Dallas safety Jeff Heath figures there’s a world outside his locker

The Cowboys are about to get a test of the notion that they’re never supposed to get comfortable in their line of work.“I think the coaches do a good job kind of keeping us sharp Youth Andre Dillard Jersey , keeping us on edge,” Heath said. “You just have to understand that comes with this game.”Before the four-game winning streak that propelled them to sole possession of first in the NFC East, the Cowboys (7-5) were on the verge of losing touch with the playoff race early for the second straight year.Two games ago, Dallas trailed Washington by a game with the Redskins visiting on Thanksgiving. Now it’s the Cowboys with that one-game lead, this time over Philadelphia with the defending champion Eagles (6-6) coming in Sunday.Once the chaser, now the chased. No difference, says quarterback Dak Prescott.“We’re not necessarily thinking about we’re getting chased now,” Prescott said Thursday. “Our backs were against the wall a few weeks ago and they haven’t changed. This is a team that looks to go out there every week and put that on display every week.”Human nature will always suggest otherwise, and the New Orleans Saints might argue that point after their 10-game winning streak was stopped by the Cowboys. Dallas was tied with Washington then, and conventional wisdom gave the Redskins a shot to get back in first place alone.Instead, the Cowboys had their best defensive showing of the season in a 13-10 win over the high-scoring Saints while the Redskins lost another quarterback to a season-ending injury in a 28-13 loss to Philadelphia that left them tied with the Eagles.“Nobody’s really thinking about a letdown or anything,” Cowboys receiver Cole Beasley said. “They’re all big. We’ve got to worry about what we have to do to get better as a team each week and put our best out there. We put our best out there Cheap Andre Dillard Jersey , we’ll be fine.”While the Eagles have back-to-back wins for the first time this season, the defending champs badly need a third if they want a shot at another Super Bowl.With a victory, Philadelphia would pull even with Dallas and have a season split with a better division record, the first tiebreaker between two teams. Lose, and the Eagles will trail the Cowboys by two games with just three remaining.The Cowboys would counter that they’re fighting to maintain control of their playoff fate.“We don’t have a margin,” offensive coordinator Scott Linehan said. “We approach it no different than we did when we were, whatever it was, 3-5. Coach (Jason) Garrett’s been obviously talking that every minute of every day.“We all need to know that in the NFL, things change quickly, for the better or for the worse, if you don’t keep your foot on the gas pedal.”Whatever Garrett is sharing with his team, as usual Andre Dillard Philadelphia Eagles Jerseys , he’s not sharing it publicly.“I don’t really understand what you’re talking about,” Garrett said when asked about preaching against any tendency for the team to ease up. “Our backs are to the wall. They’re always to the wall and that’s how we look at it.”Running back Ezekiel Elliott will have something of a personal test to keep things rolling. After 90 touches — 72 carries and 18 catches — over three games in a 12-day span, Elliott finally had some time to rest. He says he felt the best he has in a while coming into the week.The key is for Elliott to avoid any negative side effects of that feeling. Say, for example, easing up.“I mean, honestly, we’re in the same position that we were when we were 3-5,” said Elliott, who does have the motivation of trying to regain the league rushing lead he lost to Todd Gurley last week. “Having that same mentality, attacking work the same every day.”That means not being comfortable at work. The Eagles have gone all in with Carson Wentz, as expected. But expectations remain high for a team that won a Super Bowl two years ago and got surprisingly close to a return in 2018, without Wentz under center for the postseason run.With the guy who won a Super Bowl and took the team surprisingly close to a return in 2018 now gone Philadelphia Eagles Jerseys Stitched , the pressure falls on Wentz to deliver. A former Eagles quarterback who took the team to four straight NFC title games (and one Super Bowl) has an opinion regarding the leeway that the second pick in the 2016 draft should receive.“I think in the next . . . two years or so he has to find a way to get . . . out of the second round of the playoffs,” Donovan McNabb told Zach Gelb of CBS Sports Radio. McNabb said that, if Wentz doesn’t do that, the Eagles should consider their options at the position, pointing out that the success of Nick Foles “proves . . . that some people can get into that offense and be very successful.”“If [Wentz] can’t get out of the second round they should look to possibly draft another quarterback because you just don’t know about his durability,” McNabb said. “Staying healthy is very key in this league.”Whether the Eagles share McNabb’s view isn’t known. The best evidence will come from whether, and when, Wentz gets a new contract. The Eagles undoubtedly will exercise his fifth-year option before the looming May 3 deadline. The bigger question is whether they’ll transform the remainder of his rookie deal into a long-term contract, or whether a year from now Wentz will be in the same position as the first two picks in 2015 (Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota), entering the option year with no commitment beyond it.Plenty of Eagles fans remain skeptical of Wentz, and loyal to Foles. That same attitude apparently lurks in the locker room, given the leaks regarding Wentz (that weren’t decried by him as “fake news“) and the Jobu-style shrine that was built for Foles last season. If Wentz can’t stay healthy and/or can’t take the team to the same level of success that Foles did Andre Dillard Jersey Color Rush , maybe the long-term play for the franchise will be to resort to the drawing board, and look for a new franchise quarterback.That said, Wentz has the ability to do everything Foles did, and more. The first key will be to stay healthy. The second key will be to operate within the confines of the offense, a burden that applies equally to Wentz and to the coaching staff, which can become sufficiently intoxicated by Wentz’s skills to stray from the plan. The third key will be having enough help around him to get the team to where it can go, and it can go very far with Wentz.