FanHouse Dallas Cowboys

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) --Tony Romo and the Dallas Cowboys had their way with the Oakland Raiders, piling up their most yards of the season and getting another solid performance from the defense.

Now comes the big challenge for the NFC East leaders: Keeping it up.

Dallas beat Oakland 24-7 on Thursday for its sixth win in seven games, guaranteeing it will remain atop the division going into the final month. Because Decembers have been such disasters for the Cowboys over the past decade-plus, they can only hope this performance indicates things will be different this season.

If you need proof of just how uncertain NFL scouting can be, look no further than Cowboys wide receiver Miles Austin and his Raiders counterpart, Darrius Heyward-Bey.

Austin, an undrafted player out of tiny Monmouth, continued his spectacular and surprising season Thursday, racking up seven catches for 145 yards and a touchdown in Dallas' 24-7 win over Oakland. His TD grab was his eighth of the season. On the losing side, Heyward-Bey, the No. 7 pick in last April's draft, hauled in his eighth catch -- matching Austin's season-TD total -- and his first professional TD in his 10th game.

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The five stages of grief are being played out in NFL-mad Denver, where Broncos fans -- teased into believing a stunning 6-0 start had canceled out the challenges of a first-year head coach, new quarterback and assorted volatile team personalities -- are well into the process of re-evaluating a season gone horribly wrong.

Broncos players, many of whom came away from Sunday's disheartening 32-3 AFC West home loss to the San Diego Chargers embarrassed, confused and bickering, know they have to regroup in a hurry.

This was a short week, and a Thanksgiving Day game at Invesco Field looms against the revitalized New York Giants (8:20 p.m. ET). Both teams are 6-4, a game behind their division leaders, the Cowboys and the Chargers, respectively.

Zebra Report is FanHouse's analysis of actual NFL rules and how they are to be applied ... because most fans think they could do a better job than the NFL officials, yet definitely could not. Click here for an introduction as to how we do things.

As the clock struck zero in the Lions-Browns game, there was a pass interference penalty called on Cleveland in the end zone. In the aftermath of the play, Detroit quarterback Matthew Stafford laid on the field injured. The officials called an injury timeout for Stafford. Also, Cleveland head coach Eric Mangini took a timeout to seemingly do nothing more than lambast the officials for what appeared a pretty obvious interference call.

Hey, a win is a win. That's all that matters in the end. The Dallas Cowboys get to see a "7" in the win column of the standings after surviving 7-6 over the Washington Redskins Sunday. It wasn't pretty, but the Cowboys gutted out an old school victory.

Coming into the week, the Cowboys had been amassing a large percentage of their yardage via the air attack, behind the arm of Tony Romo. In Week 11, they seem to have decided to transform themselves. Romo attempted 27 passes, while the Cowboys ran the ball 33 times for 153 yards and counted on their defense to win the shortened game for them. It worked.

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Every week, NFL FanHouse hits the lowlights from Sunday's action, looking at those players who did the most to move their head coaches that much closer to returning to the Bed and Breakfast business.

This is where the divide between fantasy and reality becomes apparent.

For fantasy owners who had him in their lineups, Roy Williams, who posted five catches for 105 yards and a touchdown -- his best game of the season and his best yardage day since Nov. 18, 2007 -- was probably a factor in a winning performance.

But for the Cowboys, Williams was a primary factor in a momentum-killing 17-7 loss to the struggling Packers.

What Bill Belichick did Sunday night has happened before. It justifiably earned Barry Switzer the nickname "Bozo The Coach'' for failing TWICE on fourth down in the late stages of a tie game. And the Eagles' Andy Reid did the opposite of the New England coach on Sunday, eschewing fourth-and-short twice to kick field goals in what turned out to be an eight-point loss.

Switzer's mistake didn't prevent Dallas from winning its third Super Bowl in four seasons in the early '90s, but it left Switzer at the top of the oft-debated list of worst coaches to win a title.

On Nov. 15, 1995, the Cowboys were playing in Philadelphia and faced a fourth down and 1 on their own 29 with the game tied 17-17 and just over two minutes left. Switzer decided to go for it and sent Emmitt Smith left over the massive Nate Newton.

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GREEN BAY, Wis. -- You could smell this game as far away as Madison, and the part of it that stunk the worst was the Dallas Cowboys offense. On an afternoon in which everybody -- the officials, the head coaches, the offensive lines...everybody -- seemed to be conspiring to set the game of football back 40 years, it was the Cowboys who came up the smallest, committing 10 penalties and converting just 3 of 12 third downs in a 17-7 loss to the Packers at Lambeau Field.

"This was an impressive win for Green Bay," Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said. "But it was unimpressive the way we didn't execute, especially early, when we still had a chance to get the game going the way we wanted it to go."

But the most disappointing part for the Cowboys was that, by losing this game, they blew a very real chance to get the season going the way they wanted it to go.

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For weeks, people have asked if the Cincinnati Bengals are for real. The team keeps responding by finding ways to win games, but the questions keep coming in. This week, they get a chance to sweep the defending Super Bowl champions. Green Bay was picked by many to be a playoff team this season, but they've limped their way to 4-4, got worked by a former teammate, and now face a virtual must-win against red-hot Dallas. Meanwhile, the Colts and Patriots are stealing the spotlight for another high-profile meeting.

We'll chat about all of this at 12 P.M. Eastern, and we invite you to join us after the jump!