ROMO SHINES AS COWBOYS BEAT TEXANS

The crisis mode in Dallas has abated somewhat, as the team won’t be heading into their bye week at 0-3.  Tony Romo threw a pair of touchdown passes to Roy Williams and Marion Barber ran for another score as the Cowboys beat their in-state rivals the Houston Texans 27-13 at Reliant Stadium.  After a closely contested first half, the Cowboys broke the game open in the second and opened a 27-6 lead.  The Texans added a score in the final minutes of the game to make the final result look better than it really was.

NFL betting enthusiasts who backed the Cowboys as +3 road underdogs were rewarded with the outright Dallas victory.  The Cowboys improved to 1-2 both straight up and against the spread while Houston dropped to 2-1 straight up and 1-1-1 against the number.  The 40 points scored went UNDER the posted total of 47’—the first time all season that the Texans had failed to exceed the total.  Dallas has now gone UNDER in two of their three 2010 games.

Team owner Jerry Jones pulled no punches when speaking of the significance of the victory:

"We were going to really be in bad trouble had we lost this ballgame. Candidly, I was worried about going home and facing five weeks without a win. First five weeks in the NFL without a win; there are all kinds of horror stories."

Head coach Wade Phillips—rumored to be on the ‘hot seat’ following the poor start—also expressed relief:

"The thing about this league is you either feel good or feel bad after Sunday. We feel good right now. Our team came out and showed the way we can play. The little things that were missing in the first couple of games, I think we came through with. We played solid all the way around."

One person who wasn’t expressing relief was QB Romo:

"There's no sense of relief. We're still in a position where we've got to keep grinding to get out of this and we understand that. We know that it's not always going to be perfect, but we've got to find a way to keep getting wins."

Dallas now has a bye week before returning to action on October 10th at home against the Tennessee Titans.  They’ll head back on the road the following week with a trip to Minnesota to take on the Vikings.  Houston will play at Oakland this Sunday with the Texans installed as a -4 point road favorite with the total set at 44.