Dallas Magic Trick: New Cowboys NFL Power Rankings Make Criticism 'Disappear!'

Wanna See a Dallas Magic Trick: New Cowboys NFL Power Rankings Make Criticism 'Disappear!'

FRISCO - Wanna see a magic trick? Watch me make four full months of Dallas Cowboys and NFL football - all the triumphs and tragedies and all the celebrating and all the dispair and all the wins and the losses - disappear!

NFL Week 16 is now complete, and football watchers are taking stock in who's who. Our friends at Pro Football Network do a perfectly fine job with the "power rankings'' that are now a commonplace weekly practice all across the internet (even though I've always liked just using the "power rankings'' known as the "NFL standings'').

And guess where, after all of the blood and the sweat and the tears, the experts rank your Cowboys?

Exactly where almost all of us ranked them four months ago.

Here's the PFN countdown, with their comments ...

6) Dallas Cowboys - Dak Prescott played incredibly well (in a 22-20 loss at the Dolphins) ... The Cowboys’ bending defense bent to a point of failure on the Dolphins’ final offensive drive, resulting in a hard-fought Cowboys loss.

5) Philadelphia Eagles - Putting up 33 points against the Giants (in a tight win) on Christmas Day was a start, but the Eagles’ defense still gave up 25 to a Giants team that benched its quarterback (Tommy DeVito) mid-game.

4) Buffalo Bills - The NFL is a funny place. ... If there is one roster that the division winners (if Buffalo does not win the AFC East) don’t want to face in the Wild Card Round, it’s these Bills.

3) Miami Dolphins - We don’t often get to see two of the best teams in the league (Miami and Dallas) face off. It’s even rarer to see two of the most talented teams in the league play a game that lives up to the hype, even if it’s not quite the way we imagined it.

2) San Francisco 49ers - It’s difficult to move the 49ers down any further than No. 2 after losing to the Baltimore Ravens on Monday night. After all, the Ravens were our second-ranked team heading into Week 16 — there’s no shame in dropping a game to a club as talented as Baltimore.

1) Baltimore Ravens - Christmas evening’s Ravens-49ers game was supposed to be a Super Bowl preview, but the matchup hardly lived up to the hype. Lamar Jackson increased his MVP chances by averaging 7.2 yards per pass attempt while throwing two touchdowns and adding 45 yards on the ground. Purdy’s collapse on the other side of the field didn’t hurt Lamar’s odds, either.

Cowboys Are 'Imploding!' Claims 'Source'

See? All of this time, and what's changed? The Ravens' win at San Francisco creates a shift. And the absence of the Chiefs (now 9-6 division leaders after a shocking loss to the Raiders) is notable.

But for the most part, especially in the NFC? It's the Niners, then the Eagles, then the Cowboys - same as it ever was.