MINNEAPOLIS -- Context is everything, in football and in life, and so it was fascinating Thursday night to hear two entirely different perspectives on the events at U.S. Bank Stadium.

In the winning team's locker room, the Dallas Cowboys were celebrating the return of their defense and the emerging grittiness of their competitive spirit.

"We were able to execute our game plan perfectly," Cowboys safety Barry Church said. "Once we got them bogged down, we had them."

In the losing team's locker room, the Minnesota Vikings were lamenting another punchless offensive performance and suggesting the outcome would have been different were it not for any one of a series of errors.

"That was a game we should have won," Vikings defensive end Everson Griffen said. "We fought and it was self-inflicted."

So which was it? Did the Cowboys take another step on their march to the Super Bowl in a 17-15 victory over the Vikings? Or were they simply fortunate to have faced a flawed team that was playing without the head coach, offensive coordinator, quarterback, running back and offensive tackles with which it opened training camp?

The answer, from my perspective, is both. The Cowboys, who pushed their winning streak to 11 games, are having the NFL's best season. But they were on the ropes Thursday night in a number of instances, and only the Vikings' offensive ineptitude -- and a key special-teams fumble -- got them home.

Amid all the debate about how good the Cowboys might be, we can say this: You're toast if you make mistakes against them.

"Really what they're doing right now is finishing," Vikings linebacker Chad Greenway said. "That's why their record is what it is. That's why they're a good football team. As long as they do that, they're a team that can go as far as they want to go. They make the plays when they have chances. The couple instances we had, we missed them."

Indeed, the Vikings entered the game averaging an NFL-worst 4.74 yards per play, and they once again struggled for every first down they could muster Thursday night. The Cowboys' defense, which had given up an average of 24.3 points and 409.8 yards in its previous three games, looked revived by comparison.

In truth, the Vikings missed on multiple chances to exploit the Cowboys in ways that the Washington Redskins, Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers had in recent weeks. Receiver Cordarrelle Patterson had a 31-yard reception in the first quarter wiped out by penalty, and Charles Johnson dropped what would have been at least a 25-yard gain on second-and-18 in the fourth quarter.

Tight end Kyle Rudolph couldn't bring in a difficult but catchable pass in the end zone in the second quarter. Right tackle Jeremiah Sirles jumped offsides to push back a two-point conversion attempt that ultimately failed. Punt returner Adam Thielen lost a fumble at the Vikings' 8-yard line in the fourth quarter, and cornerback Xavier Rhodes inexplicably lined up 10 yards off receiver Dez Bryant on the next play.

Quarterback Dak Prescott noticed it right away, feeding Bryant a quick pass as the Cowboys scored what would be the winning touchdown.

Did the Cowboys create those opportunities? For the most part, a dispassionate observer would say, the answer is no. But they accepted them all, capitalized on enough and overcame a few of their own -- two turnovers, 10 penalties -- to win.

"It wasn't a clean game but nobody ever flinched," Prescott said. "Nobody blinked or thought anything else was going to happen other than we were going to win and make the plays to do that."

Back in the Cowboys' locker room, tight end Jason Witten was expounding on the pleasant surprise this season has turned into. What began with devastation -- quarterback Tony Romo's preseason back injury -- has progressed to the point where the Cowboys could earn the NFL's first 2016 playoff spot. (They'll clinch if either the Redskins or Tampa Bay Buccaneers lose this weekend.)

During the offseason, Witten recalled, the Cowboys analyzed their 4-12 performance in 2015. Half of their losses, they realized, were by one score or less. They weren't as far off, they concluded, as their record indicated.

"We spent a lot of time … talking about one-possession games in the fourth [quarter]," Witten said. "We came up on the other side of them a lot. A lot of the time, you reflect back and you say, 'They were 4-12.' But you don't think that 10 or 11 of those games were one possession. I'm really proud of our team, that we stuck with it, even though it wasn't pretty in a lot of ways."

The Cowboys are unquestionably good. On Thursday night, they were fortunate. In a league in which games are decided by seemingly random events as much as they are by clear superiority, you need both attributes to be great. The Cowboys are just about there. So it goes.