RIO DE JANEIRO – After back-to-back weeks of struggling to find their rhythm in the run game, the Cowboys found some in Brazil against the Ravens.
Javonte Williams rushed 19 times for 98 yards and a touchdown, averaging 5.2 yards per carry. The two yards he needed to get to 100 yards seemed to be in front of him when the Cowboys had first-and-goal from the two-yard line in the waning seconds of the fourth quarter, but Dallas would throw the ball and then ended up getting a false start penalty on Luke Schoonmaker the next play, causing the play call thought process to change for Brian Schottenheimer.
"We're just trying to go win it," Williams said of what he thought when Dallas had first and goal from the two. "I support the coaches and their decisions and the play calls that they made. Just a good job [by] the Ravens defense."
In Williams' mind, there's no time to dwell too much on it with the Texans coming up next Sunday.
"I felt like we had it right there at the end," Williams said. "We thought we were about to take it to overtime. It's over with, you've got to move on…"
"We can't change it. It's over with it. We're just going to move on. We're going to take recovery serious, we're going to fly back home and get right back to it in the morning."
"Just the o-line," Williams said of what was working to spring free big run plays. "They had great communication, they executed the game plan well. I feel like the two days that we got out here and got moving around really helped us with the game plan. Then just CeeDee, George and the receivers, tight ends, they opened it up for the run game. So we got to keep it going."
Often times, coaches say the run game opens up the passing game. It seems in this case, according to Dak Prescott, it was the inverse.
"It's something that we needed to get going," Prescott said of the run game. "The offensive line embraced it, they wanted that challenge. They wanted to run the ball. I saw early in the game the way that they were playing us, I went over there and told them we were going to have to run the ball. They're playing back and they respect our guys outside, they don't want us to get behind them. The offensive line did a good job of answering and making some holes, and the running backs did a good job."
Now at 1-2, Williams and the Cowboys will look to build on their performance against a stout defensive front in the Texans, but also make sure they take care of their own self-inflected wounds and lean on what they do well in order to win those kinds of games.
"It's just faceless opponents," Williams said. "We just go out there, do what we do, execute our game plan, and we're going to get back on track."
