National Football League

Cowboys make win at KC look better every week

Published Nov. 12, 2009 11:09 p.m. ET

foxsports

The Dallas Cowboys celebrated spontaneously when they escaped Kansas City with an overtime victory against the winless Chiefs a month ago. Tony Romo and Miles Austin connected on the 60-yard deciding score before finding themselves at the bottom of an end-zone pileup that was lampooned by critics certain the win was nothing more than a sign of a .500 team, if that. Even optimistic owner Jerry Jones said after the game that his team stunk. Turns out the Cowboys might have known something nobody else did. Instead of the latest in a repeating win-one-lose-one cycle, that 26-20 victory started a four-game winning streak that sent Dallas to the top of the NFC East heading into Sunday's game at Green Bay. "That's what really kind of jump-started it," receiver Patrick Crayton said Thursday. "We're on the road against a team that people are like, 'Aw, this is going to be an easy one.' We knew we were going to get their best. It was like their Super Bowl." Maybe Dallas celebrated like it was the Super Bowl because players realized at halftime what was at stake. The Cowboys were down 10-3 and hadn't scored a touchdown in five quarters. They risked falling to 2-3 with much tougher games coming up. Linebacker Bobby Carpenter sensed a defining moment. "We were playing for our jobs, we were playing for our season, we were playing for our head coach," said Carpenter, who already has a career high in tackles this year. "Everyone wanted to come out and get the season turned around." The defense was just a little too anxious for the turnaround, getting penalized twice for offsides on the same drive in the third quarter as part of 13 penalties. That sort of sloppiness was the reason Jones called out the Cowboys while acknowledging the win might have saved the season. Before the game, Jones said firing coach Wade Phillips wasn't even a consideration, win or lose against the Chiefs. Now, that talk has disappeared entirely. "Everybody made plays when the game was on the line," Phillips said. "It didn't matter who it was against. It didn't matter how many games they had won, because we can see every week somebody gets beat in those situations." The Cowboys were dangerously close to losing in overtime. They lost the coin toss, and an exchange of punts ended with the Chiefs at midfield, basically one decent play from being in range for a winning field goal. Two incompletions and a 1-yard run later, Dallas had the ball back. The Romo-to-Austin winner came one play after a 24-yard run by Tashard Choice. "Just going through overtime - not just winning the coin toss and going down there and scoring - we had to stop people to win, and that's what we were able to do," linebacker Bradie James said. "From that point on, everybody's been believing in one another." After their bye, the Cowboys didn't have to worry about style points in a big game against Atlanta, but Dallas scored some anyway in a 37-21 win. After blowing out Seattle, the Cowboys focused on simply winning in Philadelphia, where they were embarrassed 44-6 last year with a playoff spot on the line. The win over the Eagles fit the "just win" description perfectly. Philadelphia kicked a field goal for a 20-16 deficit in the final minutes, but Dallas ran out the clock after a critical throw from Romo to Jason Witten converted a third down at the two-minute warning. "I think (the Chiefs win) was important because it showed that we finally found a way to win a big game," Carpenter said. "We lost to New York and Denver kind of in the same fashion that we won. Once the team realized this is what we need to do, we can always find a way to win. I think that carried over into Philly." The celebration in Philadelphia was just a little more subdued.