Soaking it all in!

I have not done a blog on my Cowboys since they loss to the Giants in the Playoffs. That game really hurt, I knew the odds were slim to beat a team 3 times in one season, but I was hurt that hosting our first playoff game in years we were still unable to get out of our drought of winning in the playoffs. To make matters worse the Giants won the Super Bowl! Ugh!

So as the summer settles in, the Stars and Mavs are at home watching the finals in their respective leagues, and the Rangers are peddling false hope again. So my attention has once again focused in on the Cowboys. OK, maybe I have been following all along!

So I start getting excitement when I realize this team was arguably the best in the NFC for most of the season last year. A record of 13-3 brought a lot of joy, and gives me a lot of excitement about the year to come.

To begin, I am overjoyed we were able to retain our Offensive Coordinator Jason Garrett. This is a guy that was basically offered 2 head coaching jobs on the spot, so his football IQ is certainly impressive. I am assuming he is the Coach in waiting here in Dallas, I hope by that time we still want him to be the head coach!

After "The Coach" made a run on our coaching staff, front office, and some of his old players. We were able to fill in with a number of top notch coaches. Many who have been head coaches and coordinators at previous stops.

Then came the draft. I must say this was the first time in years where I left the first day of the draft excited. We added Felix Jones at RB to replace Julius (coach made me run like a robot) Jones, Mike Jenkins, and Martellus Bennet. Then on the 2nd day we picked up Tashard Choice form GT who at one point was rated one of the Top 5 backs. As an Aggie fan I have a question mark in my mind about Bennett, as he seemed to disappear in games last season. I'll credit that to Coach Fran's poor use of his talent and just hope to see him reach the potential of all of the hype he has received.

I also was terribly disappointed in our lack of drafting a WR. I see that as a huge concern, considering the 3 top receivers have all missed a fair amount of playing time over the past few seasons. Heck we are still not certain Terry Glenn is even coming back. Patrick Crayton who predicted we would make the Super Bowl dropped the pass that may have got us there. The back-ups are all unproven to say it nicely. I actually have no issue with not drafting a WR in the first few rounds as they made a run on receivers in Round 2 of the draft and to select one would have been a reach, but somewhere in the 2nd day I thought they would take a shot on someone. You still had Mario Manningham from Michigan (who went to the Giants of all teams) Marcus Henry from Kansas, and Adarius Bowman from OSU who were all big time college players, playing for big time schools, in big time games. They say few receivers make an impact in their first season, which is precisely why we needed to draft one so we didn't have to spend next season still trying to find and groom a young receiver.

What I will say is I am feeling overwhelmingly confident about our running game. Marion the Barbarian is a Pro Bowler and relentless runner. I am a little nervous about him moving up as the feature back, but adding Felix Jones who is a Home Run Hitter and brings that "wow" factor, and Tashard Choice who will make an excellent back-up as he as projected as an every down back. Playing at GT he is already familiar with Pro Sets and blocking schemes and responsibilities as he played under former Cowboys coach Chan Gailey.

The Secondary is going to be smothering. You already have 4 guys that have the ability to play at a Pro Bowl level. There are times when they were inconsistent though, as well as battling injuries, so we added 2 rookies Mike Jenkins who was rated the one of the Top 3 DB's in the draft, and Orlando Scandrick who may turn out to be the best flat out athlete on the team. Lastly, they brought in Adam Jones (he is a Cowboy now so I refuse to refer to him as Pac-Man). I recall as he spent the last 2 years embarrassing himself and the league being thankful he was not on my team. Ouch, now I have to deal with him. On the field this kid is a playmaker, I recall watching a few Titans game where he basically single-handedly lead them to victory. As a DB!! There aren't many players on defense that can take over a game like he did. So you add him to the secondary and you have All-Americans as starters and back-ups at every position.

My excitement was somewhat tempered as I realized that the Giants, Redskins, and Eagles all made significant gains in the off-season. Plus, we play the rough schedule of a Top Tier team this year. So no one is laying out the Red carpet for us, we are going to have to play every bit as well as we did last year, and get a boost from our new additions.

Lastly, we re-signed pretty much all of our desired free agents, and signed several of the guys on the last year of their contract to long-term deals. Jerry Jones is handing out so much money they need to change his name to Texas Lottery. Something will have to give, he is looking for this to pay out big over the next 2 seasons before the bottom falls out.