While the Cowboys don't play San Francisco very often - not since 2008 in the regular season - the offense will look across the field and see at least one guy they know pretty well on the 49ers defense Sunday, Carlos Rogers, the longtime Washington Redskins cornerback.
In six years with Washington to start his career, Rogers faced the Cowboys seven times, deflecting seven passes. He signed a one-year deal for just over $2 million with San Francisco in early Auguest.
While Tony Romo and the Cowboys' pass-catchers know Rogers fairly well, the 49ers do have some other, less familiar, defensive backs who form a pretty solid unit. Tarell Brown, a fifth-year vet from Texas, mans the other corner, while safeties Donte Whitner and Dashon Goldson, two free agents this summer, are pretty formidable.
"We're looking at everything," Miles Austin said of the 49ers secondary. "How the outside corner plays, how he moves in the nickel a bunch of times. We're looking inside, outside, techniques, coverages, everything. I don't just look necessarily at where I might be, because sometimes we mix things up and you might be somewhere else, so I just try to get a good grasp of where everyone is, and how everyone kind of plays."
San Francisco's defense had a pretty solid outing against Seattle in Week 1, limiting the Seahawks to just 219 total yards of offense and 17 points. The unit is coordinated by 3-4 coach Vic Fangio, who Jason Garrett actually interviewed for the Cowboys staff before hiring Rob Ryan.
"They're looking good," Austin said. "They're looking real good. They're a physical group, a tough group, and we definitely have our work cut out for us."
