Cowboys, Redskins serve another Thanksgiving feast
The Dallas Cowboys host the rival Washington Redskins on Thanksgiving in a suddenly very tasty matchup.
Dallas, for the moment at least, has saved its season with back-to-back road wins at Philadelphia and Atlanta. The Cowboys can pull even with Washington for the NFC East lead with a win on Thursday.
And it will be the ninth time the Cowboys have welcomed the Redskins to town on the fourth Thursday in November. Dallas has won seven and lost just once in the previous eight Thanksgiving meetings between the rivals.
But there’s a catch.
When the Redskins defeated the Cowboys on Thanksgiving in 2012, Texas native Robert Griffin III passed for 304 yards and four touchdowns to lift Washington to a 38-31 win.
Now, with Redskins quarterback Alex Smith out for the season with a broken leg, another Texan will lead the Washington offense in Dallas. Colt McCoy stepped in for Smith midway through the third quarter on Sunday and passed for 54 yards and a touchdown, though the Redskins still fell to Houston, 23-21.
Dallas has firsthand experience with McCoy and his ability to turn it on in Dallas. The Texas Longhorn alum passed for 299 yards and ran for a touchdown early in the fourth quarter as he directed the Redskins to a 20-17 overtime victory in Dallas in 2014.
“I don’t see them changing very much in what they do because (McCoy is) capable of doing everything physically and he’s got a good command of what they want to do,” Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett said.
McCoy is in his fourth season with the Redskins and has played in nine games, though he hasn’t started since 2014.
Dallas, a traditional Thanksgiving combatant along with the Detroit Lions, has a 30-19-1 record all-time on the holiday. It’s part of Dallas’s organizational structure to prepare on a short week in mid-November.
So it’s no surprise that Garrett and the Cowboys have a well-established Thanksgiving-week routine.
“Everything’s modified this week,” Garrett said on Tuesday. “It is Thursday in our mind. The content of practice is what we would typically do on Thursday. The practice and tempo and feel is going to be a little bit like a Friday.”
SERIES HISTORY: 116th regular-season meeting. Cowboys lead series, 70-43-2. Washington last won in Dallas on Jan. 3, 2016, ending the Cowboys’ season at 4-12 and finishing off the Redskins’ NFC East title.
