Dallas Cowboys: Former Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman called two of the team’s first three games as part of the Fox Sports crew, so he’s had an up-close look at the 1-2 team. He said that while he has seen quarterback Dak Prescott struggle, the Cowboys have problems beyond the position. “I think Dak certainly can play better,” Aikman said Wednesday. “There have been opportunities for him in some games and he’s missed those opportunities. He’s talked about it. He has been pressing a little bit. The offensive line has not protected him as well as they have in previous years. There have been things down the field and the protection has not held up. And then at times receivers have had a hard time shaking one-on-one coverage.”New York Giants: Offensive lineman Chad Wheeler had a tall order when he replaced embattled starting right tackle Ereck Flowers Sunday against Houston: keep star defensive end J.J. Watt away from quarterback Eli Manning. And while Watt got to Manning three times in the game, a 27-22 victory for the Giants, head coach Pat Shurmur was pleased with the performance. “Here’s what Wheeler did, he did a really good job, I thought, in the run game against a really unpredictable player. I thought he did a good job, and he finished blocks,” Shurmur said. “When you watch him play, you say there’s a guy who’s finishing blocks and doing those things. I’m going to take responsibility for it, a couple times he got stretched out and just pure one-on-one [pass protection] against [J.J. Watt], and I can’t put him in those positions as many times as I did, but he battled and in my opinion, even though he got beat on a couple of snaps, I thought he had a winning performance.”Philadelphia Eagles: Carson Wentz’s return to the team after his recovery from a serious knee injury has relegated Nate Sudfield to No. 3 quarterback. After backing up Nick Foles at the end of the 2017 season, throughout the Super Bowl run and early this season, Sudfield was inactive last week and will continue to be as long as Wentz and Foles stay healthy. But he said he’s staying ready in case he’s needed. “I feel like I was on my toes last year even before Carson went down,” Sudfeld said. “I think that helped me and was why they trusted me to keep it going without having any film. But yeah, I think I feel more fresh now because I was active the first two games, I’ve seen a lot of football and I’ve been in our system and know our stuff.”Washington Redskins: Running back Adrian Peterson said he knows people doubted he could make a difference for a team this season at age 33. He’s happy to be proving them wrong. All the questions make his performance through the first three games — 236 rushing yards, good for fifth in the NFL, along with three rushing touchdowns — a “little more sweet,” he told Yahoo Sports. “I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t. It does because people are discovering something that I already knew that I had within me. The people that are not around, that don’t see the grind that I put in, that don’t see me outworking 20-year-old guys that are just going into the league - they don’t see none of that.”
