IRVING, Texas - And now we're ready for Round 2.
The Cowboys and Eagles will line up and do it again on Sunday night in Philly – once again tied for the NFC East lead at 9-4, thanks to Philadelphia's home loss to the Seahawks yesterday.
However, the Eagles still hold a slight edge in the tiebreaker based off their 3-0 division record. But, the Cowboys can take a one-game lead with a win over Philly Sunday night at Lincoln Financial Field.
To do that, it will take quite the turnaround from the Cowboys' 33-10 loss to the Eagles on Thanksgiving. Afterward, many of the players said the game was not a true representation of this season and they will likely be primed for the opportunity to play it again, especially with the records tied again.
"I think you try to take some of that emotion out of it," head coach Jason Garrett said on Monday. "You go back and watch the game and say this was good, this wasn't good, let's make sure we clean this up on offense, defense and the kicking game and get back to work. That's really what you do. They're a good football team. They beat us fair and square at our place a couple of weeks ago. Now we have the chance to come back and go up there and put our best foot forward and play our best football."
When asked again if he thought the 23-point home loss was more about what the Eagles did to stop them, or his own team simply not executing, Garrett leaned toward a combination of the two.
"They came down here and they did what they needed to do to win the game," Garrett said. "We can look at different things in that game and say we did things the right way and we had some success. We didn't do things the right way and they had some success. So that's how we have to look at it, control what we can control. That game is done with. It's been done with. It's (not) coming back. The challenge ahead is what we're focused on."
The Eagles are coming off their first home loss of the season, falling at the hands of the Seahawks, whom the Cowboys beat this year on the road. The Eagles' loss, coupled with Dallas' 41-28 win at Chicago last Thursday, pushed the records back to an even 9-4.
This time around, the Cowboys will have six more days to prepare for the Eagles, who played Sunday. The two teams met on just four days rest in the first meeting, but since Dallas played on consecutive Thursdays, it'll be a 10-day layoff for the Cowboys to get ready for what is going to be the biggest game of the year.
But like most underlining aspects, Garrett says the extra rest won't be a huge benefit, just like the short week wasn't an excuse for the first game or the fact the Cowboys played three games in a 12-day span.
"A lot of people have talked a lot about this schedule that we were on and that wasn't our focus at all," Garrett said. "The league puts together a schedule for 32 teams and you follow it. You follow it to the best of your abilities, so that's not an excuse. We never talked about that once. We talked about what we have to do within the confines of that schedule. I do think it's a good thing for our team to be able to get away this past weekend, get refreshed a little bit, heal up a little bit, then get back to work."
