CANTON, Ohio -- At the opening training camp news conference, coach Jason Garrett said the Cowboys need to run the ball more and need to run the ball better in 2013.
In Sunday’s 24-20 win against Miami, the Cowboys got the more (34 carries) and the better (170 yards).
Joseph Randle led the Cowboys with 70 yards on 13 carries. Phillip Tanner had 59 yards on 10 carries, including a touchdown. Lance Dunbar had 22 yards on four carries to start the game. Kendial Lawrence had a 5-yard touchdown run late in the fourth quarter.
“I thought it was a good start running the football,” Garrett said. “We ran it well. We ran it a few different ways. We ran it inside. We ran on the edge. I thought the backs ran hard.”
The Cowboys had only one game last season with more than 34 carries (42 at Baltimore). They had five games with 17 or fewer runs last season. They ran it 17 times in the first half Sunday.
“There’s always room for improvement,” Tanner said. “We’ve still got a long ways to go. We’ll go watch the film, capsulize what we did well, and look at what we did wrong and fix that. But this felt like a solid foundation.”
