IRVING, Texas – A few days after the Thanksgiving day loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, players throughout the Dallas Cowboys' roster kept saying the same thing: That wasn't us.
It was if Jason Garrett sent that message to his team after the 33-10 loss.
As far as the Cowboys' offensive line is concerned, that wasn't them.
DeMarco Murray was held to season-low 73 yards. Tony Romo was sacked four times. The Eagles also had eight tackles for loss in the game.
In the Cowboys' 41-28 win against the Chicago Bears last week, the offensive line returned to form.
The Cowboys ran the ball 33 times, not including two Romo kneel downs, for 196 yards. They had two rushing touchdowns. Romo was sacked once in 27 pass plays and threw three touchdown passes. He wasn't intercepted. The Bears had just three tackles for a loss.
"I think we're closer," center Travis Frederick said when asked if that was more like them. "I don't think we're there yet. But I think we're certainly closer. We just need to keep working on that and hopefully we can do something like that against Philly."
But Frederick wasn't able to say the Bears' performance was completely them.
"We had a couple of pre-snap penalties," he said. "We've got to work on a couple of technique things here and there. Assignment-wise we missed a couple of things. It's small things you don't see when you see the TV copy but things we know we didn't do right."
The Cowboys get the rematch with the Eagles this week with the NFC East on the line. If the Cowboys win the rest of their games, they will win the division and make the playoffs for the first time since 2009.
If the Cowboys are going to get it done, it will largely be done on the backs of the offensive line.
"I think a big message is just getting back to executing what we do," right guard Zack Martin said. "We were able to do that a lot."