NFC Notes: Cowboys, Eagles, Washington

Cowboys

• Cowboys OC Kellen Moore said he would love to be a head coach in the NFL, but is focusing first and foremost on the team’s playoff run: “Obviously if the opportunity shows up that would be awesome. But we got to take care of this thing first. We got to make sure we’re still rolling. This is obviously focus No. 1. We got a great opportunity ahead of us.” (Jon Machota)

Eagles

Eagles QB Jalen Hurts said he was thrilled RT Lane Johnson got a touchdown.

“I think it’s a testimony of perseverance and obviously being strong,” Hurts said, via Pro Football Talk. “Lane knows that his teammates have his back, he knows that I have his back. Going through the things he went through earlier in the season, obviously being able to come back and be with us and be part of our football team and our offense I’m happy for him. I’m happy he’s good.”

Washington

Washington HC Ron Rivera believes the team’s blowout loss to Dallas was an outlier, not the beginning of a negative trend.

“This is a bad game,” Rivera said, via The Washington Post. “This ain’t a direction — I’ll tell you that right now. You look at the way we played the previous two games in our circumstances, and you would say, ‘That’s a hell of an effort.’ But what happened last night — that was disappointing.”

Washington DL Daron Payne and DL Jonathan Allen, who have been teammates dating back to their college days at Alabama, were seen in a heated exchange on the sidelines, Rivera reassured that the dispute was just “a little brotherly disagreement.”

“The guys have to understand that this has to be something that you have to set aside,” Rivera said. “It happened during a game, but it happened because of the passion of the game. It happened because of the frustrations that come out. I’d rather see them frustrated. I’d rather see them passionate about playing the game than say, ‘Okay, whatever,’ and then move on. I think that’s probably to a degree a good thing. But you really don’t want it to be like that.”

Rivera alluded to the team’s circumstances in recent weeks as a key factor that affected Sunday’s performance. Aside from injuries and having more than 25 players hit the Covid-19/Reserve list, DB Deshazor Everett was involved in a fatal car accident on Thursday. Everett was the driver, and his girlfriend, who was in the passenger seat, passed away. Everett was admitted to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries.

“Friday was a very difficult day because of everything that had transpired, and that was kind of one of those things that you just kind of had your ears up after that,” Rivera said. “We’ve been dealing with a lot of s—, and it’s something that we’ve got to learn to deal with and handle and, at the same time, be able to go forward and play to our abilities, play how we’re capable of. Yesterday was not an indication, in my opinion, of what we’re capable of.”

Rivera also mentioned the possibility of QB Kyle Allen getting playing time during the team’s final two regular season games.

“Will we play Kyle? Probably,” Rivera said. “And not as an indictment of Taylor or anything like that, but just that we also want to make sure we get a really good look at Kyle.”