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IRVING, Texas - Six months after the Baltimore Ravens won Super Bowl XXXV, they began training camp at a Westminster, Md. practice facility decorated with a huge banner. Above the blown-up photo of their Vince Lombardi Trophy, read the team's preseason motto:
Defense Begins.
Considering the way Baltimore had earned its title, with one of the stingiest, most physical defenses in league history, it was a fitting slogan.
This week's opponent is a perfect example of what can happen when the defense is able to carry a team. For nearly a decade, the Ravens haven't had a big-time offense, and while the team has had its down years, it's long been impossible to simply count Baltimore out in any game. Their defense has shown too many times the ability to will the team to a win, to massage the problems created by a less than explosive offense.
"We had it in Philadelphia when I was there," Cowboys coach Wade Phillips said. "They get a lot of confidence, and playing year after year at a high level with really great players . . . it's kind of been passed down. They feel like they can win on defense and that's a good thing to feel.
"And hopefully we can get that kind of feeling ourselves."
In his long coaching history, Phillips has been associated with plenty of defense-first teams. Contrary to preseason expectations of the Cowboys, it appears that he's coaching one of those teams now. As the Cowboys offense has played good games and bad over the last month and a half, the defense has been consistently excellent.
So it's not such a big deal now if Tony Romo's back is sore, or Marion Barber's toe isn't quite right, or if the team isn't pass protecting as well as it once was - or Terrell Owens isn't getting the ball enough, or Roy Williams isn't getting it at all.
As long as the defense keeps rolling at its current pace, the Cowboys have a good shot to win every game. Beginning in Week 8, when the Cowboys beat Tampa Bay 13-9, the defense has been outstanding, save for Week 9, when the Giants ran up 35 points on a hopeless Cowboys team without Romo. And even that loss has been rectified, the Cowboys beating New York 20-8 on Sunday night while holding Eli Manning and the Giants out of the end zone.
In the last five games, the Cowboys have twice kept their opponent from scoring a touchdown. They've given up just four touchdowns in that span. Imagine that - just four touchdowns in 20 quarters. As the playoff fight continues, and hopefully into the postseason after that, the Cowboys will continue to lean heavily on their ability to shut down opposing offenses.
"If we can continue to play like we've been playing, we feel like it's enough to get us where we want to be," said defensive end Marcus Spears, himself a big reason the Cowboys have been so successful shutting down the run, which they've done so well in the recent turnaround. "We always felt we were a big part of what we do here as a team. You can't get into a situation where you feel you can get lax because your offense can score points . . . We want to be the best. That's the bottom line."
The win over Tampa showed how dominant the Cowboys can be when they stop opposing running games, as they held Bucs running back Earnest Graham to just 42 yards on 17 carries. The next week, New York's Brandon Jacobs went for 117 yards on the ground, and the Cowboys went into their bye week with a chance to re-prioritize.
Since then, they've held each opponent's top runner in check.
Pro Bowler Clinton Portis had just 68 yards, Frank Gore only 26, Julius Jones 37, Willie Parker just 25 and Derrick Ward had 64. Nothing special there.
"Once you realize they are not going to be able to run the football on you, you can take more chances," Phillips said. "You can attack more, you can go up the field more, you can make calls where (you) are pass rushing and reacting to the run rather than just the regular run recognition and recognizing pass."
As Phillips explained, the Cowboys have been able to limit what teams can do on first and second down to create opportunities for the league's leading pass rush.
In the last three games alone, the Cowboys have piled up 20 sacks. In that same stretch, DeMarcus Ware has 7.0 sacks, giving him 19.0 on the season and a shot at challenging Michael Strahan's NFL record of 22.5. He said the key to all the improvement has been that the Cowboys finally had time to get used to a number of off-season changes, like new coaches. Ware lost his linebackers coach Paul Pasqualoni in the off-season, the Cowboys replacing him with Reggie Herring. Defensive line coach Todd Grantham is in his first year with the team as well.
"Guys are having confidence in each other," Ware said. "We had new coaches that had new philosophies on how you want to play blocks, and guys are really just buying into the system now and saying, 'Whatever you call, we've got to make it work. We've just got to be aggressive and play the way that we play.'
"I started feeling like that after the last Giants game, when we got our butts kicked. After that we've been playing and improving. I think that we're getting to the point now to where we have to do it every week, and that's how it's got to be."
The increased pass rush and a shift to playing mostly man coverage has allowed the Cowboys secondary to blossom as well. The absence of cornerback Terence Newman because of a groin injury and the season-ending injury to safety Roy Williams hurt for a while, as the team tried to work in a handful of new players to cover their losses.
What's resulted is a pass defense to match the Cowboys outstanding run stopping. Beginning in Washington, the Cowboys have been creating more turnovers through the air and shutting down opposing receivers. Redskins quarterback Jason Campbell had a below-average passer rating of 73.4. San Francisco's Shaun Hill had a couple of late touchdowns to boost his rating to 100.9, but made no plays when it counted. Former Pro-Bowler Matt Hasselbeck's rating was a mere 70.8, and Ben Roethlisberger's was sub-par too, at 80.9.
Even Super Bowl MVP, 2009 Pro Bowl selection, Mr. Efficiency, Eli Manning had trouble against the Cowboys. He left Texas Stadium last Sunday night with a season-low efficiency rating of 43.9. Rookie cornerback Orlando Scandrick, another key piece in the team's pass coverage improvement, said the most helpful thing to the defense was getting healthy.
"Terence allows us to take one guy out," Scandrick said. Newman returned against the Redskins to shut down Santana Moss, and has been exceptional trailing the opponent's best receiver since. "If you think about the beginning of the year, I was new, Adam (Jones) was new, Mike (Jenkins) was new, Roy went out, and basically Keith (Davis) was new. And Ken (Hamlin) was our only guy, and we hadn't played together a lot, and now we've had some time to play together and we're on the same page."
Up and down the depth chart, the Cowboys defense has the look of one capable of carrying the team to wherever it goes. That's a shift from 2007, when the offense was putting up record numbers.
"We went through those tough games there (without Romo) where the defense had to play well for us to stay in the game, and we didn't in a couple of those games,"
Phillips said. "But I think we got mentally tougher, and we decided, or they found out that, hey, we may have to win games. This team has depended on the offense for a good while here, probably even before I got here. I think the defense at some point this season has stepped to another level and said, 'Hey, we can win games. We can be just as good as the offense.'
"And that's a big step."
In fact, it's the one step the Cowboys had to take to improve on 2007.
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Josh Ellis - 
