Concern not Panic best bet for Cowboy fans

Listen, the NFL preseason and its results are over analyzed these days by all the gurus; that's because there really isn't much going on toward the end of summer as August fades into the history books. Phil Simms made some valid points while doing the Cowboys v Texans game on Saturday night. The first point was that the Texans admittedly game planned for the contest while the Cowboys were plain vanilla or as Simms put it, "Dallas is running offensive and defensive schemes that are 1st day of training camp installs". So, let's not over react to the Texans 23-7 win as it is no more impressive than Green Bay's 38-17 thrashing of Indy.

The preceding being said, I would be concerned about a couple of things with the Cowboys. Let's first talk about what doesn't concern me; I am not concerned one ounce about the defense. When you have talent (Dallas has plenty of it) then defense is about effort and scheme. The Cowboys had neither in Houston on Saturday night. While I am not going to make excuses for the lack of effort- these guys get paid enough money to try hard whenever they are on the field- I will say that Dallas did not blitz at all. When Houston went to 4 WR sets, the Dallas counter is almost always to blitz and make the QB make quick decisions, they didn't do that. Dallas was 2nd in the NFL in points allowed in 2009, I don't expect that to change much in 2010- this group is talented and tough.

Here is what does concern me; the Cowboys utter lack of effort along the offensive line. I know, I know, Colombo and Kosier were out. So what, Montrae Holland and Alex Barron get paid a nice chunk of change to back-up those positions and it's uncommon to go through an entire season without injuries thus your back-up lineman better be ready to play. I saw far too many jailbreaks when Romo went back to pass and I saw absolutely no push in the running game. The only word that can be used to describe the effort of the offensive line was well, "offensive".

My other main concern about this team is one that parallels life in general; some people don't handle success well and in thinking about that I wonder if this team knows how to handle success. Let me throw this out there, in 2006 the Cowboys lost the Romo fumbled FG playoff game in Seattle 21-20. Going into 2007 the questions abound about whether Romo could play in the NFL or recover from such a mistake and all the Cowboys did was go 13-3, winning the NFC East. The following year, Jerry Jones brought in Tank Johnson, PacMac Jones etc. etc. and supposedly loaded up for a Super Bowl run, in case your memory needs some jogging, the Cowboys went 9-7 and were eliminated on the season's final Sunday in Philadelphia 44-6. Ouch!!

Fast forward to 2010, the Cowboys coming off a very successful 2009 campaign which saw them win football's best division the NFC East with an 11-5 mark. The team won at New Orleans (the eventual Super Bowl Champion) late in the season, posted back to back shutouts of Washington and Philadelphia to finish the regular season (the first time that happened in the Cowboys' illustrious 50-years history) and won a playoff game handily over the Eagles 34-14. The Cowboys spent the entire summer reading about how they could host the Super Bowl in their stadium after this season ends.

I will leave you with this question; are the Cowboys "paper Champions" for 2010? Right now, we don't have the answer to the question but what I can tell you is that if they don't improve their execution and effort while amping up their intensity they may want to put in ticket requests with their owner right now as the "Big Game" is bound to be sold out.