IRVING, Texas -- Cowboys cornerback Mike Jenkins was standing on the sidelines for the bulk of Sunday's victory over the Carolina Panthers.

Jenkins played just one defensive snap against the Panthers, the least amount of defensive snaps he's played in his career. He was healthy, though he tweaked his right shoulder in the loss at Baltimore while making a tackle.

But Sunday, the Cowboys defense prepared for the zone reads and option pitches of quarterback Cam Newton. It was a physical game where open-field tackling was important. Jenkins was better suited to play mainly in coverage due to his health.

Jenkins hasn't been the best tackler in the world but played through physical problems last season and displayed a toughness the Cowboys coaches have mentioned this season.

"Oh, I think as much as anything else that style of offense was an offense where we had to really be geared into defending the run, defending the quarterback run," Garrett said. "They come at you a lot of different ways running the football. There’s an option game. There’s veer. There’s the read option. All the different stuff that they do. There were some packages we had Jenks in there that were more coverage oriented. Certainly coming off the shoulder injury he’s had we wanted to make sure he was available for the coverage stuff and maybe a little less for the run defense type stuff that we played a lot in that ball game."