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The Cowboys have hinted as much since the beginning of the preseason and showed glimpses of a different personality by opening the season with two wins in the first three games, led by a dominating rushing attack.
But beating the talent-deficient Tennessee Titans and the quarterback-challenged St. Louis Rams is one thing. Doing it against Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints would be a true litmus test.
The Cowboys knew as much—no matter how much they tried to downplay Sunday's matchup against the Saints as just one of 16 games on the schedule.
It's also why the postgame celebration in the locker room following the Cowboys' most dominant and complete performance since 2009 was seemingly so euphoric.
The Cowboys had a 24-0 halftime lead and led 31-3 in the fourth quarterback before cruising to the 38-17 victory Sunday at AT&T Stadium, extending their winning streak to three game and giving them a 3-1 mark to start the season for the first time since 2008.
Never mind that the Saints dropped to 1-3 on the season; consider them an early measuring stick for a Cowboys team seeking a coming-of-age victory.
The Saints had owned the Cowboys in recent years, winning three of the last four and eight of the last nine, including an embarrassing and humiliating 49-17 blowout last season.
If the Cowboys were going to be anything, they had to get that Saints mojo out of their system, giddy owner Jerry Jones gleefully admitted after the game.
"I did. I sure did," Jones said when asked if had got visions of last years's game on Sunday night. "Oh yeah, I did. I didn't want to think before the game was over, but I had thought about it all week, thought about it in the offseason. That was a rough trip home.
"I've got a lot of friends in Louisiana, and there are a lot of Cowboys fans in north Louisiana . That hurt. That was embarrassing to go down there and not do better.
"This is really an important victory to us because of the respect, because of how we fared against New Orleans over the last eight or nine ballgames. This is one of those that we kind of needed to knock the ghostly cobwebs out of our minds. It doesn't take much to get me happy. I feel great. I feel happy with where we are."
Where they are is in a first-place tie in the NFC East with the Philadelphia Eagles. They head into next Sunday's game against the Houston Texans (3-1) looking for just the second four-game winning streak since head coach Jason Garrett took over midway through the 2010 season.
But more importantly, they gained legitimacy that the "win one, lose one" road to 8-8 might be a thing of the past, and the Cowboys have a chance to be end a four-year playoff drought and maybe even make a run to the Super Bowl.
Quarterback Tony Romo didn't invoke the Super Bowl into his postgame commentary, but he talked about the consistent way the team has played during its three-game winning streak and voluntarily brought a comparison to the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks.
"I think you're always excited," Romo said. "Each week in the NFL is different. You go out and lose next week, and you lose all the luster and good feelings from this week. I think what you find is that we are consistently doing the same things each week, and in the past, we weren't able to do that.
"When you’re really good—Seattle runs the same defense each week, and people have a hard time with it because they are really good. I think once you find your ability to do something consistently, it lets you know that you're probably going to be able to have it for the rest of the year."
The Cowboys' foundation to success this season is no secret. They have relied each week on a dominating ground game, led by league-leading rusher DeMarco Murray and three first-round picks on the offensive line.
Murray rushed 24 times for 149 yards and two touchdowns. He became just the fourth running back in NFL history to top the 100-yard barrier in each of the first four games of the season, joining Hall of Famers Jim Brown, O.J. Simpson and Emmitt Smith.
Combine that with Romo's continued progress from December back surgery and a deep, explosive group of receivers led by Dez Bryant, and this is the team's most complete offense in more than a decade, at least so says the Cowboys quarterback.
Yes, better and more complete than the 2007 and 2009 units that finished third and second in the league, respectively, while leading the Cowboys to a pair of NFC East titles. Bryant is playing the lead role at receiver that Terrell Owens did then, but Romo says this team has so much more.
"We are going to be tough to deal with because of our ability to run the football," said Romo, who completed 22 of 29 passes for 262 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions. "We have guys outside that are tough to deal with as well. We are a complete unit. This is as complete a unit as I have ever been a part of.
"You can make an argument about your No. 1 receivers being similar. But I don't know we have had the depth we have now. Jason Witten is still Jason Witten. We have a very good slot receiver [Cole Beasley] who really hasn't been able to show it cause we have so many good players. Terrance Williams on the outside has really turned into a quite a player that gives defenses trouble. And we have Dez, and I haven't even talked about the linemen and [running back] DeMarco [Murray], which changes in the game just in general."
Add in an improving defense, which is short on big names and premier playmakers but long on fighters and relentless athletes, and the Cowboys believe the Saints game is only the beginning of something special.
"We're a real scrappy bunch," safety Barry Church said. "A lot of people don't give us credit for the jobs that we do, but we're trying keep fighting and speaking with our pads, not with our mouths, and we're going to go out there and take it one game at a time, and we'll see what happens.
"Coming off being the worst defense in the league last year, we definitely have to play with a boulder on our shoulder. So we're just going out here and showing people we're an improved defense. Once we get everything down pact and we stay healthy, we'll be a force to be reckoned with."
As impressive as the Cowboys played on offense on Sunday, their ability to shut out the Saints in the first half and then stave off a brief fourth-quarter rally was an example of this defense being much different than the abominable units of past years.
Brees passed for 340 yards and threw two touchdowns in the fourth quarter after the Cowboys led 31-3. He was intercepted once, and the Cowboys also recovered two fumbles to win the turnover battle 3-0.
It certainly served as a reaffirmation that the philosophy and plan for success in 2014 has the Cowboys headed in the right direction.
"We believe in what we do," Garrett said. "We're convicted about how we put this team together. How we built this team. The kind of guys we want on this team. The physical nature that we want to play with, we have strong convictions about that. You just have to keep going about it the right way. Get the right guys together, go to work every day, do things the right way.
"We believe the results will come. We'll continue to work hard."
Garrett said it all through a voice that was hoarse from shouting instructions during the game as well as whooping and hollering in a raucous postgame locker room.
All quotations obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.
Clarence Hill covers the Cowboys for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
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