The Dallas Cowboys won’t have a home playoff game. They won’t have momentum entering the postseason, nor a perfectly healthy roster. Indeed, they can’t even have total confidence in which team is going to show up against Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the wild-card round on Jan. 16.
But what they will have is expectations. More specifically the expectations of team owner Jerry Jones, who made it clear almost six months ago what he expected of this team and head coach Mike McCarthy: A significant step forward.