There doesn’t seem to be a disagreement in the Cowboys locker room over whether or not the Eagles game is a big game. It is. That’s accepted. But there does seem to be a disagreement over whether players should approach the game as such, or whether they should do their best to treat it as “just another game.”
Mike Jenkins, for instance, subscribes to the latter approach.
"You definitely have to treat the Eagles like just another game," Jenkins said this week, per the Dallas Morning News. "I mean we got to see them two times a year. That's just one of those things where you'll fool yourself. If you let the hype get to you, you'll start putting stuff in your head. What you want to do is just go into the game knowing what you're fitting to do, what you have to do and go out and just do it.
"You can't get caught up in, 'Oh, we're facing [DeSean Jackson] this week. I don't want him to do this. I don't want him to do that.' You know what his talents are. You don't want to start speaking nothing into existence. You know what you do. You just do what you do."
Fair enough. But Bradie James is about as far as one can get from this philosophy of tricking yourself into downplaying the significance of the game. It’s a big game, he knows it, and he’s going to use this knowledge to fuel his preparation.
"This is a big game," James said. "There will be story lines all over the place, but it's a big game for both teams. We all want to make a statement and for us to achieve the goals that we set out to do during training camp, this is a team that we have to beat."
To each his own, we suppose.
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