2016 NFL playoff picture: Cowboys remain on top, but Giants aren’t going away

Can anyone catch Dallas for the top spot in the NFC? The odds are longer than ever after the Cowboys carved up a strong Baltimore pass defense for more than 300 yards in a Week 11 win.

Dak Prescott and Dez Bryant lifted the Cowboys to a 27-17 victory on Sunday to improve to 9-1 on the season and add another dimension to one of the league’s scariest offenses. MVP frontrunner Ezekiel Elliott was merely above average against Baltimore, running for 97 yards on 25 carries. Instead, it was Prescott, buoyed by his big target Bryant, who powered the Cowboys.

Prescott threw for more than 300 yards for the second straight game, and Bryant caught a pair of touchdowns in Dallas’s emerging pick-your-poison offense. With weapons all over the field, the Cowboys have been unstoppable since their season opener.

Dallas’s biggest threat may be the only team to leave AT&T Stadium with a win this fall. The New York Giants have won five straight games after a 2-3 start to emerge as one of the conference’s top contenders. They held off the Bears on Sunday to improve to 7-3 — a record that would put them in line for a divisional title in the South or North, but instead has them two games back of Dallas in the East.

Washington, who defeated the Packers on Sunday night, is in line to make it three playoff teams from the division. At 6-3-1, Kirk Cousins has given his team a half-game cushion in the race for the NFC’s second wild card spot.

The Cowboys’ other obvious threat is a Seattle team that’s rolling in November. The Seahawks have won three straight since a controversial loss to the Saints, dispatching quality teams like the Patriots and Eagles in the process. At 7-2-1, Russell Wilson’s team is in solid position for a postseason run and a shot at its third Super Bowl appearance in four years.

A messy North got a little bit cleaner in Week 11. Detroit remains on top of the conference after beating Jacksonville, but Minnesota kept pace by stopping the four-game losing streak that threatened to derail its season. The Vikings fended off a challenge from the Arizona Cardinals to improve to 6-4. Green Bay, losers of four straight, will need a major turnaround to snap a seven-year playoff streak.

The Cardinals’ loss also helped clear the NFC West race up a bit. Arizona, a team who advanced to the NFC Championship last winter, now sits three games behind the Seahawks with only six weeks to play. If Carson Palmer is going to rally his team to the postseason, he’ll likely need to do it as a wild card selection. The Rams eschewed an opportunity to move up in the division when Jared Goff succumbed to the curse of the No. 1 overall pick and failed to win his first start as an NFL quarterback.

While the West may be wilting, the South got some help by virtue of a Tampa Bay upset. The Buccaneers knocked off the 7-3 Chiefs on the road in one of Sunday’s most surprising results. Jameis Winston went 54 minutes without a touchdown — his longest such streak since high school — before finding Alan Cross for the 3-yard scoring pass that stood as the game’s deciding score.

The Bucs are now 5-5 and only a game behind division leader Atlanta. With the conference’s final wild card spots still undecided, Winston could lead his team into the playoffs for the first time since 2007. He’ll have to get through a stacked schedule to get there, however.