The Cowboys are a fashionable pick as an 'up and coming' team because they haven't puked over their own shoes yet, and trounced the Saints, and the Saints were favorites of many of the so-called 'talking heads' to go to the superb-owl.
However, let's face it. The Saints this year are AWFUL! I saw their game today against Tampa Bay and that was in New Orleans!
So if we correctly conclude that the Saints really were bad from the beginning, the Cowboy's 4-1 record looks a lot less impressive. The Cowboys lost to the 49nrs (and lost within the first five minutes of the game)...at home. They then have beaten a murderer's row of.....drum roll please.....
Titans, Rams (with their third string QB), Saints, and now the Texans
All of these are really bad teams. The best of the bunch is probably the Rams, and the Cowboys went down 21-0 to them before clawing their way back...and that only happened because the Rams are "offensively challenged" (for obvious reasons).
Edit: I respectfully disagree with Diags. The NFCE is not impressing me. At least not yet. John Clayton himself said it: The AFC and NFC South are both proving to be unusually weak, and the NFCE is (iirc) 5-1 against the AFCS including today's Dallas win (barely in OT). Basically the NFCE is looking unusually good thanks to NFL scheduling that is having them play the NFL equivalent of 'The Sisters of the Poor'.
Edit PPS: As even more evidence, going into tomorrow's game, the NFCW and NFCE have met five times with the NFCW having a 3-2 edge. Seems pretty even until you look into it a bit. Both losses by the NFCW were from St Louis which is (obviously I think) the weakest team in the NFCW [having no reliable offense for obvious reasons], and both of those were to the Cowboys and Eagles (the two best NFCE teams) and in the first case the Rams actually led 21-0 and should have won had they had any reliable offense) and very nearly surprised the Eagles today. Assuming Seattle beats Washington (which I think they will), it will be 4-2.