The Dallas Cowboys’ season is saved — for now

IRVING — You can take it to the bank that the Cowboys absolutely saved their season Sunday night in Washington. Unfortunately, unlike your bank account, there is no FDIC guarantee that it’s going to stay that way.

That will depend upon the Cowboys playing with the same sense of desperation — it’s more than just urgency at this point — that marked their grind-it-out 14-10 victory over the Redskins, and not just next week, but in each one of the season’s remaining half-dozen games.

They haven’t shown that type of focus and consistency since the season’s first three games, but if they can do what they’re supposed to do in the next nine days against San Francisco and Seattle, the Cowboys will be riding a freight train’s worth of momentum into December.

And that’s where, over the last decade at least, the NFL tends to separate the bulls from the Cows.

This is a challenge that hits head coach Wade Phillips in the weakest part of his résumé. Motivating his teams in big games — playoff-pressure type games — has not exactly been his forte over the years.

Until Sunday night in D.C. anyway.

So it’s simple, right? Whatever Phillips did last week to fire his team up, he needs to do again right through the end of December. And then he can crank it up to another level when January arrives.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. That has to be a part of Phillips’ message, too. It’s not about January. It’s not even about December, at least not yet.

It’s about next Sunday. Period.

"You want the team to feel like every game is a 'must’ win," Phillips said at his Monday press briefing at Valley Ranch. "You’re going to get the best out of them.

"You’re going to get your best practice, you’re going to prepare the best, you’re going to be focused the best and that’s what you want. That’s what our message has to be this next game, too."

But how does a coach convince a team that the situation is just as desperate this weekend as it was Sunday night? Especially when the opponent is the 3-7 49ers. Followed on Thanksgiving Day by the 2-8 Seahawks.

Oh, yeah. Maybe he can just remind the Cowboys of October, when they barely beat the Bengals and lost to the Rams and Cardinals.

"I try to be honest with them and tell them those things," Phillips said. "You just can’t overlook that. You can’t overlook what kind of attitude you’re supposed to have.

"It can happen to you. It can happen to teams, and it’s happened to us this year. We want to make sure it doesn’t happen again."

There were many positives for the Cowboys to take out of Sunday’s game, and not just that they won, but how they won, too. This was the formula that can win for a team in December and beyond.

Win with defense, win with power, win by imposing your will on the other team.

As much as Tony Romo made a difference in being back at quarterback, this wasn’t about Tony the Gunslinger shooting the eyes out of the Redskins.

No, this was about a defense that refused to melt down, a defense that took away the Redskins’ two main offensive weapons in Santana Moss — welcome back, Terence Newman — and running back Clinton Portis.

This was about the offensive line finally dominating the defense in front of it — welcome back, Kyle Kosier — and, when the game was on the line, about Marion Barber making it Barbarian Time.

This was about a head coach rolling the dice, turning down an opportunity to bump the Cowboys’ lead from four to seven points and calling a fourth-down run instead.

By going for it, Phillips reduced the game to one play. Make it and it’s over. Fail, and the Redskins still have to go 90 yards in 62 seconds to win against a defense that hadn’t given up squat since the first quarter.

What Wade clearly didn’t want to do was give the Redskins another shot at his kickoff-coverage team, and who can blame him for that?

"It was decided to kick the field goal into the wind — and we’d had trouble in pregame kicking that way — so that was a concern," Phillips said. "Kicking off into the wind was another concern, even if we go up seven, that we could give them some kind of field position.

"We felt like we had a play [on fourth-and-2] that would do it and we did. When they lined up with everybody inside, we felt good about what was going to happen."

What happened was Marion the Barbarian taking a pitch right and jubilantly diving for the first down that put the game on ice.

This is not to undersell what it meant to have Romo back. Romo’s the guy who makes it a party. He was the guy who kept telling his teammates, on both sides of the line, that they could do this, that their best football still lies ahead of them.

"He affects the game," Phillips said. "He affects our players, he affects our attitude about what we can and can’t do. He even affects what the other team does.

"His enthusiasm, his confidence, his calls. It was great to have him back, and we can see a difference in our team, both our offense and defense."

Romo brings hope, something that’s been in short supply at Valley Ranch for a month or so. As we’ve already seen this season, though, hope can be fleeting.

Season saved, hope restored, future unresolved.

Now we wait to see which Cowboys team shows up next Sunday.