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IRVING – Chad Johnson led us astray. Cincinnati did not throw the kitchen sink at the Cowboys, even though several passes thrown by Carson Palmer in the first half Sunday had that appearance.

Desperate times did not produce desperate measures. Other than an onside kick in the fourth quarter, the winless Bengals were content to take as few chances as possible.

A confident team might have pulled off the upset. A team on the upswing could have made this conventional approach work.

Cincinnati is neither one of those teams.

"When you're not a very good football team and you come into a good football team's house, you've got to play perfect," Palmer said after a 31-22 loss. "We can't play decent, we can't play good.

"We've got to play great."

The Bengals, as they have for much of the last 20 years, fell short of great. But Cincinnati did enter the fourth quarter with a chance to win, because Palmer and the passing game came to life, while the defense confused Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo.

Palmer completed 16 of 22 passes for 155 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions in the second half. An offensive line that allowed 12 sacks in the first four games and was criticized by head coach Marvin Lewis for a lack of physical play in last week's loss stepped up.

"The offensive line played phenomenal," Palmer said. "That's one of the best pass rushes there is, and I don't think I got touched until the last drive."

He wasn't.

Cincinnati's defense was unable to contain Felix Jones or Marion Barber. But this team knows how to play pass defense.

Romo had thrown for 90 yards with one touchdown and one interception entering the final quarter. Defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer, who spent 13 years on the Cowboys staff, doubled Terrell Owens most of the afternoon and enticed Romo to throw underneath. Rather than blitz, he chose to vary the zone looks.

That unraveled in the blink of an eye, when Owens turned a short crossing pattern into a 57-yard touchdown early in the fourth.

"We tried to mix it up and not give him a steady dose of anything," Zimmer said. "We made a bad play on the touchdown to Owens. He might have caught it, but it shouldn't have been 55 [actually 57] yards. The safety took a bad angle and the corner was too far off."

That touchdown didn't do the Bengals in. Neither did Chris Perry's fourth quarter fumble, although the running back tried to accept responsibility for Cincinnati's fifth consecutive loss.

Now Romo's final touchdown pass, the one that bounced off the hands of Miles Austin and into the hands of Patrick Crayton, that's a different matter.

"Where we are right now, I just started laughing," Palmer said. "It's unbelievable things like that happen."

Not really.

Not when it happens to Cincinnati.