It’s possible, maybe even likely, that you had the Dallas Cowboys at 2-2 through the first four games of the season. That would shock almost no one.

While that may or may not have been the case, the way Dallas got here was predictable in some ways, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying to crawl through. Be that as it may, here the Cowboys are indeed a .500 operation through four games and have earned a moment to sit back, catch their breath and reset.

Most of fans’ fears about this team went unquenched Thursday night, but finding a way to win ugly is a skill, whether it makes anyone happy or not. The Cowboys won ugly, but it will count the same as the next “nice” one they can get, assuming they do.

That’s probably not true if we’re honest. While this was “just the Giants,” it is worth mentioning that the Giants are an NFL team and beating one is never easy. Additionally, the win in question was a road win for the Cowboys and a road one in the division. It doesn’t get any more valuable and they pocketed the copy.

These are the kinds of things that become easier to say the further the “mess” of the match gets in the rearview mirror. It is precisely for this reason that we offer three “day after thoughts” here every week, so that we can properly contextualize what we saw in the game that just happened.

Here we go.

The arrival of Mazi Smith is the best thing that happened

This is an assumption, but a safe one: Dallas Cowboys fans everywhere had written off the idea that Mazi Smith would be a useful player for the team at any point in time.

Smith wasn’t just useful on Thursday, he was phenomenal. Remember, the New York Giants had 26 yards on 24 attempts. That was in large part due to the role Smith played.

We’ve seen enough “not great” games from Smith to avoid any kind of establishment of completely different times; however, it is certainly exciting to see him take such an important step.

Jalen Tolbert and Hunter Luepke will be key pieces

This was noted in the day-after thoughts last week and was also in second place (even though last week was just a few days ago) – Jalen Tolbert and Hunter Luepke are really starting to come into their own.

A big reason for this is the lack of other legitimate options, but Tolbert and Luepke have been reliable weapons in the passing game for weeks in a row now. That’s serious growth.

What’s more is that Luepke will be an explosive ball carrier who can get out of the backfield. Consider that the Cowboys had a total of three rush attempts on Thursday night, with the runner reaching 15+ MPH. Two of them were written by CeeDee Lamb and the third was by Luepke. Tolbert and Luepke get more chances.

It shouldn’t have been that hard to win, but we’ll be grateful

Some of the little good vibes that emerged Thursday night disappeared in the wake of the news about Micah Parsons and his high ankle sprain. Oh, and then there was DeMarcus Lawrence’s foot injury.

But even before these things happened, it was hard to stay afloat after this victory. Dallas got a remarkably efficient day from their quarterback, two of the players they can’t rely on (Mazi Smith and Terence Steele) stepped up in earnest, and the team didn’t allow a single touchdown to be scored. Despite all these things, they won by five. They didn’t even cover the 5.5 point spread (an admittedly large number).

It’s a lot of fun that Dallas continues to beat a division rival and we’ll always make the right jokes because of it, but this felt like a much tougher round to go with them. This isn’t the case because New York is suddenly tough and tough, but because the Cowboys are so ill-equipped.

Thursday night’s performance may have only been good enough to beat one team. Luckily for the Cowboys, that one team was the team they were playing.