Doug Pederson didn't guarantee the Philadelphia Eagles would beat the Dallas Cowboys Monday, but his comments certainly made it to the Cowboys locker room. Dallas has enough motivation to beat Philadelphia and take over first place in the NFC East. The Cowboys just have extra ammunition to beat the Eagles with Pederson's comments.

"If you need a coach, or anybody else, to fire you up, I don't think you really should be playing," said Cowboys wide receiver Michael Gallup, via Jori Epstein of USA Today. "That's what Dak (Prescott) says, really every week. 

"We shouldn't [need] anybody else to motivate us to be fired up. You should already have that. For me, I'm not looking for anybody to fire me up."

Pederson clarified his statement that guaranteed the Eagles were going to beat the Cowboys at his weekly press conference Monday, proclaiming he didn't guarantee a victory and never would. 

"That shows confidence in our football team and I promise you [Cowboys Head Coach] Jason Garrett is going to say the same thing with his team that they are going to win the football game, as well," Pederson said. "I'm not going to stand up here and go on record and say, 'We're going to go down there and try to win a game. Man, hopefully we can go win this one.' It just doesn't show confidence and I want to show confidence in our players.

"We have a ton of confidence in them. We are going to put a good week of preparation in and go play."

Garrett echoed Pederson's words to his team, not sending any fighting words back to Philadelphia. 

"We're excited about the challenge," Garrett said. "Obviously they're a great football team and we're going to focus on ourselves and what we need to do to prepare to play our best football on Sunday night."

The Eagles are 3-3 after six games and play their biggest game of the year Sunday night, which could leave their playoff fate hanging in the balance. Pederson doesn't regret the message he said to his team, no matter the fallback from his public comments.  

"I want the guys -- they have to understand that we've played six games, and sure, the season hasn't gone so far the way we'd like it. We've had opportunities in a couple games to win those games and it could be a different outcome right now," Pederson said. "But I can say one thing to the players behind closed doors that I'm not going to say in front of you guys, right, or to the fans, because -- and I have to show that confidence, right, because I believe in our guys. I totally do. And we're close. When I say we're close, we're close, in a lot of areas.

"We are playing some young guys in some spots. They are getting better every week and we're going to continue to work and we're going to get better."