IRVING, Texas -- When Jason Garrett approached the podium Monday afternoon he apologized for his scratchy voice.

After answering 29 questions in about 20 minutes about what happened in the win against the New Orleans Saints and what might happen down the road, the Dallas Cowboys coach offered up a reason why his voice might not have been in the best of shape.

“I thought our fans were great (Sunday) night, too,” Garrett said, unprompted. “In that kind of a game, against a team that is so close to us, a team that travels well, I think as a football team, hopefully we did a lot of things that made our fans stay involved in the game in a positive way. But that atmosphere really helped our team, and I thought that was really important for us to establish that -- to have some success, them be behind us. It’s hard for teams to go on the road and deal with crowd noise and deal with a crowd that’s into it as much as our guys were last night. I thought it was a really good thing for our team, and we appreciate that certainly going forward when Houston comes to town this week.”

Much was made of the infiltration of San Francisco 49ers fans at the season opener. There were a ton of Saints fans inside AT&T Stadium last week as well, but with a 24-0 halftime lead and a 31-3 lead in the third quarter they could not be heard.

The Houston Texans make the trip north to Arlington, Texas, this week, an even shorter drive than New Orleans. This will be the Texans first regular-season game appearance at the $1.2 billion stadium.

Garrett wants to make sure the fans can impact this week’s game as well.