Cowboys move on from Denver, focus on Arizona
Todd Archer
ESPN Staff Writer
FRISCO, Texas -- The 42-17 loss to the Denver Broncos is done, gone and buried, according to Dallas Cowboys coach Jason Garrett.
That officially happened Wednesday when the coaches and players met for the first time after the loss, and Garrett addressed the lack of effort by Ezekiel Elliott, as well as some other players, on two interceptions.
"Zeke's a professional. Zeke knows how to play football at this level. He's demonstrated that over the course of his career," Garrett said. "He's not perfect. Nobody is perfect. When things happen, we address them. We coach them and then we move forward."
Elliott stood with his hands on his hips after Chris Harris Jr. collected a deflected ball off Dez Bryant's hands for the first pick of Dak Prescott. On Aqib Talib's interception return for a touchdown, Elliott remained on the ground after blocking a blitzing Denver defender and did not get involved in the chase.
While those plays were the most scrutinized, they were hardly the reason why the Cowboys suffered their third-worst loss of the Garrett era. The offense could not generate any running game or stay on the field on third down. The defense allowed four passing touchdowns and a 100-yard rusher, while missing too many tackles.
"Every week there's issues on our team that we address head on and we make sure we handle them, we address them, we solve them and we keep moving forward," Garrett said. "There were plenty of things in that ballgame that we had to address and put behind us."
Elliott carried nine times for 8 yards, career lows in both categories. Prescott had the second multi-interception game of his career. There is some notion that the Broncos have offered up a blueprint for how to slow down the Cowboys' offense.
Arizona Cardinals coach Bruce Arians, however, wasn't buying it.
"If you can borrow Denver's players," said Arians, whose team will face the Cowboys on Monday night at University of Phoenix Stadium. "It doesn't necessarily match up sometimes for what they did and what you can do."
Arians viewed the Cowboys' lack of production against Denver as an anomaly.
"You never prepare for just one week of what you see on tape because scoreboards indicate a lot of things that happen during games," Arians said, "and we anticipate what they've done for the last year-and-a-half, not just what happened last Sunday."