Sunday afternoon, Dallas held San Francisco's Frank Gore to a season-low 26 yards on 14 carries. Gore was the sixth-leading rusher in the league but had no impact, and the Cowboys coasted to a victory at Texas Stadium.

Last week, the Cowboys held the league's second-leading rusher - Washington's Clinton Portis - to a pedestrian 68 yards on 15 carries.

In the next five weeks, the Cowboys face the Giants' Brandon Jacobs, Philadelphia's Brian Westbrook, Baltimore's Willis McGahee and Pittsburgh's Willie Parker. Oh, and Seattle's Julius Jones visits on Thanksgiving Day.

If the Cowboys expect to reach the playoffs, stopping the run against these teams is important. Their task could be made easier, as Jacobs, Westbrook, McGahee and Parker are battling injuries.

While Jacobs didn't play Sunday, the Giants have an Earth, Wind & Fire corps of running backs and lead the NFL in rushing.

The Ravens have the third-best run offense in the game. Le'Ron McClain rushed for 88 yards against the Eagles on Sunday.

The Steelers are built on the run.

Jones is expected to play an inspired game on Thanksgiving Day.

In the off-season, he wasn't offered a contract by the Cowboys, who were making Marion Barber the lead running back.

Jones couldn't wait to get out of Dallas, and he wants to show his former team just what it's missing.

"It doesn't stop coming," defensive end Marcus Spears said. "Hopefully, we can put games together on both sides of the ball and feed off each other. We kind of went back to the grindstone a little bit on the run game. We can't allow people to do it no matter what the situation is."

The defensive linemen started to play gap control and kept the tackles and guards off the linebackers.

It's worked the last two weeks. The Cowboys have allowed 118 yards on the ground against the Redskins and 49ers after allowing 248 yards the previous two weeks.

"We are playing a lot smarter," Spears said. "Guys are being where they are supposed to be and actually making plays. The crazy thing about our defense is, in this game you won't see a D-lineman showing up big on the stat sheet."

Instead, inside linebackers such as Zach Thomas and Bradie James combined for seven tackles Sunday.

"It's on us to stop the run," James said. "There's a couple of games that we haven't stopped the run, so if you don't stop the run, you don't give yourself a chance."

Entering Sunday, the message was clear.

"To hold [Gore] to 1.9 yards per carry, I think we did a great job of making them one dimensional," Thomas said. "Mike Singletary wants to get that running game going, and they never could."