Note To Cowboys Phil Costa: Play Well, Then Talk

Story updated at 14:39ET

Before the New England game, little known (nationally) Dallas Cowboys center Phil Costa made a bit of noise in the Twittersphere. Well, at least we think thought he did.

When asked on twitter by @DCFanaticsBlog about his upcoming matchup with the imposing Vince Wilfork of New England, Costa quipped with a bit of bravado.

@dcfanaticsblog: You ready for Wolfork big guy? He's a mountain. Good luck on Sunday Phil,"

@philcosta67: appreciate it...of course im ready hes more like a speed bump than a mtn...#cowboys are ready to roll!

Wilfork laughed it off when told about the tweet, basically saying the game was on the field.

Well Phil went out and had the worst day of any Cowboys lineman this entire season.That includes Bill Nagy's scary performance Week One against the Jets, and Doug Free's matador 49ers game that cost Tony Romo a piece of his lung.

ProFootballFocus.com released their individual player grades for the Cowboys-Patriots tilt, and it wasn't pretty for the offense. The only player that received an above average grade from the unit was quarterback Tony Romo. Costa was the worst of the bunch, grading out as a -6.3 for the game; -2.4 in pass protection and -3.6 in run blocking. If you're wondering why they don't add up, he also scored a -0.5 in screen blocking,but did manage a +0.2 on his penalty grade.

For those unfamiliar with the PFF grading system, they basically track each player on every play, assign a grade for how they performed their job and tally them up. They have a litany of categories they score in, and while no advanced metric is perfect, it does serve as a good measuring tool beyond the simple stats that can often be misleading. For more on their methods, go here.

Costa surrendered three quarterback pressures and one hit on Romo, as well as playing the speed bump for a blitzing Gary Guyton on first down as the Cowboys tried to run out the clock. Guyton stopped Murray in the backfield for a loss of two.

I performed an analysis of the Cowboys offensive line performance against the Patriots for SB Nation's Dallas Cowboys blog, Blogging The Boys. It was horrible. Their play, not the written piece (I think). They accounted for 23 mistakes on the Cowboys 74 offensive snaps.

On the other side of the line, Wilfork went out and scored his best grade of the season, a +2.9 that included a +3.3 run defense grade.

Now, Costa's twitter account was introduced by a young lady named Leigh Costa, whom we can only assume is related in some way to Phil. whom we've found out actually has no relation to Phil!

After his trash talk, Costa's account was subsequently deleted, before the game, and hasn't been seen from since. It would be safe to assume that the second-year player learned his lesson the hard way. Maybe Coach Garrett caught wind and put down a "Cowboys Way" mandate. Let your play do the talking for you big guy.

[UPDATE]It has been pointed out that Costa (Phil) is saying that he did not tweet those words. He had hired a publicist named Leigh Costa who was manning the account and laid the smack down. Now, I'll leave it up to you to decide whom to believe by going to the page of the blogger that was interacting with Costa's twitter account. The whole, 'it wasn't me who said it' thing has been played before but it could be true.[/UPDATE]

For more Cowboys daily news, analysis and conjecture, join me and the rest of the staff over at Blogging The Boys.