ARLINGTON – With each Cowboys victory, the stakes increase and the stages grow larger. It just can't get much bigger than a battle for first place with the Eagles in Philadelphia next Sunday.
Unless maybe it was last year's battle there for second.
The Cowboys mostly like to forget about the season-ending 44-6 defeat that allowed the Eagles to reach the playoffs as the NFC's last wild-card team rather than Dallas. As coach Wade Phillips said about last season in training camp, "It is what it was."
But with a three-game winning streak after Sunday's 38-17 victory over Seattle, and with young playmakers enjoying new levels of success, the Cowboys may actually use the frustration of last year's elimination game as a springboard for success.
"Trust me, that 44-6 game is going to be in our heads," Patrick Crayton said after becoming the first Cowboy to return punts for touchdowns in back-to-back games.
In a league in which teams use free agency to fill gaps and collect draft picks to cut costs, rosters get overhauled quickly. Longstanding grudges don't hold.
But it's not necessarily the history of the Cowboys-Eagles rivalry that Sunday night's game at Lincoln Financial Field is all about.
"You couldn't talk about something that happened in a game two years ago or three years ago," Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said. "There are not enough people in this room that were around. But a ton of players and coaches here remember last year.
"And I think we'll benefit from that."
The Cowboys will need any form of motivation they can find. The Eagles may be just two weeks removed from an inexplicable loss to Oakland. But after coasting through a Monday night win in Washington, the Eagles hit full speed with a 30-point first half in their 40-17 destruction of the New York Giants on Sunday.
If Marion Barber and Felix Jones were good in the Cowboys' backfield Sunday, first-round pick LeSean McCoy and unknown Leonard Weaver were even better in gaining more than 150 yards rushing against New York.
If Tony Romo was very solid in collecting his 256 passing yards and three touchdowns Sunday, Donovan McNabb was just as productive, reaching 240 and three TDs, but with 13 fewer attempts.
But if the Eagles' 23-point victory over the Giants was slightly more impressive than the Cowboys' 21-point win over Seattle, it makes no real difference. Both are 5-2, one-half game ahead of the Giants, and the team that plays better Sunday night hits the halfway point of the season in first place.
"Philly's gonna be a challenge because the last couple of weeks we haven't faced a defense like Philly's," tight end Martellus Bennett said. "But you've got to win three in a row to call it a streak, so we're hot right now."
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Story courtesy of www.dallasnews.com
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