Tony Romo passed for three touchdowns and scored another as the Dallas Cowboys kept their NFC East title hopes on track with a 31-15 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Saturday night.
Dallas quarterback Romo stoked the Cowboys (8-6) to a 28-0 halftime lead as they moved a half-game ahead of the New York Giants in the NFC East.
New York (7-6) can regain a share of the lead with a win over the Washington Redskins.
Photo: AFP
Dallas can claim the NFC East title with wins over Philadelphia and the Giants in the next two weeks.
“It is going to be a good tough battle, but we are going to be ready for it,” Romo said of the Jan. 1 return meeting with the Giants, who edged the Cowboys 37-34 last week.
Two consecutive defeats in which they blew fourth-quarter leads had dropped the Cowboys into a tie with the Giants, but they roared back behind their captain.
Romo hit Miles Austin and Dez Bryant with eight-yard scoring strikes in the first quarter and threw a nine-yard pass to Laurent Robinson for another score in the second.
He helped push the score to 28-0 with a one-yard sneak seconds before halftime.
“I was just throwing the ball, finding the guys open and the guys did the rest,” Romo, who finished the game with 23 completions for 249 yards, said of the big first half.
Tampa Bay (4-10), who lost for the eighth consecutive time, finally got on the board after a Romo fumble in the third.
Defensive end Adrian Clayborn sacked Romo, forcing the fumble, which linebacker Dekoda Watson scooped up and ran seven yards for a touchdown.
Dallas added a field goal before Josh Freeman led Tampa Bay on a 75-yard drive climaxed by his 13-yard pass to Dezmon Briscoe. Freeman’s throw for the two-point conversion made it 31-15 to end the scoring.
The Buccanners’ quarterback finished with 17 of 27 passes for 148 yards.
Dallas were playing without top running back DeMarco Murray, who is out for the year with broken ankle, but Felix Jones again filled the void, rushing for 108 yards on 22 carries after gaining 106 yards in the loss to New York.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later