We won't see the Dallas Cowboys again until Oct. 14, but it's hard to forget what went down on Monday night.
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The team's embarrassing loss at home to the Chicago Bears explained exactly why Dallas is 2-2 and struggling to separate itself from the rest of the NFC East. The Cowboys are making the same mental errors they've made for years, and were simply outplayed by the Bears, but cornerback Brandon Carr says it's too early to overreact.
"It's not the time to panic," Carr told told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram this week. "We've got a lot of football left. We're still fairly new to each other, still trying to find ourselves. But the good thing I can see is we just keep battling."
Heading into the bye week, Carr has been one of the bright spots in Dallas. Brought in to heal a secondary that was torched repeatedly last season, Carr and rookie Morris Claiborne give the Cowboys one of the conference's better pairings at cornerback.
Nobody on this defense can do much about an interior offensive line that's crumbled in big spots and neutralized this team's ability to move the ball. People want to point the finger at Tony Romo and his five picks against the Bears -- and, granted, that was messy -- but it's Jerry Jones who's pieced together a guard/center/guard lineup lacking depth and dynamic players.
Carr is talking about Dallas cohering down the stretch the way the New York Giants did a year ago. He's right. It's too early to sound the alarm bell, but this looks an awful lot like last year's team -- and not the one playing in Gotham.
Follow Marc Sessler on Twitter @MarcSesslerNFL.
