Cowboys riding momentum towards the playoffs

But if you were around the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday evening, squeezing through big bodies and stepping over shoulder pads and rolled up athletic tape in the hole-in-the-wall niche that serves as the visitor's locker room at Giants Stadium, you could actually see momentum. It was there, tangible, palpable, real and undeniable, for everyone toting a tape recorder or a minicam to witness.

Just as important, you could see the manifestation of unbridled confidence, perhaps momentum's most critical byproduct at this juncture of any NFL season. And you could sense that the momentum that's being amassed by the Cowboys, as they roll through the second half of the campaign and head toward the playoffs, is a commodity that could propel coach Bill Parcells' team deep into the Super Bowl derby.

Here's the difference right now between the Cowboys and just about everyone else in the NFC: Dallas players look at each other and seem to know that someone will make a play. Players everywhere else in the conference seem to be looking at each other cross-eyed right now. If you're, say, a Chicago defender, do you have any faith that quarterback Rex Grossman is going to find a way to put even 10 points on the board? Do the Atlanta Falcons know, on a given week, which Michael Vick will show up in the huddle? Isn't it a little late in the season for Seattle players to be wondering whether the juggernaut offense of a year ago is going to show up again?

"What's great about what we have going on here right now is that there is so much faith we're going to do whatever it takes," James said on Sunday evening. "Some team is going to have to bring its A-game to beat us because we feel good about ourselves. I mean, we've got a lot of faith in each other, as we keep moving forward."

And a lot of momentum, too, born of that faith.

In his first law of motion, which essentially deals with momentum, Newton states that bodies in a state of motion tend to remain in that motion unless an outside force is applied. If the last few weeks are any kind of indication, it's going to take a mighty outside force to knock the Cowboys from their current path. This is a team that believes in itself, and is building positive reinforcement on a weekly basis, and that's the kind of political capital that sells well in the NFL.