Cowboys Country

'Grit Over Glitz': Dallas Cowboys 'Big Boys' Crush Vikings in All-Time Blowout

All those glitzy names. All those headlines. All that money. But winning Cowboys at Vikings was going to have to be about something much more gritty.

Mike Fisher

Dak Prescott. Justin Jefferson. CeeDee Lamb. Tony Pollard. Dalvin Cook. Adam Thielen. Ezekiel Elliott.

And yes, even Odell Beckham Jr., who isn't even employed by the Dallas Cowboys (yet) or the Minnesota Vikings, the two teams that squared off in Sunday's Week 11 matchup.

All those glitzy names. All those headlines. All that money.

And yet all along, the Cowboys knew it would be "the big boys'' (as they termed it inside The Stat all week) who would have to play big to register a victory at Minnesota. ... which they did, in crushing 40-3 fashion.

The Vikings came into this marquee meeting with a glistening 8-1 record, having won "The Game of the Year'' last week in OT at the Bills. Meanwhile, the Cowboys were losing "The Game of the Year, Jr.'' with another OT, result, a failure at Green Bay keyed in large part by Dallas allowing 207 rushing yards ...

Maybe because too many members of Dallas' front seven were trying to play "hero ball'' instead of doing their jobs.

The coaching staff ordered its players to "do your job,'' commanded that "pass-rushing is a privilege,'' and demanded that the dirty work of run-stopping be prioritized.

Young defensive team leader Micah Parsons vowed to oversee a fix of the problem; "It won't happen again!'' he said.

And the leader of the offense, quarterback Dak Prescott, said all of the right things as well.

And the fulcrum point in this game was going to be whether the Cowboys would do the gritty crud needed to stop the run. Dallas had allowed at least 200 rushing yards in consecutive games; how odd is that? The only time that's happened before was in the franchise's expansion season of 1960, when an 0-11-1 team gave up four straight 200-plus games.

''One thing I do know,'' insisted defensive coordinator Dan Quinn of his unit, ranked No. 29 in the NFL in rushing yards allowed. "We have the right crew to do it.''

And indeed, while the glamor guys put up lovely numbers - obviously, when a team breaks a 3-3 tie to outscore a foe 37-0, in the end hanging a 40-burger on 'em, that's going to be a byproduct - this win is just as much about the guys like Zack Martin and Johnathan Hankins, who had to own the trenches, about the guys like Dalton Schultz and Tank Lawrence and Parsons, who earn headlines but also had to scrap, about making the Vikings' running game invisible using brute force ... and then, because of the game-script blowout, making every single thing Minnesota tried look amateurish.

Dallas is now 7-3 having just recorded the largest winning margin in a road victory in franchise history, and sure, credit goes to everybody. Pollard carried the ball 15 times for 80 yards but also led the team in receiving with six catches for 109 yards and two touchdowns. Elliott added 15 carries for 42 yards and two touchdowns. Lamb had five receptions for 45 yards. Prescott was 22 for 25 and threw for 276 yards and two touchdowns. Maher made all four field goals. The Cowboys defense - best in the NFL in sacks - finished with seven more of them.

All quite spectacular and glitzy ... but mostly rather meaningless without the grit.

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Mike Fisher
MIKE FISHER

Mike Fisher - as a newspaper beat writer and columnist and on radio and TV, where he is an Emmy winner - has covered the NFL since 1983 and the Dallas Cowboys since 1990, is the author of two best-selling books on the Cowboys.

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