DeMarco Murray established career highs in carries (32) and catches (nine) in the Dallas Cowboys' 41-28 win against the Chicago Bears, continuing a trend of heavy use the entire season but coach Jason Garrett doesn’t see Murray slowing down, Todd Archer of ESPN Dallas reports.
“DeMarco is a guy who has shown he can handle the workload, both as a runner and a receiver,” Garrett said. “He wants more. He never wants to come out of the game. At different times, we’ve done a good job of getting the other guys in there and they’ve taken advantages of their opportunities and we’ll continue to do that, but he’s a bellcow player and it doesn’t look like he’s slowing down at all to me. He feels great. He says he feels great and really looks like he’s playing at a very high level.”
Garrett said the use had more to do with Chicago’s scheme than a specific plan to get Murray the ball that much.
“That used to happen a lot with Emmitt [Smith] back in the day,” Garrett said. “When you’d go play the Giants, they play a lot of Cover 2 and Emmitt would carry the ball a lot and they’d be trying to take the outside receivers away and we’d dump the ball down a lot. That was a little bit of the game the other night, whether it was all Cover 2 or not, there was a softness to their coverage where they weren’t going to give up a lot of big plays and Tony [Romo] did a good job of checking the ball down.
“DeMarco is a guy who has shown he can handle the workload, both as a runner and a receiver,” Garrett said. “He wants more. He never wants to come out of the game. At different times, we’ve done a good job of getting the other guys in there and they’ve taken advantages of their opportunities and we’ll continue to do that, but he’s a bellcow player and it doesn’t look like he’s slowing down at all to me. He feels great. He says he feels great and really looks like he’s playing at a very high level.”
Garrett said the use had more to do with Chicago’s scheme than a specific plan to get Murray the ball that much.
“That used to happen a lot with Emmitt [Smith] back in the day,” Garrett said. “When you’d go play the Giants, they play a lot of Cover 2 and Emmitt would carry the ball a lot and they’d be trying to take the outside receivers away and we’d dump the ball down a lot. That was a little bit of the game the other night, whether it was all Cover 2 or not, there was a softness to their coverage where they weren’t going to give up a lot of big plays and Tony [Romo] did a good job of checking the ball down.
