Dallas is ready for the show

IRVING, Texas -- Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones lives for this stuff.

He has the NFC’s only undefeated team, a matchup hyped as a Super Bowl preview, and a star receiver who’s finally making headlines for the right reasons.

“This is the big showroom here,” Jones said. “It’s not the lounge, it’s the big showroom.”

Hard to argue with that today, as the Cowboys and New England Patriots, both 5-0, face each other in a showdown between two of the NFL’s most popular -- and polarizing -- franchises.

It’s only the third time in the league’s modern era that undefeated teams have met this deep into the season, and the interest extends beyond the U.S. borders. Among the 107 media outlets that have applied for credentials are ones from Mexico, Canada, Japan and Thailand.

“It would be a big game if it was just two undefeated teams,” former Cowboys lineman Nate Newton said, “but it’s even bigger for one reason -- and people are going to hate me for saying this -- because it’s the Dallas Cowboys. We’re still America’s Team.”

That’s certainly the sentiment at the Coppell Deli, a greasy-spoon diner that, as owner Jay Khorrami proudly proclaims, is one of John Madden’s favorites. Located about two miles from team headquarters, the cholesterol-clogged emporium is decorated with dozens of autographed Cowboys pictures and features menu items named after Newton, Emmitt Smith and, quizzically, the far lesser-known Daniel Stubbs.

“Breakfasts and lunches here are a lot more crowded when the team’s winning,” Khorrami said. “This is a Cowboy place.”

It’s common for Dallas rookies to make a morning stop at the deli and pick up a dozen or more orders of Stubbs Specials -- bacon, sausage, eggs and cheese on Texas toast -- for the veterans. It’s an ominous sign, perhaps, that the Cowboys don’t gorge themselves on those as they once did.

“The Super Bowl Cowboys used to eat about three times as many as the guys today,” Khorrami said. “They’d get about 60 or 70 orders of Stubbs before they went to the airport for an away game.”

So far, these Cowboys have shown some impressive tendencies. They have been relatively slow starters in games yet have scored a league-best 122 points after halftime. No other team has scored more than 100.

In their come-from-behind victory at Buffalo on Monday -- one they clinched when rookie kicker Nick Folk made, then, because of a tricky timeout, remade a 53-yard field goal -- they had to overcome five Tony Romo interceptions.

For the Cowboys, getting to 6-0 would require knocking off a New England team led by Tom Brady, who has thrown at least three touchdown passes in each of the first five games, the first quarterback to accomplish that since San Francisco’s Steve Young in 1998.

Brady has a 128.7 rating through five games, better than every quarterback since 1960 except Kurt Warner, whose five-game rating for St. Louis was 131.4 in 1999.

Folks in these parts are excited about the Cowboys, Newton said, but remain cautious in their optimism.

First of all, they have been through Super Bowl seasons before, so they have high expectations for their team.

And second, they’ve watched prime opportunities slip away before, as in the playoffs last season when Romo fumbled the snap on a would-have-been game-winning field goal in Seattle.

“People are still waiting here because we had some great starts back in Bill Parcells’ tenure only to melt in December,” said Newton, who hosts a Cowboys radio show. “Everybody’s holding their breath.”

And biting their tongue. That’s the case with Coach Wade Phillips and receiver Terrell Owens.

Phillips was upset during the week about comments attributed to him in an HBO report concerning New England’s videotaping the defensive signals of the New York Jets.

On “Inside the NFL,” Peter King said: “The league, the Patriots, everybody, they just want this ‘Spygate’ thing to go away. But Wade Phillips this week told me something that I think a lot of coaches around the league . . . are still thinking, and that is, ‘Hey, New England was caught cheating and it’s a black mark on their success.’ ”

Phillips said he talked to King but denied saying, or even implying, that.

“To quote me as saying ‘black mark,’ that’s an Eastern term. That’s a Connecticut term,” Phillips said. “I might use smudge or something like that from Texas. . . . I’m sure he misconstrued what I said.”

The Patriots are a dangerous team, especially when riled. The game after they were caught cheating -- a transgression that cost them a premium draft pick in 2008 and $750,000 in fines -- they annihilated the San Diego Chargers.

Owens, meanwhile, has been conspicuously quiet heading into this game. Earlier in the week, he taped a tongue-in-cheek note to his locker and advised the media he would be talking only after the game.

He said he made the decision because of the “magnitude of this week’s game and high volume of questions for the Original 81 about the other 81” -- a reference to Patriots receiver Randy Moss. He ended the note with a postscript: “Getcha popcorn ready.”

Lo and behold, in front of Owens’ locker Friday was a bag of popcorn the size of a beer keg. He offered some to reporters but otherwise stayed mum, talking only later on his radio show.

On that show, host Dan Le Batard asked Owens to play a game of “Who’s better?” -- the original 81 or the other 81.

Not surprisingly, Owens gave himself the edge in just about every category -- speed, route running, leaping, over the middle, hands.

Then, the biggie: “Better quarterback?” Le Batard asked.

“Aw, I’m a better quarterback” than Moss, Owens said, neatly dodging the question. “I can throw the ball like 75, 80 yards.”

--

sam.farmer@latimes.com