ARLINGTON, Texas - The ball was literally floating up there. It must've been in the air for an hour.
For the guy waiting underneath, Anthony Spencer, it had to seem even longer.
"I just made sure I didn't drop it," Spencer said after the Cowboys' 7-6 win against Washington was sealed by his interception of a tipped Jason Campbell pass. "I watched it the whole time."
There is some irony here given the nature of the play and the guy who made it. With the Cowboys struggling to get the Redskins offense off the field for much of the day, Jason Campbell rolled to his left, away from Spencer, who said he was playing for a screen pass. All season long the third-year linebacker had been getting himself in position to make plays, but letting them get away from him. This time it came right to him.
The first part of the game-winning interception was made by Stephen Bowen, who made an adjustment with DeMarcus Ware before the play to get himself a run at Campbell. Ware had been beating Redskins left tackle with his outside speed rush, so Bowen figured the two of them should stunt.
"I said no matter what, you take the inside move, because he's expecting you to go outside," Bowen said. "So he came inside, Campbell stepped out trying to go outside, and I came around and he threw it and I just tipped it."
With the ball back inside two minutes, the Cowboys were able to run all but seven seconds off the clock to seal the win, moving them to 7-3 and still in possession of first place in the NFC East. With their next game just three days away, and followed by the always-crucial month of December, the Cowboys have some hope they will get more plays like this in the future from Spencer, a guy whose continued improvement would be a huge plus for a defense that already has a dominant force on the other side of the 3-4 in Ware.
Spencer has shown signs this season that he's close to being a very good complement to Ware, but he's also left some wondering if he was really good enough to finish those big plays the Cowboys needed him to make. In just about every game there has been some occasion when Spencer had the big play all but made, only to let it slip away.
On Sunday it was different.
"I feel like I've been real close to making a lot of plays the entire season," Spencer said. "Even back to the Broncos game, the ball went through my hands and they ended up scoring a touchdown and winning the game. So I've just been focusing on trying to make the plays when they come my way and being ready when they come my way."
The former first-round pick had his patience tested even in this game, on a play so fitting of how it's gone for him in this, his first full season as a starter. With time running out and the Redskins driving toward the end of the first half, Spencer chased Campbell out of bounds for what would have been his first sack of the year. The play was later reviewed, and Campbell was proven to have tossed the ball away before taking the loss, stripping Spencer of the sack.
That's just how it's gone this year for Spencer, who later had teammates expressing their pride in him for sticking with it.
"We're glad Spence made a play, but Spence has been playing very well," Marcus Spears said. "If you keep working those opportunities will present themselves, and that's what he keeps doing. He never gets discouraged, and that's what I like about him. . . . It's a statistical business, and usually for outside linebackers in the 3-4 they want to see you get 10, 20 sacks a year. But at the end of the day when we go back and look at film we look at how much did this guy affect the game, and week in and week out he's affected the game."
The Cowboys have said all along they like what Spencer is doing. He's been around the ball and in position to change games. Finally, at just the right time, it happened for him.
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