WATCH: Prescott responds after turnover with TD to WR Cooper

Following an uncharacteristic interception, Dak Prescott and Amari Cooper responded with a touchdown to take a double-digit lead.

After a rare interception for quarterback Dak Prescott against Washington, Taylor Heinicke gave it right back on an interception to defensive end Randy Gregory, who is making his first start in a month.

Prescott responded after his turnover with a drive starting in opposing territory, marching down the field and finding wide receiver Amari Cooper for a seven-yard touchdown.

Cooper missed two games in November and had limited snaps in New Orleans but he’s back to form against a Washington team he performs well against. Dallas converted a two-point conversion after the score thanks to running back Ezekiel Elliott and the Cowboys are in the driver seat early with an 11-0 lead on the road.

Pollard among 7 Cowboys inactive vs Washington, no setback for Gregory

Dallas and Washington will be missing their elusive backs while the Cowboys welcome back Randy Gregory and Neville Gallimore to the fold. | From @CDBurnett7

During the week, Cowboys running back Tony Pollard broke the news of his torn plantar fascia but continued to push towards playing against the Washington Football team. The explosive back is inactive for the matchup and Ezekiel Elliott will be forced into more of a workhorse role with JaQuan Hardy and Corey Clement spelling the sixth-year running back.

On the contrary, Dallas welcomes back defensive end Randy Gregory and defensive tackle Neville Gallimore. This marks the first game of the season with Gregory, Gallimore, Demarcus Lawrence and Micah Parsons all active. The Cowboys have six inactives for the contest, including four rookies.

Tight end Sean McKeon had seen significant snaps in recent weeks, including a touchdown on Thanksgiving versus the Raiders. With his injury, Ian Bunting was called up and will take over the reserve tight end role with Dalton Schultz and Jeremy Sprinkle leading the way.

After a week that included nine players on the injury report, Washington will be without running back J.D. McKissic and linebacker Jordan Kunaszyk, with starting middle linebacker Jamin Davis battling through injury.

Bench Warrants: Cowboys bring own seating on Week 14 trip to Washington

Have several seats, Washington fans. The Cowboys had to bring in their own benches because Fed Ex Field is trash. | From @KDDrummondNFL

The Dallas Cowboys are once again traveling to their vacation home on Sunday, heading to the east coast to take on the Washington Football Team in an NFC East battle in Week 14. Dallas is so used to being in friendly confines as a part of the NFL’s most storied rivalry, they decided to move in some of their own furniture for the game.

Dallas’ equipment managers weren’t only responsible for making sure the players brought the right length cleats to manage the rough field conditions. They also apparently had to get the seating right for the game, because they couldn’t trust the home team to put on a good show. Dallas brought in Cowboys-branded benches for their players, something that is not typical in the NFL.

While head coach Mike McCarthy has taken to delivering guarantees and owner Jerry Jones has waxed poetic about how much he loves Washington-area Cowboys fans, this is not totally a thumbed nose at the home team. It really is a poorly-run endeavor and with a cold front in the metropolitan area, the Cowboys had to make sure what happened to the Seattle Seahawks a few weeks ago wasn’t going to happen to them.

Anyone who has watched football over the last couple of decades is well aware of how horrible the experience is at Fed Ex Field, the Maryland home to the Washington Footbal Team. Dan Snyder inherited the stadium from previous owner Jack Kent Cooke and the handling of the facility has been, well, less than stellar, including a leak of a sewage earlier in the season.

Viewers on TV can always expect to see a sea of blue whenever the Cowboys visit Washington. Hopefully they won’t have to see the actually sea this week and in an effort to actually feel comfortable in the middle of December, they apparently had to take matters into their own hands.

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Cowboys Gameday News: Tony Pollard update, roster moves as Gregory returns

The cavalry’s arrival, divisional win importance and a potential return to form headline Cowboys news ahead of Sunday’s tilt in Washington. | From @CDBurnett7

The Dallas Cowboys took their lumps in November while dealing with a long list of injuries and came back down to Earth after an incredible first half of the season. Now, with a big road matchup with the Washington Football Team in Week 14, Dallas has the cavalry for a late-season run.

Defensive ends Randy Gregory and Demarcus Lawrence will play together for the first time since Week 1 alongside star rookie linebacker Micah Parsons, who could see some lanes open up for pressure with the “three-headed monster” back on the field. The reinforcements on defense don’t stop there with sophomore defensive tackle Neville Gallimore making his 2021 debut.

The Cowboys sit at 8-4 but need to find momentum again in what feels like a must-win game in Washington. With the receiving core back to 100% as well, Dallas feels like true favorites on the road against the Football Team who have been suffocated by injuries recently.

Here are the gameday Cowboys News and Notes.

Cowboys have edge in key win indicators, but can they stop WFT momentum?

WFT leads the league in third-down conversions since Wk 7 while the Cowboys are second overall in conversion defense. Who has the edge in advanced stats? | From @ProfessorO_NFL

The 8-4 Dallas Cowboys will face the 6-6 Washington Football Team in an intra-division battle with playoff implications on the line. The Cowboys will make their second consecutive road trip, following a win against the New Orleans Saints.  Currently on track for the fourth seed in the NFC, the Cowboys will want to continue to add distance from the rest of the division and a win against Washington would go a long way towards clinching a playoff spot.  The Cowboys currently have a 99.4% chance to make the playoffs and a 94.2% chance to win the division.

Their magic number to clinch the division is four.

Washington will enter Sunday riding a four-game winning streak.   With wins over the Tampa Buccaneers, Carolina Panthers, Seattle Seahawks and Las Vegas Raiders, WFT has been able to find new life from a defense that struggled early in the season, and a rejuvenated running game.  WFT did receive news that defensive end Montez Sweat will miss the game due to COVID-19. This game starts their five-game stretch against NFC East opponents to close out the season.

Let’s open up the Advanced Stat Notebook to see how these two rivals measure up using DVOA, EPA, ANY/A and Toxicity. Will the Cowboys be able to move one step closer to clinching a divisional title or will WFT be able to close the gap?

Susceptible pass defense with Prescott’s mastery highlight Cowboys-Washington things to know

From Dak Prescott’s dominance to the streaking Washington Football Team led by Taylor Heinicke, here’s what to watch in the Week 14 contest. | From @BenGrimaldi

The Dallas Cowboys had a rough November, losing three of four after a 6-1 start. December started much better, with a win, ugly as it was, on the road. Now the Cowboys have had their mini bye and are preparing for the final five contests that will determine the team’s fate in the 2021 season. The schedule makers backloaded the league with division games and the Cowboys’ fight to seal the NFC East begins with a game against the Washington Football Team in Week 14.

These are teams heading in opposite directions. While Dallas has struggled recently, Washington has won four straight, including a win over the Super Bowl Champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers to kick start their streak. The Football Team has squeaked out wins the last two weeks and managed to get within two games of the Cowboys in the division.

There’s no love lost between these NFC rivals and the stakes are about to get even higher for both teams. Here’s six things to know about football team from D.C. ahead of their Week 14 matchup.

Cowboys, Washington set to hit refresh on NFL’s most storied rivalry in Week 14

Break out the memes. A look at how the epic rivalry started, and how it’s been going.

This rivalry used to be magnificent.

Now? It’s closer to making someone pass the sticks instead of finishing a game of Madden when the score is too far out of hand. The Cowboys are simply dominating Washington around every corner. Washington fans want to pretend last year’s sweep mattered, ignoring the elephant in the room was all of the key Dallas players not in said room. One can’t blame them, really. There’s been so little for them to celebrate in the head-to-head series over the last five, 10, 20, 30 years…

What started as big brother finally relenting and letting little brother play in the pick-up game, has transformed into little brother dominating the field of play and making the elder look foolish.

Before the days of the internet and people moving a million miles an hour while sporting millisecond-attention spans, time once stood still when these two powerhouses collided.

The storied history is littered with pranks and shenanigans, debauchery and tomfoolery. There was the time Cowboys fans stuffed a live turkey in Washington owner George Marshall’s hotel bathtub.

Imagine that.

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How to watch, wager, live stream, listen to Cowboys-Football Team in Week 14

How to watch the broadcast, stream, or listen to the Dallas Cowboys at Washington Football Team game. Latest betting lines. | From @CDPiglet

The Dallas Cowboys survived a tough game against a depleted New Orleans Saints team. The Cowboys are 8-4 and are two games up in the division as they are about to face off with in four of the next five games. This is the teams’ chance to put the division to bed and begin preparing for the playoffs.

Entering the season this match up was about the excellent Washington defense trying to stop one of the best offensive units in the NFL. Washington’s defense started out poorly, but has been on the rise in recent weeks despite having to go without their premier edge rushers. For the season as a whole, they rank in the bottom of the league in third down conversions and passing touchdowns allowed, and a lot of that is due to the lack of sacks.

The question for Dallas is can they attack those weaknesses with the offensive line playing as poorly as they have been. If the Cowboys can’t run efficiently then the pass rush will impact quarterback Dak Prescott. If the OL does hold up, Prescott, who is 7-1 all time against Washington, could have a big statistical day. His lethal trio of starting receivers, who have only played 28 snaps together so far this season, will be tough to stop without a great pass rush.

For the Dallas defense, they are finally getting healthy. Their defensive line of Randy Gregory, Osa Odighizuwa, Neville Gallimore, and Demarcus Lawrence will play snaps together for the first time all season. The pass rush brought by that foursome could be as good as the Cowboys have had since the 1990s, though Gallimore and Gregory are expected to be on a snap count in their first games back.

This allows Micah Parsons to play more at linebacker, drastically improving the impact of that position, especially from a blitz standpoint. If the Dallas pass rush can get to Washington quarterback Taylor Henicke, he is mistake prone and the Cowboys could add more takeaways to their top-five turnover defense.

For many of the Cowboys fanbase, the Washington rivalry is still the top one for Dallas even though the Football Team hasn’t had the recent success of the Philadelphia Eagles or New York Giants. Here are how both fan bases can watch, listen, and bet on one of the best rivalries in sports history.

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Pollard’s plantar, Parsons hip pocket headline Cowboys-WFT injury report

Micah Parsons and Tony Pollard are dealing with injuries for Dallas while Washington has a slew of nagging issues on both sides of the ball. | From @CDBurnett7

Coming into Week 14, the Dallas Cowboys finally appeared to have a healthy lineup after dealing with a long list of injuries throughout the season. Defensive ends Demarcus Lawrence and Randy Gregory are back from injury and will play together for the first time since Week 1 barring any setbacks for Gregory. On top of that, defensive tackle Neville Gallimore is expected to make his 2021 debut against Washington.

Even tight end Blake Jarwin’s return hasn’t been ruled out after being placed on IR with a hip injury earlier in the season. With three straight divisional games coming up, it’s gut-check time for a Cowboys team that lost their momentum in November and sits just two games ahead of the Washington Football Team, their road opponent this week. The returning players give Dallas hope for a reawakening late in the season, but more injuries have entered the conversation as Micah Parsons appear on the injury report for the first time and information about Tony Pollard’s foot injury became available.

Cowboys Wire Podcast: Play-calling rut and what’s on tap vs Washington in Week 14

Worried about this Week 14 game? Here’s why you shouldn’t be. Talking play-calling, wager advice and all things Cowboys with @RyanO_Leary), @KDDrummondNFL.

Worried about this Week 14 game? Here’s why you shouldn’t be. Talking play-calling, wager advice and all things Cowboys.

The guys tackle topics on Kellen Moore’s recent play-calling, Ezekiel Elliott’s health, Micah Parsons’ case for Defensive Rookie of the Year and more! Also, a Dallas-Washington preview with picks against the spread. Hosted by Ryan O’Leary (@RyanO_Leary) with Cowboys Wire Managing Editor KD Drummond (@KDDrummondNFL).

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