Up To Speed- Dallas Cowboys

LAST SEASON
As expected, the Cowboys season was a three ring circus. In one ring, you had Terrell Owens, who managed to squeeze in a vintage year of 1180 yards and 13 TDs despite a botched midseason suicide attempt. In another, you had Tony Romo, the quarterback who took over the reins at midseason and played like the reincarnation of the still-living Roger Staubach for a few weeks, before fading at the end of the year and then botching the hold on a chip shot field goal to seal the teams' fate in the wildcard round of the playoffs. Finally, there was the fat, grumpy ringmaster, Bill Parcells, whose perpetual look of indigestion we can only hope will be relieved by his decision to retire for the 4th time this offseason.

OFFSEASON
First and foremost, the Cowboys replaced Parcells with Wade Phillips. This will be Phillips 3rd go round in the NFL as a head coach, with previous reigns in Denver and Buffalo. He was the Bills head coach for the infamous "Music City Miracle" playoff loss to the Titans, so if other teams are smart, they will run crazy trick plays on every kickoff, as he has proven that he is helpless to stop them.

While there is a big change at the top, on the field they are pretty much bringing the same shiznit they did last year. On offense, Romo will begin the season as a starter for the first time, and again presumably have a couple very good veteran WRs to work with in Terry Glenn and Terrell Owens. Jason Garrett is the new offensive coordinator, and many think that Phillips is just keeping the head coaches' whistle wet for him until he gains some experience as a coordinator. The Cowboys also signed former high first round OL Leonard Davis to help open some holes for Julius Jones and Marion Barber.

On defense, the Cowboys big move was to sign former Seahawk safety Ken Hamlin to help shore up what was the NFL's 24th ranked pass defense in 2006. The pass rush wasn't atrocious last year, but it wasn't feared either. Outside of DeMarcus Ware the Cowboys didn't really have anybody who could pressure the QB consistently last year. They hope that LB Greg Ellis, who missed half of last year with an injury, will be back healthy this year to give them another threat.

You'll hear a lot this year about how the key to this team is Tony Romo, and blahdie blahdie Tony Romo this and ooogie boogie booogie Tony Romo that. He'll be under the microscope all year, but really, after seeing Rex Grossman take a team to the Super Bowl last year I don't think Romo is really the deciding factor on how far this team goes, he'd have to fuck up pretty bad to be worse than the NFC's Super Bowl QB last year.

What's going to make or break this team is whether the defense can stop ranking in the 20's in the league like it did last year and break into the top 10 or not. That's why they hired Phillips, a defensive guy, as head coach. I did see a really good defense represent the NFC in the Super Bowl last year, and unless the Cowboys D takes a great leap forward this year, they're going to exit early in the playoffs again. Now you're up to speed on the Cowboys.