At times it looked like the Cowboys were going up against the officials as well as the Bears. One drive came to a halt after a very questionable call turned an eleven-yard screen to Julius Jones into a ten yard penalty. Another drive was in jeopardy after Owens was flagged for an equally questionable offensive pass interference penalty.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the Cowboys sacked Rex Grossman on a fourth down play with six seconds left on the clock and the officials called the end of the half even though there were clearly two or three seconds left in the half.

But even the officials seemed unable to stop Tony Romo. After a few teasers to the running game early in the game, Dallas switched to a pass first, pass second offense and put the game on the shoulders of their quarterback. And Romo responded, at times throwing passes with Bears hanging off him.

The end result: Dallas 34 Chicago 10 much to the dismay of the officials who, no doubt, picked Chicago in Yahoo’s NFL Pick ‘em game.

If there were any doubts on whether Romo is the quarterback to lead this franchise into the future, he answered more than a few questions tonight. In a game that was going to be decided by the quarterback play — or, rather, the lack of bad quarterback play — Tony Romo showed that he was a match for perhaps the best defense in football.

Romo certainly has his detractors among the fans. In fact, some fans are so against Romo I think they might actually root against him during the games. But, I think Romo might have even won over a few of them. Maybe not Drew Bledsoe, but certainly those that have held out hope that he’s the franchise quarterback the Cowboys have been searching for so desperately for most of this decade.

He looked… Favre-like.

And in a game where the Jones vs Barber debate might have had a bye week, Marion Barber still found a way to make his case. He scored his first touchdown on a swing pass where he juked one defender then ran over another to reach the end zone. He then busted a long run towards the end of the game setting up a one-yard run into the end zone.

Meanwhile, Julius Jones found himself up against the Bears, the officials, and his own teammates. First, he catches a screen pass and breaks a Brian Urlacher tackle to reach a first down only for it to be called back for an illegal block in the side. (The officials deciding to make blocking in the side a penalty just for that play.) And later he made a good run up the middle called back on a Flozell Adams call.

I still have a feeling we are going to see the running back by committee continue until the running game breaks down. Right now, it falls under a don’t fix what isn’t broken rule. And it isn’t as if Julius has run poorly, even if his stats fall into the poor category.

But Marion Barber certainly does look like Steven Jackson in that commercial where he breaks tackle after tackle only to have a number of people gang up on him but he still finds a way to score. And, as that continues, I think it becomes tougher and tougher to keep to the running back by committee plan. At some point, you just have to see what Marion Barber can do as the primary back — especially with Julius Jones in the last year of his contract.

And let’s not forget Terrell Owens. T.O. had another solid night not letting the league’s best defense slow him down. Between Owens and Witten, Romo didn’t have to worry about finding an open receiver.

After watching the Cowboys win a shoot out with a not-so-great Giants team and then take out an also-not-so-great Dolphins team, it was nice watching them take down the reigning NFC champion.

If nothing else, this game announces to the league that the Cowboys are back. And they are dangerous.