It didn’t mean that much, and yet it meant a lot. There was nothing at stake in this season-ender for the Washington Redskins, except for the individual bonuses contained in the contractual fine print. Yet there was the sense that if the Redskins didn’t play well and took a loss, they would have squandered all of the edge and sweet energy of the last few weeks. Instead, they added to their impetus.

“I think it’s worth something,” Coach Jay Gruden said.

This was an incentive-clause game, and those can be weirdly corrosive. With the NFC East title already won and nothing left to play for against the Dallas Cowboys except some individual material gain, Gruden was in an ill-defined quandary. Who to rest for the playoffs, and who to start? How long to leave them in, and risk injury? Those types of questions bedevil the most veteran coaches. “It’s really hard,” Gruden said, “because you want to win the game and you play to win the game, obviously, and you also don’t want to lose anybody. There’s a fine line in that. And I felt like whatever decision I made could have been horribly wrong.”

But Gruden played it just right — and the blooming acumen of their young head coach is just one more thing for them to be confident in as they go into the postseason after a 34-23 whipping of the Cowboys. They rested just the right number of crucial players — Trent Williams, Matt Jones, DeSean Jackson, Jason Hatcher, Perry Riley — yet still put enough muscle on the field to finish feeling on a roll at 9-7, and like they hadn’t compromised themselves by quitting on the season before it was over.

“It was important,” quarterback Kirk Cousins said. “Nine and seven sounds a lot better than 8-8. In addition to that, we felt like it was important to go into the playoffs with some momentum and a rhythm. . . . We didn’t want to go into the playoffs having broken that streak.”

The Washington Post's Gene Wang and Scott Allen discuss the Redskins' Week 17 win over the Dallas Cowboys. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)

[D.C. Sports Bog: Best and worst moments from the victory over Dallas]

It was important that Cousins start the game, so he could make this a no-contest by halftime and deepen the team’s belief in him by setting the franchise single-season passing record. But perhaps more significantly, he turned a nice little scoring trend into a fully ingrained habit, with his three touchdown passes in the first quarter, including that steel cable of a 39-yarder to Pierre Garcon that left Cowboys scattered like litter.

Cousins has now staked his team to at least a 14-0 lead in four of the past six games. Name a quarterback who has been more predatory in forcing the opponent to play from behind — he has 11 TD passes to no interceptions in his last nine quarters. Who would have predicted when he was 2-4 as a starter that Cousins would be jerked from a game in the first half because he had become too valuable?

“Kirk wanted to stay in the game and stay in the rhythm and keep the momentum that he’s built up for these five, six games when he’s played so well,” Gruden said. “And he did that. He accomplished that.”

It was important not to cheat themselves or the audience by closing out the season with the scent of tanking in their nostrils, the way their hapless opponent did. It was important that Alfred Morris ran so hard that he logged his first 100-yard game since the opener, and in the third quarter helped the Redskins put together a drive that consumed 8 minutes 21 seconds and was the game’s door-slammer.

It was important to prove that this was an outfit with enough professionalism and self-discipline to win when it didn’t count. It was important for 24 players with two or less years of experience to learn that, as wide receiver Jamison Crowder said, “When the playoffs come, you have elevate,” instead of deflate.

“Everyone was talking about who’s going to sit, who’s going to rest and all that stuff, but nobody really blinked,” Gruden said. “They just came to practice and worked.”

Coach Jay Gruden walks off the field with running back Darrel Young after the Redskins’ 34-23 win over the Cowboys on Sunday in Arlington, Tex. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)

Significant credit has to go to Gruden for finding just the right tone and maintaining a sense of clarity with his team, which was no easy thing given his calculations over whether he had more to lose than gain by resting various players. “I had to go with my gut and instincts,” he said.

[Kyshoen Jarrett and Dashaun Phillips suffer neck injuries]

He wasn’t rewarded in every single instance, losing Kyosheon Jarett and Dashaun Phillips to frightening head/neck injuries. But for the most part, Gruden got his team to play competitively, without sacrificing too much. “The guys that did play, they finished,” he said. “They played hard.”

Bill Parcells once said, “There are no meaningless games when you’re playing in them.” If you’re a competitor, every game means something. It was important to make an honest effort because the good teams make that their daily habit. They refuse to mail one in, or take the easy way, because if you do it once, you might do it again.

“I think it would be very immature and very foolish to go against what you’ve been doing,” Cousins said. “The whole point of being successful is to stay consistent with what you’ve done, to maintain your rhythm and your routine and not change.” Maybe that’s what the Redskins really won for themselves in this game: the mature conviction that it wasn’t meaningless.

For more by Sally Jenkins, visit washingtonpost.com/jenkins.