The Cowboys were faring just fine at Minnesota before Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith went down.

Rather than dwelling on the final score, the Cowboys are preparing to play the Vikings again by focusing on the 17-0 lead they held before Emmitt Smith broke his hand and Troy Aikman suffered a concussion.

"We will not go in there with a woe-is-us attitude," Dallas coach Chan Gailey said. "We're the underdogs. We understand that, but we've been up there and played well. We didn't finish the game like we needed to, but we did play well."

The Cowboys (8-8) and Vikings (10-6) meet again in the Metrodome on Sunday in an NFC wild-card game. Minnesota is favored by seven points, the biggest spread of all four first-round games.

Dallas has earned its lack of respect by playing horribly in December -- and not much better in October and November.

The Nov. 8 game against the Vikings typified the Cowboys' season.

They looked great for the first half in taking a 17-0 lead, then suffered a pair of severe injuries and committed enough penalties and turnovers to gag their way to another loss.

Dallas had done much of the same the previous week in turning a 17-3 lead over Indianapolis into a 34-24 loss. Those back-to-back 10-point losses were the season's worst and hurt even more because of they came after double-digit leads.

Yet as the Cowboys try gearing up for the playoffs, they're only remembering the positives of those games to erase their negatives, such as a seven-game road losing streak.

They're also trying to convince themselves they won't follow the fate of the previous three 8-8 teams to make the playoffs, none of whom won a game.

"We've been inconsistent," Smith said. "When we've been consistent, we've dominated games. That could be scary because if you ever develop that consistency, you can go a long way."

Against Minnesota, Smith ran for 140 yards on 13 carries just 24 minutes into the game when he broke his right hand in the face mask of a defensive back he was stiff-arming during a 63-yard touchdown run.

Smith actually carried the ball once more for a 24-yard touchdown before leaving for X-rays. What he thought was going to be the best game of his career -- and possibly one of the best in NFL history -- ended up being a huge what if.

"It was a great night, even though for only a half," Smith said. "I hope we start where we left off. Will they give us 17 points again? I hope so."

The Cowboys scored all 17 points in the first nine minutes of the second quarter. In the first quarter, Richie Cunningham missed kicks of 42 and 37 yards on Dallas' first two drives.

"We have to feel pretty good walking into that arena because we could've been ahead 23-0," Gailey said. "I won't have to tell the players anything. They can put the tape on and see what happened, how we played."

A fumbled snap by Aikman set up Minnesota's first touchdown, and the comeback was on.

The Vikings got within 17-10 with a field goal on their first drive of the third quarter, then Aikman was lost on the next possession when a sack by Jerry Ball left the quarterback with his second concussion in as many weeks.

After another Minnesota field goal made it 17-13, Dallas safety George Teague seemed to have preserved the lead with an interception. But an illegal-contact penalty against Deion Sanders let the Vikings keep the ball, and they went on to score the go-ahead touchdown. The Cowboys never threatened again.