IRVING, Texas -- One day after a training-camp practice in Oxnard, California, last month the Dallas Cowboys loaded up on a handful of buses for a short 10-minute drive across the 101 to Century Theatres at The Collection Riverpark.

Head coach Jason Garrett wanted his players to see a movie. He’s done this before. The Cowboys saw "Lone Survivor" a few years ago.

But this movie was a little different. It wasn’t a new release. This movie was released 22 days after Jason Witten was born in 1982. The series of movies is almost synonymous with Philadelphia, the city that seems to loathe the Cowboys more than any other, but on this night "Rocky III" would serve as Garrett’s motivational ploy.

"Rocky III" is a sports classic with a message that Garrett has been repeating to his team since they got together in April. The best things the Cowboys did in 2014, according to Garrett, were fight and work hard.

The expectations in 2014 were minimal but the Cowboys surprised everybody -- maybe even themselves -- with their 12-4 finish and playoff win.

In 2015 there are heavier expectations, but Garrett wants that fight and hard work from 2014 to remain.

In "Rocky III", Apollo Creed hit Rocky hardest not with an uppercut or jab, but with his words after seeing Clubber Lang win the heavyweight title. Rocky had gone soft.

"You lost that fight, Rock, for all the wrong reasons," Creed told Rocky in the movie. "You lost your edge. Alright, I know you’re manager dying had you all messed up inside, but the truth is you didn’t look hungry. Now, when we fought, you had that eye of the tiger, man. That edge. And now you’ve to get it back and the way to get it back is to go back to the beginning."

When the Cowboys got together as a group for the first time in April, Garrett told his players last season was over, the disappointment of the Green Bay Packers' playoff loss was gone. There was nothing to be gained from remembering last season.

They had to start over.

He has repeated the message over and over with different stories that have the same meanings. At the start of training camp, he played a clip of a television interview with U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, whose humble beginnings in North Carolina did not limit her aspirations.

Garrett passed out t-shirts with the message, "We do" on the front, to remind the players they will determine what happens in 2015 by what they do and say.

Later he also recalled a story from long-time equipment manager Buck Buchanan, who passed away in July. His son, Bucky, works for the team now in a similar role. In 1992, Garrett asked Buchanan for a t-shirt that fit him better.

"This is the Dallas Cowboys," Garrett remembered hearing Buchanan say. "We pursue excellence in everything that we do. I can get you a t-shirt that fits."

Every player, coach and staff member has a Yeti cup that has "pursue excellence" stenciled on it.

Before the Cowboys went to see "Rocky III", Adm. William McRaven, now the chancellor at the University of Texas and once the commander of the United States Special Operations Command, spoke to the players in a team meeting Garrett called the best he’s seen in his life.

McRaven mentioned how they begged five men to quit during Hell Week as they sat in mud, waves crashing around them and temperatures dropping, so the entire group could go home. Nobody quit. One guy started to sing and soon they were all signing, fighting through the adversity.

"All these guys are freezing their asses off, singing at the top of their lungs," Garrett told the crowd at AT&T Stadium at the Cowboys’ kickoff luncheon last week. "Somehow, some way, they’re getting through it. You have to thrive when you’re uncomfortable."

The stories regarding Lynch, Buchanan and McRaven are real life. "Rocky III" isn’t real life, but the message still works.

According to Jason Garrett, the best things the Cowboys did in 2014 were fight and work hard. AP Photo/Brandon Wade

"It was all about getting our edge back," safety Barry Church said. "I mean, coach has said that to us from the jump. It’s about getting our edge back. He wanted us to see the six seconds of when Apollo Creed is talking to Rocky and told him, 'Hey, when we fought you had that eye of the tiger.' We got that message. We’re grinding, trying to get that edge back."

Andrew Gachkar figured about a third of the players had actually seen the movie before that night.

"In 'Rocky III', he’s already the champion of the world and (Garrett’s) saying, 'Don’t settle for that. You’re going to lose your fight. You’re going to lose your edge thinking you’re the best in the world and all of a sudden you get knocked on your ass.'

"We’ve got to come out here like we are fighting every day. I don’t know many teams in the NFL working as hard as we worked."

These stories are good when they work and corny when they don’t.

The Cowboys will begin to find out if they have that eye of the tiger on Sunday when the New York Giants come to AT&T Stadium.

Will they get knocked out or will they fight?

"I think it started with the offseason program and it’s just a willingness to go to work every day, and that’s something we’ve tried to instill into our guys since we got here, and that has to be part of the culture," Garrett said. "Our game sets up that way, play by play, series by series, quarter by quarter, game by game. I think our guys understand that. Really, whatever happened yesterday on the last play doesn’t really matter, doesn’t have much relevance. What matters is what we do now, and you have to work hard, you have to lay the right kind of foundation in the offseason program and during training camp. I think guys have done that, and now what matters is today, what matters is the process of this practice, getting ready for tomorrow, getting ready for Thursday, certainly for the Giants."