HOUSTON -- What the heck happened on the turnover that killed the Cowboys' only decent drive of the first half?

Felix Jones ran one play. Tony Romo ran another, throwing a pitch that hit the Reliant Stadium turf and was recovered by the Texans.

The explanation: Romo changed the play at the line of scrimmage, but Jones didn't know it. Chalk it up as a lesson learned.

"I didn’t say it loud enough, I guess, for Felix to hear," Romo said. "It’s loud. The clock is running down, so you’ve got to get the snap off. It’s a situation where it’s good that it came up now, because from now on, we’re going to have a signal for the type of run that we want. We haven’t had that.

"It’s going to be loud on the road. To get to both tackles, the receivers and the tailback behind you, you’ve got to be able to signal something for the people that aren’t near you and then tell the lineman. That should speed up the process. It’s disappointing that it happened tonight, because that was an important possession, I thought. But it will definitely benefit us in the long run to have things at our disposal."

Well, at least the Cowboys' got something out of the running game Saturday night.

The Cowboys gained a grand total of 13 yards on 12 carries. Jones (three carries, six yards) and Marion Barber (four carries, minus-2 yards) failed to find much room to run for the fourth consecutive preseason game.