2024 NFL Power Rankings, Week 10: Biggest risers and fallers after Week 9
24. Miami Dolphins
The unfortunate injury to Tua Tagovailoa early this season has seemingly been the exact setback the Miami Dolphins could not afford to really make something out of this season.
We hope Tagovailoa is able to stay healthy for the duration of this season, but what is there to be gained at this point? The Dolphins aren’t exactly playing in the most loaded division in the NFL this season, but they have lost so much ground against the Buffalo Bills (including their two matchups against them) that they would have to go on a historic run to even back into the playoffs at this point.
With their season on the line against Buffalo this past weekend, the Dolphins couldn’t quite limit the Bills enough. The Bills got in position for a long field goal attempt and made the Dolphins pay for it.
Miami’s season is pretty much over with a 2-6 record into November, but if they can start stacking wins, you just never know. This team is so explosive offensively that it’s hard to count them completely out.
23. Dallas Cowboys
Adding injury to insult, Dak Prescott went down for the Dallas Cowboys against the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday, and I think that type of injury would undoubtedly spell the end of this season for Dallas.
Not that Prescott has been leading this team to one dominating victory after another, but at 3-5 and with your star quarterback going down? It’s not good.
The Cowboys are obviously heavily invested in their top two offensive players (Prescott, CeeDee Lamb), so I would be interested to see what selling at the NFL trade deadline would look like for this team. And I doubt Jerry Jones is going to do that, as loyal as he has been to so many of these players through the years.
The Cowboys are more likely to sleep in the bed they’ve made. They have no choice but to just weather this storm and hope they can steal a couple of wins if Prescott has to miss time. And if they can’t? Well, they might be careful with some of their star players that have been out this season and perhaps we’ll see guys getting shut down, and Dallas will just live with the results.
This team is in a rough position right now.