Springs Enjoys a Special Day

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Week 4: Redskins 26, Cowboys 24

Washington amasses 381 yards with an efficient, well-balanced offense and a banged up Redskins defense limits a high-powered Dallas attack for a victory.

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Before Dallas's desperate score in the final minute with Washington playing an almost prevent defense and ensuring the clock ran down on a team with no timeouts, Blache's defense had yet to give up a single point in the fourth quarter of four games.

Seeing the Redskins shut down a Dallas ground game after getting run over at times a year ago, that might be as impressive a statistic as the offense not turning the ball over in four games.

And as much as this was about Washington's ability to fill in the gaps and survive and thrive as a team, seeing Springs come off the field triumphantly was as good an image as anyone could have imagined.

A team employee ran into Springs on Friday at about 4:30 p.m., a time when many players do the family thing or go out with friends, and asked why he had yet to leave the park.

"Film," the 33-year-old cornerback said, saying 80 percent of his job now involves breaking down what happened when he lined up against a certain receiver a year ago.

It's been talked about ad nauseum this past week the last time Springs and his team lined up against Owens at Texas Stadium. T.O. had an unheard-of two-to-one catch-to-touchdown ratio -- ending up in the end zone 50 percent of the time he caught the ball. Eight catches. Four touchdowns.

"I just saw he ran through the zone a bunch of times to beat us," Springs said. "We couldn't let that happen."

This time? "They were really congesting the middle," Owens said. "Played a lot of bump-and-runs, safety over the top. A lot of that stuff just takes Tony off the read in my routes. Most of the time I was getting in my routes. Coming out of them, the ball was already going in another direction."

When a calf strain sidelined Springs in the second half and Fred Smoot was in wonderland after his losing his helmet and his senses during a tackle, Leigh Torrence and Chris Horton jumped into the fray. Carlos Rogers shadowed Owens on three straight Romo incompletions, two of which straddled the pass-interference line but never crossed it.

"Safeties had to play like nickel backs this week," Zorn said afterward, lauding his coaching staff.

"It's not a testament to anything I did, it's a testament to the players committed to executing it," Blache said.

Springs and Owens are friends who go way back as competitors. It was Springs, of course, whom Owens beat on "Monday Night Football" when he unsheathed his sock and removed a Sharpie pen, signed the football and gave it to a financial adviser who shared Springs and Owens as clients.

"I think I know him better than any other receiver in the game," Springs said.

He had his number today the way the Redskins had the Cowboys' number in their final regular season visit to the football field with no roof, where a kid once ran the field after his father's games.

"I'm going to see him now," Shawn Springs said, shuffling slowly out of the locker room. A few people close by nodded and wished him well on his last day at Texas Stadium.