By Dwain Price, NDG Sports
ARLINGTON – That season-high three-game winning streak and all those good tidings the Dallas Cowboys built over the past three weeks will be put to a severe test Thursday night at AT&T Stadium when they host the powerful New Orleans Saints. Kickoff is at 7:20 p.m.
The Saints march into town with the National Football League’s best record at 10-1 in addition to leading the league in scoring at a whopping 37.2 points per game.
They also are riding a 10-game winning streak after losing their season-opener to the Tampa Bay Bucs, 48-40. But the Saints’ gaudy statistics doesn’t seem to concern the Cowboys, who took control of the NFC East with last Thursday’s 31-23 victory over the Washington Redskins.
“We’re not going out there and getting awed by another team,” quarterback Dak Prescott said. “They put on their pants the same way we do. They’ve won 10 (in a row) and I guess we’ve won three (in a row). So we’re just worrying about doing everything that we can during the week to prepare ourselves and giving ourselves the best chance to go out there and play with that confidence and play loose.”
The Saints are so explosive on offense that they’ve scored 43 or more points in six of their 11 games this season, and they averaged 43.8 points over the last four games. Thus, the Cowboys’ best chance of winning may be to attack New Orleans with some long time-consuming drives featuring running back Ezekiel Elliott which will keep the Saints’ offense chained to the bench.
“Obviously, the longer we have the ball it takes away from them having the ball,” wide receiver Amari Cooper said. “So if we can do things like create turnovers so that we can have the ball more than them, then obviously they won’t be able to score as many points.”
While that strategy is easier said than done, the Cowboys know they can’t allow themselves to backtrack after they stayed focused while the sky seemingly was falling when they were owners of a dismal 3-5 record. Now, with consecutive big-time wins over Philadelphia, Atlanta and Washington, the Cowboys are 6-5 and are in control of their own (playoff) destiny.
“Our team has bought in and done a great job over the last month or so of taking it one game at a time and treating these like playoff games, and that’s what this one is,” right guard Zack Martin said. “New Orleans is probably the hottest team in the NFL and we’re looking forward to them coming to our place and being able to play them.”
Prescott also is looking forward to his matchup with Saints quarterback Drew Brees, who has thrown 29 touchdown passes and only two interceptions this season. Prescott grew up in Louisiana, so he’s had some history studying Brees, who is the NFL’s all-time leader in passing yards.
“Growing up in Louisiana obviously watching the Saints, he’s somebody I paid attention to a long, long time,” Prescott said. “I was fortunate to be in the Pro Bowl with him in ’16.”
And how did the Prescott-Brees interaction go in the Pro Bowl?
“You do everything you can like the little duckling,” Prescott said. “You just follow Drew Brees and figure out what he does, how he does stuff.
“Drew opened up and shared things with me. We talked, we had a lot of conversations, and actually we stay in touch.”
While Brees is putting up eye-popping numbers, Prescott is coming off a solid game where he competed 22 of 31 passes for a season-high 289 yards and two touchdowns. And both touchdown passes—covering 40 and 90 yards – went to Cooper, who caught eight passes for 180 yards.
Prescott made no bones about what must be upper-most on the Cowboys’ mind as they face the team many are predicting to win this season’s Super Bowl.
“We just got to go score,” he said. “We got to go do what we do on offense.
“Obviously we have a lot of trust in our defense. So it’s not, ‘Ah, we got to go in there and do this to stop their offense.’ We just got to simply play our game.”
What the Saints have accomplished in being the monsters in the NFL today certainly isn’t lost on Cowboys coach Jason Garrett.
“They’ve won 10 games in a row,” Garrett said. “It’s hard to do that in the NFL.
“In all three phases of their team, they can run, they can throw it on offense. They move the ball every time they have it. They score a ton of points.”
Defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli probably lost a lot a sleep this week trying to devise a scheme that’ll prevent the Saints from scoring a ton of points on the Cowboys.
“We have to do what we do, and within that we can’t beat ourselves,’ Marinelli said. “And we just got to do the ordinary things better than anything else, and the basic things.”
More than anything, the Cowboys know they must remember that the Saints will put some points on the board. They just want to keep their point total to a minimal.
“They’re going to make plays and we’re OK with that,” cornerback Byron Jones said. “But we’re going to have to find a way to take the ball away, get it back to our offense and minimize their big plays.”
On the flip side, the Cowboys know they must maximize their big play potential and keep putting as many points on the board as possible. They also must keep reminding themselves that they have the talent to also put a lot of points on the scoreboard.
“This team is very confident,” Prescott said. “From offense to defense, we’re confident in ourselves individually, and what we do collectively we don’t lack in that.
“As I said, we’re going to take it one game at a time and that’s all that matters.”
