"Trap game"-- what do you think?

What do you think of this concept of a "trap game," in which a highly ranked team plays an opponent it should beat, while it may be "looking ahead" to the next opponent, who should be a greater challenge?

This comes up, of course, after last Monday's Dallas-Buffalo game, where Dallas was the favorite going away, but they also face one of the other undefeated teams next Sunday, New England. In case, anybody missed it, Dallas QB Romo turned the ball over 6 times, and Buffalo scored 2 touchdowns on interception returns and another on a kickoff return; but Buff's offense did not score except for a FG, and Dallas won in the final ambiguous minute with a FG at the very end, 25-24. Was Dallas really looking ahead to NE, was Buffalo just so excited to be on Monday Night Football after a 13-year absence that its team quickness was turned up a step, or was it both of these general ideas?-- that Dallas was not concentrating, at least not on offense, and Buffalo overachieved? Or, is it just that there is less difference between a 'good' team and a 'poor' team than is usually thought, and anything can happen in any game?

Perhaps another example of this trap game concept was 2 Saturdays ago when Okalhoma lost at Colorado. Were they thinking ahead to the Red River Shootout with Texas the next week? They showed poor concentration against Colorado, but were 'with it' against Texas, which also played well but made 2 critical mistakes, while Oklahoma made none.

On the other side [that a 'trap game' is just some excuse of the imagination], how about USC's defeat at the hands of Stanford? A 40-point underdog beat the nation's #1 (or perhaps 1A) team, and that top team did not have a game the next week thought to be much of a challenge [Arizona, also near the bottom of the Pac10]. This supports the idea that a poor game by a 'good' team and a good game by a 'poor' team can happen any time.

So what do you think? How much truth is there-- or can there be-- to a team "looking ahead" and getting zapped by a team it should prohibitively beat?