There’s a lot of talk about home field advantage going around Cowboy-friendly water coolers. In fact, there’s been talk about home field advantage going around since week five of the season when it was apparent these Dallas Cowboys might just be good enough to clinch it.

Home field advantage is nice, don’t get me wrong. But home field advantage is not the big one.

A first round bye is the big one. Home field advantage is just the icing on the cake.

A first round bye means two games to the Super Bowl instead of three. It also means your first playoff game will be at home. One less game trumps playing the NFC championship in Dallas — trumps it by a large margin. And, hey, it’s no certain thing that the team that wins home field advantage will even make it to the conference championship, so clinching that first round bye gives you a shot at playing at home the next week.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I won’t be satisfied with just a first round bye. I won’t be satisfied with anything less than 14 wins, and even then, I’ll be thinking we let a win get away from us in these last three weeks.

But this is the big one. First round bye. The week after, we’ll put the icing on the cake. And then we can talk about resting starters.