFC champion Chicago Bears, who had clinched home-field advantage and pulled some starters for health reasons to prepare for the postseason.

The Cowboys' final four games do not feature a team with a winning record, but McCarthy believes winning begets winning, even if the calendar changes over to a new year.

"There's no reason we can't go in here in any of these games and blow them out," Cowboys linebacker Leighton Vander Esch said. "We've got to have that mindset that it doesn't have to be close. We do what we need to do and we take care of business and do our job every play, things are going to turn out good for us."

If not in 2020, then McCarthy can point to his past about what can happen in 2021.