It is clear at this point that the biggest overreaction of the season came in Week 1, when many of us went ahead and wrote off the Dallas Cowboys after Dak Prescott injured his thumb in a season-opening loss to the Buccaneers.
Put aside for the moment what's happened to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers since then, the Cowboys right now are one of the top four or five teams in the whole league.
They went 4-1 without Dak. They've gone 2-0 since he returned. They dropped 49 points on the Chicago Bears on Sunday to roll into their bye week at 6-2, a game and a half behind the unbeaten, first-place Philadelphia Eagles, whom they actually played pretty tough in the last game before Prescott came back.
If you were concerned that, upon Prescott's return, the Cowboys would abandon the offensive formula that helped them win games during his absence, the two games they've played since should assuage your concerns. Dallas ran 57 plays Sunday, and 29 of them were run plays. Even with Ezekiel Elliott missing the game due to injury, they leaned on the run and let Prescott pick his spots to pick apart the Chicago secondary.
Prescott finished the game 21-for-27 with two touchdown passes and an interception that helped bring the Bears back into the game just before halftime. But he also had 34 rushing yards and a rushing touchdown, and that was the theme of the day for Dallas. When they had to, they controlled the game on the ground. Sure, it helped that the Bears had a horrible tackling day, but you play whom you play and you don't apologize. Tony Pollard is a home run hitter, and his 131 rushing yards and three touchdowns on just 14 carries amounted to one of the standout performances of the week. As a team, Dallas averaged 6.9 yards per carry, which is flat-out dominant.
So let's start the Week 8 overreactions column with the Cowboys, since that always feels like a good idea, and we've got one that fantasy players and armchair NFL analysts alike can get excited about.
