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Don't try to be a hero.
"That's exactly right," Detroit Lions linebacker DeAndre Levy said. He was on the field as the Cowboys put up 42 points in Week 16. "They have so many guys, they line up or they get rolling a little, and you start to think, 'I have to do this and that and all this other stuff.' What you have to do is play your rules and stick to it."
The Cowboys host the Green Bay Packers in the second round of the NFC playoffs on Sunday in a rematch of a startling early-season game. Dallas went to Green Bay in Week 6 and hammered out a 30-16 victory that included 157 yards from running back Ezekiel Elliott and 247 passing yards with three touchdown tosses by quarterback Dak Prescott.
Dallas was also a picture of offensive balance with 33 rushing attempts and 29 dropbacks by Prescott. Moreover, it did that without star wide receiver Dez Bryant.
That game was typical of how Dallas played much of the year. Aside from a meaningless season-ending loss to Philadelphia in which Elliott didn't play and Prescott barely played, the Cowboys were held under 24 points only three times all season.
Two of those times came in losses to the New York Giants, and the other was in a 17-15 victory over the Minnesota Vikings. Dallas averaged 26.1 points per game in the regular season but averaged only 14 points in those three games.
"They're really good, they're really physical," Minnesota linebacker Chad Greenway said of the Dallas offensive line, which includes Pro Bowlers Tyron Smith, Travis Frederick and Zack Martin.
"The thing they do best is be patient. They do the same thing time after time and wait for you to make a mistake. If you do, then it's havoc."
There wasn't much havoc against the Vikings, who only made three defensive mistakes against the Cowboys. Two (a 14-yard Prescott scramble for a first down and a 56-yard pass from Prescott to Bryant) combined to lead to a touchdown. The third defensive error (a 30-yard Elliott run) led to a field goal.
Against most teams, the mistakes pile onto each other. Against Green Bay, Dallas was able to take advantage of coverage errors off play-action passes from Prescott for a touchdown on the opening possession. As the game wore on and Green Bay struggled to score, there were more errors. Elliott eventually broke five runs of 10 yards or longer, including two of 25 or longer.
"You saw it start to get a little worse and worse as the game went on," Green Bay rookie starting inside linebacker Blake Martinez said. "I think we were all trying to do too much, and it carried over into some of the rest of the season. It took some of the veteran guys on the team to get everybody to kind of relax and calm down again."
For Martinez and fellow Packers rookie defensive tackle Kenny Clark, facing that Dallas offensive line was an education.
"They can play you any way they want," Clark said. "They can be physical or use technique. They invested a lot in that line, and you can see why."
The Giants and Vikings used an active front seven to counter that line and keep Dallas under control.
The Giants bottled that up with a combination of exceptional defensive tackle Damon Harrison and a group of ends led by Olivier Vernon and Jason Pierre-Paul.
Dallas averaged 149.8 yards per game on the ground, second best in the league, but it mustered only 104.5 yards in games against the Giants. And Elliott himself, who averaged a league-high 108 rushing yards per game, averaged only 79 vs. the G-Men.
For the Vikings, the combination of linebackers Greenway, Eric Kendricks and Anthony Barr was the most important element to counter Elliott's preternatural ability. Without the aforementioned 30-yard run by Elliott courtesy of a mistake in the Vikings game, the rookie running back was held to 2.9 yards per carry the rest of the day.
"You can see the speed, the strength and how he runs low," Levy said. "But he's also really patient, and he has vision. He works really well with that line to wait for you to make that mistake. When he sees that mistake, he has great acceleration."
Which again comes back to doing basic things, as one defensive coach said in explaining the matchup of Green Bay against Dallas.
"Green Bay has the tools to play with them up front," the coach said. "[Defensive lineman Mike] Daniels is good, and Clark is pretty stout for a rookie. Obviously, they have good linebackers with [Clay] Matthews and [Nick] Perry.
"The problem they have is they have to gamble a lot because of their secondary. They're definitely vulnerable back there."
To that point, Prescott was a major key to the first game in Green Bay when he went 4-of-4 for 46 yards and a touchdown on Dallas' opening drive. Much of that was based on play-action fakes that forced the Packers to respect the run, but the point is Dallas wasn't afraid to throw with a rookie in a big game on the road—even without Bryant on the outside for support.
All of which means everyone on defense has a major responsibility to perform.
"We don't coach guys to be heroes," Green Bay head coach Mike McCarthy said. "We're going to come out and play Green Bay Packer football."
Or in the parlance of another team with great history, just do your job.
And do it well.
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