There are seasons, and there are crusades. Somewhere along the battered November stretch, the 2025 Dallas Cowboys traded one in for the other. The numbers—so often a cold comfort—painted a bleak picture as Halloween faded. At 1-2-1, then sagging to 3-5-1 by the trade deadline, the Big D looked destined for football’s purgatory: not rebuilding, not contending, simply adrift. Injuries ravaged the secondary, Micah Parsons—once a cornerstone—became headline fodder in Green Bay, and the defense was surrendering a staggering 420.5 yards per game.
Cowboys Reborn
But in the NFL, the script is never truly written until December. The Cowboys’ renaissance began in the shadows: a bye-week recalibration, seismic trades for Quinnen Williams and Logan Wilson, the return of three defensive behemoths, Malik Hooker, Donovan Wilson, and DeMarvion Overshown. Suddenly, back-to-back wins against the two teams that contested last season’s Super Bowl, namely the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs, have reignited hopes at Jerry World.
After being an afterthought with online betting sites just a few weeks ago, the Cowboys are now suddenly back in the fight. The latest football betting at Bovada odds make Dallas a +550 shot to win the NFC East. And with them being just 1.5 games behind an Eagles side in freefall, they will certainly fancy their chances.
Yet the unexpected thunder in this postseason charge hasn’t just been the stars with their names stitched on a thousand jerseys. Further game-changing plays have come from two men who stood out in the unlikeliest of uniforms just years before, catching the league flat-footed.
In the crucible of the USFL’s spring ranks, KaVontae Turpin and Brandon Aubrey forged a resilience and flair that are now re-engineering the Cowboys’ odds of January glory.
KaVontae Turpin’s Relentless Energy Electrifies Big D
Every contender needs a wild card—a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency player who upends the expected narrative. Look closely at Dallas’ surge, and you’ll find KaVontae Turpin, all speed and nerve, tucked in the margins of highlight reels, transforming slivers of space into full-blown momentum shifts.
If CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens are the headliners commanding defensive schemes, Turpin is the live wire in Brian Schottenheimer’s grand design—a player who invites chaos and capitalizes on it with breathtaking reliability. Just 5’9” and 180 pounds, the wider football world once wrote him off as “too slight.” But the USFL saw an artist at work: Turpin’s MVP campaign with the Generals put the big league on notice, and the Cowboys liked what they saw.
Dallas took a calculated gamble following that MVP effort, and that wager has become a core asset as America’s Team claws for postseason oxygen. Through Week 13, Turpin’s efforts have gone somewhat unnoticed: a modest 260 yards and one touchdown hardly set the world alight. But in and among that, there have been some monster plays that have kept the Cowboys’ hopes alive.
Take Thanksgiving, with the Cowboys’ playoff dreams hanging by a thread. Deep in the fourth quarter, Pickens fumbles in the red zone and defenders swarm, knowing that if they gather the ball, they give the mercurial Patrick Mahomes one last chance to drive his side down the field and steal the win. Instead, Turpin, dismissed by so many, launches himself into the fray, emerging with the football and Dallas’s fate in tow. It was a play of pure improv, all heart and instinct—a puckish, defiant answer to years of doubters.
What does that bring in the locker room? Ask owner Jerry Jones, who called it “one of the biggest plays in years.” Ask the defensive coordinators, who now regard Turpin as the league’s most versatile WR3—equally liable to jet past a nickel back or knife upfield on a kick return. Rewarded with a three-year, $18 million extension back in March, Turpin has become the gravitational anomaly that makes everything else on offense possible.
Brandon Aubrey and the Art of Clutch
Rarely is a kicker central to a team’s renaissance. Rarer still when that kicker’s origins lie not in the draft room but on the soccer pitches and backwater stadiums of America’s other football. Brandon Aubrey’s path—Notre Dame soccer captain, USFL star with the Birmingham Stallions, gridiron afterthought until 2023—reads almost as satire in a sport obsessed with pedigree. Yet, it was that non-linear journey that produced football’s great outlier.
In a league where the margin for error narrows with every down, Aubrey has made distance irrelevant. His debut: 50-for-50 on field goals as a rookie, a feat so improbable it scraped the border of fiction. This season, he’s missed twice in 24 attempts (91.7%), a mark of relentless precision. Extrapolate further: 37 of 38 extra points; a 64-yard missile in a Week 2 shootout against the Giants; and five field goals beyond 60 yards—a line in the record books only he has ever reached.
Yet, Aubrey’s real value lies in the adrenaline-spiked heartbeat of the two-minute drill. Week 12, trailing rivals Philadelphia by 21 points, the Cowboys roar back to life, tying things up at 21-21 deep in the fourth. Then, rather than attempting a go-ahead touchdown, Dallas instead attempts to see out the clock, knowing full well that Aubrey is as reliable as it comes at sinking them through the posts. The former USFL sensation starred down a game-winning 42-yarder and duly walked it off, handing the Lone Star State’s finest a scarcely believable 24-21 win.
Yet, his contributions go beyond mere statistics. There is a psychological defiance in Aubrey’s range—the knowledge that at any given moment, three points are within reach, regardless of circumstance. Should the Cowboys be level with less than two minutes on the clock, they know that their man can sink them from distance. 70 yards isn’t a problem; he’s even been seen managing a couple in training from 80-plus. And it’s that not-so-secret weapon which could be the difference between another season of obscurity and a playoff return.