Dallas Rested, the Giants Tied and a 57-Yard Kick Fell in London, and the Cowboys Became Favorites

The Dallas Cowboys did not play on Sunday, October 11, 2026, and the Cowboys NFC East odds after the Eagles loss in London and the Giants' tie in Landover put Dallas alone at the top of the division board. On October 12, 2026, Kalshi and Polymarket both had Dallas at 39% to win the NFC East, up from 36% on Kalshi on October 9, which means two results the Cowboys watched did what their own Thursday night game against Tampa Bay could not.

Jacksonville beat Philadelphia 19-17 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London on a 57-yard field goal as time expired, and the New York Giants and the Washington Commanders played to a 27-27 tie at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland, after a scoreless overtime. The two results left the Giants first in the division at 3-1-1, Dallas second and Philadelphia third, both at 2-3, and Washington fourth at 1-3-1, according to ESPN's standings on October 12.

How Sunday went for the rest of the division

The London game turned in its final three and a half minutes. Philadelphia led 14-10 after three quarters, and Jacksonville took a 16-14 lead on a 27-yard touchdown pass from Trevor Lawrence to Parker Washington with 3:20 left, a lead that stayed at two points because the extra point failed. Jake Elliott put the Eagles back in front with a 48-yard field goal with eight seconds left. Jacksonville then moved into range for Cam Little, whose 57-yard kick on the last play won it. The loss was Philadelphia's third of the season and dropped the Eagles to 2-3, level with Dallas.

The Giants came from further back in Landover. Washington led 27-13 early in the fourth quarter after Jayden Daniels ran 26 yards for a touchdown and threw a two-point conversion to Terry McLaurin. Jameis Winston then threw two 17-yard touchdown passes, to Isaiah Likely with 7:20 left and to Malik Nabers with 1:43 left, and neither team scored in overtime. The tie kept the Giants in first place, but it left them half a game short of where a win would have put them.

What the division board says on October 12

The NFC East contract is the deeper of the two Cowboys boards, and both venues price it. Kalshi had Dallas at 39% on October 12, the same as Polymarket, which makes the Cowboys the favorite at a little less than two chances in five while they sit second in the standings. Polymarket had Philadelphia at 32% on October 12, 2026, down from 36% on October 9, so the Eagles gave up four points in London and slipped from level with Dallas to seven points behind.

The leader by record is priced as the third choice. Polymarket had the Giants at 18% on October 12, 2026, against Kalshi's 20%, a single point above the 17% Kalshi showed on October 9, which means a tie that kept New York in first place bought the Giants almost nothing on the board. Washington stayed at 10% on both venues. Read together, the prices say the market treats the division as a two-team race between Dallas and Philadelphia and the Giants' lead of a game and a half as a start the market expects to fade.

The postseason contract moved the same way without a Dallas game to explain it. Kalshi, the only exchange pricing whether Dallas reaches the postseason, had the Cowboys at 51% on October 12, 2026, up from 47% on October 9, so the club is back above a coin flip three days after the Tampa Bay loss pushed it below one. A team that lost its last game and gained four points on its season price while idle is a team whose price is being set by its rivals as much as by itself.

Why the market ranks Dallas ahead of the team leading the table

Most of the answer is the schedule still to be played inside the division. Dallas has four division games left: two against Philadelphia, one against the Giants at AT&T Stadium in Arlington on January 3, 2027, and one at Washington to close the season. The Cowboys play at Philadelphia on Monday, October 26, and host the Eagles at AT&T Stadium on Thursday, November 26. Those two games decide the head-to-head between the two clubs the market has priced as co-favorites for a month, and they are the reason a 2-3 Dallas can be priced above a 3-1-1 New York.

The Giants already hold one result over Dallas, a 28-20 win at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in the season opener. That counts in a tiebreaker, and a team that has beaten Dallas once and leads the division by a game and a half has a clear case to be priced higher than it is. The board's answer, at 18% on Polymarket, is that the market does not expect the Giants to keep winning at the rate of their first five weeks, a read of the Giants' season to come rather than of anything that happened on Sunday.

The rivals' next fortnight matters as much as Dallas's. Philadelphia hosts Carolina, 2-2, on October 18 before the Cowboys come to Lincoln Financial Field, so the Eagles reach the head-to-head either at 3-3 or at 2-4. The Giants host New Orleans on October 18 and then play at Houston on October 25, a Texas game that bears directly on the Dallas price, while Washington plays at San Francisco, 5-0, on Monday, October 19. Dallas's own schedule outside the division is the harder half of the case for 39%: the Cowboys host San Francisco on November 15 and Jacksonville on December 27 and travel to Seattle and to the Los Angeles Rams in December. A division favorite that has to beat the 49ers and the Jaguars to stay there is priced on its rivals' weakness as much as on its own strength.

The case that Dallas is priced too high

The strongest argument against the 39% price is that it rewards the Cowboys for a weekend they did not play. Dallas is 2-3, has lost two of its last three games and is 1-1 in the division after losing to the Giants and beating Washington in September. Its next two games are on the road, at Green Bay, which beat Chicago 31-7 on Sunday to reach 3-2, and at Philadelphia. If Dallas loses both, it would reach November 1 at 2-5, and a division favorite at 2-5 with the Giants above .500 is not a position the board can hold. The Giants also play New Orleans, a 1-4 team, at home on October 18, so the half-game they lost in the tie can be made up while Dallas is in Wisconsin.

What comes next

The Cowboys play at Green Bay on Sunday, October 18, 2026, at 7:20 p.m. Central at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the same day the Eagles host Carolina and the Giants host New Orleans. Dallas then plays at Philadelphia on Monday, October 26, at 7:15 p.m. Central, the first of the two games the division price rests on. The live board is on the Cowboys NFC East market page, the postseason price is on the Cowboys playoff market page, the Thursday loss is in the Buccaneers story, and the club's full board is on the Dallas Cowboys team page. The next fixed date for the division price is the October 18 kickoff in Green Bay.