CHARLOTTE — When you're playing the league's top-ranked offense, you're not going to count on that many stops.

But for the Carolina Panthers Sunday in their 30-27 win against the Cowboys, they got the stops when they needed them most, and helped set a new standard on run defense, which continues to create opportunities.

"Anytime you make plays in the fourth quarter, those are big-time plays," outside linebacker Patrick Jones II said. "So we do that. We just know we got to buckle up and go execute."

Considering this was against the league's top-ranked offense coming into the game, the fact they made stops late underscored the larger point. They held the Cowboys to 292 yards on the day (they were averaging 406.6 per game). They had only been held under 396 yards once all year.

And the Panthers did it when it mattered.

With the score tied with 8:18 left in the fourth quarter, they held Dallas to a three-and-out and never gave the ball back. On the first play of that series, safety Tre'von Moehrig set the tone by dropping Dallas running back Javonte Williams for a 5-yard loss. Williams' next reception was stopped for a 7-yard loss by Trevin Wallace, before Dak Prescott threw a harmless pass to the flat on third down. That was it. The best offense in the league never touched it again.

"Whenever we back them up, keep them behind the sticks, it's that mindset of they've got to go through us," Moehrig said.

The Cowboys had for a lot of the day, scoring on five of their first seven possessions (not counting a one-play kneel-down just before halftime).

But the Panthers, as they've done recently, made them one-dimensional.

The Cowboys gained just 31 rushing yards, and their previous low rushing total was 117 yards.

Coupled with the 19 yards they allowed the Dolphins on the ground, the Panthers have now given up just 50 rushing yards in the last two weeks.

That's the second-fewest allowed in a two-game span in franchise history (45 to Washington and Dallas in November 2015), and stood as a remarkable contrast.

The Panthers allowed 200 yards per game on the ground in the final six of last year, prompting wholesale personnel changes, and then another 200 at Jacksonville in the opener this year.

"It's sort of identity now, but it's becoming the standard," Jones said of their suddenly stingy rush defense. "I mean, last week we had 19 and this week we had 25 or whatever, so that's good, but still we set the standard before at 19, so the lower and lower, that's what we're chasing."

"The standard we're just all trying to figure out, just keep updating the standard every week. We're just all getting to know each other better, getting to know how we play, and each week you just see us coming together with more and more chemistry, and that's just how it's going to keep going."

Jones speaks softly and deeply anyway, but the way he said that — not boastful, very matter-of-factly — speaks to where they're heading.

Things are obviously different, owing in part to all the new players. And the fact that they're still learning each other makes the work that much more impressive.

"Yeah, I'm proud of the guys," linebacker Christian Rozeboom said, who led the team in tackles for the second week in a row. "I think the game plan was there, and we just made plays, and it's just fun to see guys fly around, and we're just having fun out there.

"We believe in each other and at the end of the day, 27 points isn't where we want to be point-wise, but winning at the end of the day is all that matters to me."

The Panthers stopped the Cowboys for losses five times on the day, with the continued pressure from up front making things easier all the way back.

"I think it was in every snap, good and bad," Moehrig said. "Just overcoming adversity, handling the things that went well. That's our number one thing, stopping the run, and if we make them one dimensional and we can get we can get our guys out on the field in packages on the field that give offense a hard time."