Week 11’s edition of “Monday Night Football” doubles as the battle for Texas bragging rights with the Houston Texans (6-4) coming to AT&T Stadium to face the Dallas Cowboys (3-6).
The two teams are headed in opposite directions with the Texans in first place in the AFC South, and the Cowboys in the midst of a four-game losing streak. However, that doesn’t mean in-state bragging rights don’t mean something to these teams. Dallas second-year linebacker DeMarvion Overshown is from the small town of Arp, Texas, that is roughly 140 miles or so southeast of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. He also went to the University of Texas, and he reps his small town Texas heritage with pride, regularly wearing authentic cowboy hats, big belt buckles and boots. To native Texans like Overshown, Monday night means a little extra than any old regular-season football game.
“It’s the battle of Texas. I know they’re [the Texans] pretty new to the league [becoming a team in 2002], and they’re not a team where we can go back all the way and time tells. When it’s the battle for Texas, especially with them having the season that they’re having, a team that they’re thinking that they run the state,” Overshown said Friday on a conference call. “Even though it’s a down year for us, we still run the state of Texas. So we got to go out there with that pride and that mindset of this is still our state and we’re still the big brothers.”
Even though he was a third-round pick in the 2023 NFL Draft, 2024 is really Overshown’s rookie year after he tore his ACL in the preseason a year ago. He has burst onto the scene with his speed and pass-rush chops from the inside linebacker position, racking up a team-high 4.0 sacks in 2024, including a Week 1 sack of Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson that blew three-time All-Pro teammate Micah Parsons’ mind. That play led Parsons to declare Overshown a future All-Pro after one career game. With four sacks in his first nine games, Overshown joined Parsons (6.0), Hall of Famer DeMarcus Ware (4.0) and Jay Ratliff (4.0) as the only four Cowboys players since sacks have been tracked as official statistic (since 1982) to have at least four sacks in their first nine games. Should Overshown register a sack of Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud on Monday night, he would trail only Parsons (8.0) for the most sacks by a Cowboys player in their first 10 career games. The 24-year-old credits Parsons for his own early development.
“Any player that is blessed to play with Micah Parsons would see that he takes a lot of attention to him, and if you have two or three guys blocking one guy, there’s no reasons why the other 10 shouldn’t be winning their battle,” Overshown said. “So I definitely don’t take that for granted, and I look at it as an opportunity for me to get mine. I think us just playing off each other know that ‘hey, if he’s not there I’m there. If I’m not there, he’s going to be there.’ So just having that kind of relationship and know that we got each other’s backs. I know that’s how we feel about everybody on the defensive side of the ball. That’s really the culture we’re trying to get on that side of the ball. … Micah and I have shared with each other how excited and ready we are to play with each other because we know how we play.”
The Texans won their first game as an NFL franchise against the Cowboys in Week 1 of the 2002 season, but Dallas has the all-time edge over Houston with victories in six of their eight matchups. The football world will find out on Monday night if the struggling Cowboys can maintain their big brother status or if their edge over the Texans is now in brand recognition only in 2024.
