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Blog Promotion

Long time blog member Jon has a cross promotional venture that could benefit the blog and you.

Jon sells computers, electronics, games and home video equipment online. He has offered to donate $1.00 from every Madden, NCAA or any other XBOX Playstation game sold on his website to help support the Cowboys Blog.

Here’s the deal, in Jon’s words:

I am in the computer, electronics, hardware, software, and gaming business. I have a full line of computer products, MP3, MP4, memory, headphones, video consoles, games, software, and Microsoft Software. Everything is new sealed in package and shipped directly from one of our many warehouses in Pennsylvania, Boston, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, and California. Your item will ship from our closest location to you. $4.95 Shipping on ALL ITEMS!!!! No matter how much you order!!!!

A few items of interest to the fans of the blog, and the Dallas Cowboys would be Madden ‘06, available August 9th, NCAA Football AVAILABLE NOW, and Sirius and XM Satellite Radio. Sirius has the NFL Network, and carries the games also. Some of their products also have a sports ticker depending on the reciever.

I have agreed to donate at least one dollar from every copy of gaming software sold on my website to the blog to help Rafael and Raul keep up the great work. Regardless if it is found through the blog or not. Have fun and get your Philly Friends, if you have any to buy it on this site and support Rafael’s work. They won’t even know it!!!! This is a way for fans to get their Madden and still support your favorite site.

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Old Problem — Better Timing

The Cowboys are again staring at a tight end problem. Just two days after blocking TE Dan Campbell was lost for two weeks with appendicitis, TE Sean Ryan broke a foot and will be lost approximately six weeks. The team is hopeful he will return in time for the season opener against San Diego.

Though Campbell should return in time for the last three preseason games, the lack of depth at this key position is a major concern. Dallas likes to run two TE sets on offense and has no blocking TEs at the moment. Parcells noted the domino effect this would have in many situations, as the injuries also affect short yardage and goal line sets. The Cowboys plan to sign TE Mike Gomez as a “camp body.”

Given the importance Dallas places on tight ends, do not be surprised if the team begins shopping for another blocker there. The one bright side is that Dallas has time to address the problem. Last year, Campbell and Ryan were injured in the regular season, leaving the team with limited options, since the NFL’s trading deadline comes so early.

injury Update: The Cowboys’ Blog’s medical source offers some perspective on the tight end injuries. Our staff doctor — and he’s a real doctor, this isn’t for fun — tells me that Dan Campbell’s timetable will likely be two to three weeks rather than the one to two reported. “If the team identified the appendicitis early, [doctors] could remove the appendix with only two to three small incisions made for a scope,” he said. This cuts down on recovery time from the old procedure, which had to cut through abdominal muscle to reach the infection. “If this was a regular person, a conservative estimate would be four to six weeks. But with the degree of attention pro athletes get now, two weeks is possible.”

He was not so sanguine about Sean Ryan. He estimates the fracture would be healed in four weeks, but that Ryan would have to regain a lot of lost conditioning and would not likely be in top shape for the start of the season.

All Hands On Deck

Stephen Jones solved one of Bill Parcells early problems by reaching agreements with first round picks Demarcus Ware and Marcus Spears early Saturday evening. Both will be available for practice tomorrow. The Cowboys have now signed all the team’s picks.

Camp Roundup — Saturday, July 30th

The end of the offseason and the beginning of camp are overlapping in a messy way. Bill Parcells complained this afternoon that there are at least five things disturbing his preparations. They include:

TE Dan Campbell being played on the physically unable to perform (PUP) list due to appendicitis. Campbell had an appendectomy Thursday night and will surely miss the first week of camp. He could miss a second week before returning;

First round picks Demarcus Ware and Marcus Spears have yet to sign and cannot participate in practices;

DE Chris Canty, who signed earlier this week, has yet not received clearance to go full speed in drills. He is listed on the injury report as “extremely limited until August 8th;”

The big news of day one was the absence of guard Larry Allen. Allen failed a conditioning test and was expected to be placed on the PUP list. However, Allen’s predicament does not appear as serious as Campbell’s. Parcells informed the press that Allen was not injured. The player was working out in shorts with trainers and could be working with the team as early as Sunday.

Parcells’ comments make it sound like the league has beefed up conditioning standards during camp in the wake of Minnesota OT Korey Stringer’s heat-stroke-related death a few summers ago. “The league has really mandated us to be very, very cautious in light of some incidents that have happened in the past,” said Parcells. “I would say we’re erring on the side of caution. That’s the best way to put it.” It sounds like Allen failed the conditioning standard, which is probably more strict for large linemen, and cannot participate in two a days until he meets it.

Allen’s failure is a surprise, since Parcells complemented Allen for his offseason conditioning a few weeks ago. Whatever the case, this does not appear to be a long-term problem. Or so we can hope. OG Stephen Peterman has taken Allen’s place at LG in the meantime.

Burnett Signs

There was one significant positive development Friday evening. LB Kevin Burnett, the Cowboys’ second round pick, signed a five year deal and reported for practice Saturday morning.

Parcells Appears the Happiest Camper

“I felt like I had to increase my energy level a lot. That’s what I attempted to do physically.” “I want to be able to stay on their ass every day. That’s the best way I can put it.”

– Bill Parcells at Friday’s press conference

When your head coach puts himself through a minicamp to prepare for the season you better not come with any lame excuses about your weight. Are you listening, Marcus Spears?

Bill Parcells greeted the press at Oxnard yesterday in perhaps the best shape of his coaching career, certainly of his time in Dallas. The coach has been running diligently and has lost weight. This should further diminish the talk we heard last January that Parcells was looking for a retirement seat at Saratoga racetrack. Big Bill looked at the disappointment of 2004 and included himself among the failures. He’s rededicated himself to the project at hand, and looks as eager as any rookie.

This is going to be fun, folks.

Cowboys Complete Second Day Signings

Dallas signed fourth round selections Marion Barber and Chris Canty on Thursday, meaning all five second day draft picks are now under contract.

The organization must feel some relief in signing Canty. The DL from Virginia had first round grades before he injured a knee last season. It was thought his agent might demand more than fourth round compensation.

Dallas still has not signed first day picks Demarcus Ware, Marcus Spears and Kevin Burnett.

Boot Camp No More

In his last major press conference just after the draft Bill Parcells mentioned that he is not a fan of the current NFL calendar, which has mini camps and workouts nearly year round. Parcells said he liked the offseason to be just that, a time when players escaped the game and recharged and later a time for conditioning. He prefers the old system of long training camps because they gave a staff time to teach. Today, coaches use the mini camps for installing systems and the camp is just a way to refine those sets.

Parcells biggest complaint is that there are at most two weeks to work with a team before games start. This, he claims, changed the emphasis from teaching technique and recognition skills to game planning. As a result, fundamentals are poorer.

Parcells has apparently made the challenge of modern camps harder for himself. A look at this year’s camp schedule shows a significant change in preparation from 2003 and 2004. In those years Parcells would put the Cowboys through ten uninterrupted days of two a days before slowing down for the first preseason game. This year Dallas will begin with just eight days of uninterrupted work. What’s more, they will not be consistent days of two-a-days. Instead, the team will alternate two practice days with single practice days. That’s a 40% decrease in practices, from 20 in the old system to just twelve this year.

I’m not sure why the number of practices has been decreased. It could be a safety issue. The NFL has been much more careful to monitor practice conditions since Vikings OT Korey Stringer died of heat stroke in 2001. But Oxnard, California, where the Cowboys train, was chosen for its cooler weather. It should allow Dallas to practice in any manner Parcells sees fit.

I’m guessing that Parcells feels his team is using his camp more for teaching than conditioning. In the old days, players would leave the game, and use the weeks of practices to regain their fitness. In these days of offseason workout programs, there is no reason for players to report fat and out of shape. The emphasis will likely be on installing sets and preparing players for their assignments. With the changeover to the 3-4 defense and a new QB to prepare the Dallas coaching staff had better be on its game. The deadlines will that much tighter this preseason.

Update: Blog reader Cash points out a relevant Sports Illustrated article on Dolphins’ camp. According to Peter King, Miami HC Nick Saban is also following the two-a-day/one-a-day formula, noting,

Saban decided to run his summer practice schedule this way. On one day, he will practice at 9:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. The next day, he’ll practice at 3 p.m. He said experts on intense physical activity told him the way to keep his players freshest the longest was having two meals between every practice and two significant drinking periods between every practice.

Fundraising Update II

We have now reached the point where my air travel is covered. The tentative plan is to jump in for week three of camp, just before and the week after the Arizona game.

Keep those cards, letters and donations coming. Thanks again to everyone who has already pledged.

Requiem for a Tradition

One of the earliest signs that I was beginning to age occurred several years ago when I heard Emmitt Smith discuss his love for playing on Monday Night Football. Emmitt recalled how as a young boy, he would beg his father to let him stay up late enough to see Howard Cosell narrate the show’s halftime highlights. Having done the exact same thing with my parents, it occurred to me that enough time had passed for Emmitt to not only grow up, but to have a long, productive — and now complete — pro career. The memory was as depressing as it was sweet.

I thought of Emmitt and time again this spring when the NFL announced that the amazing 36 year run of Monday Night Football on ABC would come to an end after the 2005 season. I was reminded yet again of what that institution had been and what the fans have lost when ESPN announced that it’s new announcing team will be Al Michaels and (hide the children, please) Joe Theismann.

Friends, especially those of you under the age of 30, I assure you it was not always this terminal. MNF was a gamble for a third place network with nothing to lose and a league with everything to gain. When it succeeded it did something few shows can claim: it redefined the way Americans, especially American men, used the medium.

ABC was a television backwater in 1970, having never so much as finished second in the three network sweepstakes that was pre-cable American TV. ABC had only tasted the top ranking for a few weeks in the fall of 1964, when its new hit Bewitched caught the nation’s fancy. Ratings were so bad at the network that an industry joke asked, “how do you end the Vietnam War? Put it on ABC. It will be over in 13 weeks.”

Football in prime time is so taken for granted today that it’s hard to imagine how reluctant the NFL was to roll the dice with ABC. Football of any type at night was a novelty, having only debuted in 1965 when NBC moved the Orange Bowl to New Year’s Day evening to showcase the New York Jets’ new toy Joe Namath. When it came time to schedule the first MNF matchup, Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell volunteered, but feared he might “lose my shirt” on a weeknight game. He admitted to being stunned when the walkup crowd could not be accomodated.

The true genius of the program was its three man booth featuring Howard Cosell, Don Meredith and, in the inaugural season, Keith Jackson. Jackson was replaced in year two by the mentally-lacquered Frank Gifford, who is still amusing fans with his sing-song misremembering of names. (My two favorites were his confusing Cowboys’ CB Dennis Thurman with Thurman Munson, the late Yankees catcher, and calling Falcons’ coach Leeman Bennett “Leeman Beeman.” Repeatedly. You simply had to be there.)

Frank aside, the key of the program was the Meredith-Cosell duo. Whether the pairing was intentional or a happy accident of programming by ABC producer Roone Arledge, it was television genius. In an era of memorable sitcom odd couples, from Archie and Meathead, Fred and Lamont and Oscar and Felix, Dandy and Howard could hold their own. They were the strangest of pairs: Meredith, a recently retired, hard-livin’, smooth-drawlin’ QB from north Texas. Cosell was the sharp-tongued, bitter-souled intellectual who always seemed as disgusted by the games as he was intrigued by them.

Cosell, who always promised, and frequently delivered to “tell it like it is,” pioneered actual criticism from the booth. Meredith, in his “aw shucks, Howard” way, would attempt to rein in Cosell and deliver a folksier, yet equally insightful comment. Gifford would provide down and distance. They gave us personalities to root for and against. Cosell embodied what it must be like to watch a game with your most arrogant, disaffected college professor. Bars nationwide promoted Monday Night Football parties where lucky fans could throw a brick through the tube when Howard was bloviating. Dandy became our stand in, the regular guy who could make his points and hold his ground with Professor Cosell without recourse to pomposity or polysyllabic words.

At a time when the NFL was unsure whether America would accept football as an alternative to sitcoms and dramas, Cosell and Meredith guided the league into prime time by wrapping a sitcom around a football game. Nineteen years before Mystery Science Theater 3000, Americans tuned in by the tens of millions to watch these two watch football. People noticed when a drunk, disappointed Oilers fan flipped off the cameras in the fourth quarter of a 34-0 Raiders drubbing because Howard and Don’s interplay had kept them riveted.

The NFL worked as entertainment because ABC treated the game as only part of the show. Cities went crazy vying to become the next site for the traveling circus. It was a big deal to host a Monday night game. It was validation of your city, a sign you were legit. It was an even bigger deal if you were snubbed.

The problem over the years is that ABC surrendered top billing to the game. Ironically, as the football became more important, Monday Night Football became less so. Now, it’s just a platform for hucksters and has-beens. I look forward to missing Hank Williams Jr.’s stale intro. The Simpson’s dead-on parody of Bocephus’ jingle — “are you ready for some SOC-CER?!” — showed how risible the song has become.

Recent attempts to revive MNF demonstrate how little ABC understands what made it a success in the first place. I had hope for the Dennis Miller addition because it brought somebody from outside the “jockocracy” that Cosell decried and offered an opportunity to recreate the simulacra of the early days. Alas, MNF was just a way station on the road to insignificance for Miller; he tried to impress us as a football guy rather than as the wiseass who knew a little about the game. How boring.

Even John Madden, who in his day was one of the best commentators ever, seemed a caricature of himself, mugging to promote his video game. The gratuitous explosions that seem to follow every commercial break and every big play (watch a game and notice how often you see flames in the background) shows that ABC just doesn’t trust their product anymore.

That’s why it’s especially sad that the final MNF analyst will be Theisman. Joe embodies the worst of all worlds. He’s got Cosell’s acid but none of Howard’s insight. He’s also got Gifford’s penchant for saying dumb things without any of the unintentional humor. (What can you say about a guy whose signature comment is, “Bill Walsh is not a genius.” “Norman Einstein, now there’s a genius.”) In short, Joe is proof the original MNF concept has hit rock bottom; what once was an ace sitcom with some football thrown in at no cost is now pure pigskin with little of the fun. If the game is a yawner the program is doomed.

Oh well, at least my kids won’t beg me to stay up through halftime on Monday nights.

On Schedule

The rookie-signing train is running right on schedule.

Dallas continued its recent practice of waiting until the week before camp to sign its rookies, inking Justin Beriault, Rob Pettitti and Jay Ratliff. The team is confident it can sign the remaining rookies before camp.

Fundraising Update

Sorry to keep the good folks who have donated so far in the dark about my proposed trip to camp. I moved this past week and have a jumpy new net service that only lets me online about every fourth minute. Very frustrating.

The good news is that we’ve had some generous donations and are just about halfway to paying for my travel. I again urge anybody who would like to see original reports from camp to make a small donation via the Paypal and Amazon links on the right of the blog. Any amount helps. Thanks again to those who have already donated and thanks in advance to those of you who will. I feel the love.

Ellis as a Flex Tackle?

I was reading K.C. Joyner’s section on the New England defense in his excellent “Scientific Football 2005,” which I highly recommend, when I came across a passage that put the whole Parcells/Greg Ellis feud in a new perspective.

Joyner details the evolution of the 3-4 scheme from the Dolphins of the ’70s through the Pats of the early ’00s. According to Joyner the third major evolution, after the Parcells/Belichick Giants redefined the rush LB with Lawrence Taylor, came in the ’90s when Steelers’ DC Dick LeBeau redefined the roles of the 3-4 linemen. The Steelers had several undersized DL then and LeBeau adapted by using all of them, including his nose tackles, as cover men in the short zones. This made his pass rushes much harder to predict.

When Ellis’ role in a 3-4 is considered the media and most of us on this site ponder how Ellis would function in a “pure” 3-4, where the front seven plays in static positions — the tackles head up on the offensive tackles and the nose tackle over the center. Ellis’ light weight of 271 lbs. is considered a liability in this formation. Joyner points out that the more effective 3-4s work because they avoid being this predictable. He is seconded by the writers at Pro Football Weekly’s 2005 Annual, who note that most 3-4s these days are either “under” or “over” schemes, where the linemen “cheat” or line up over guards or in gaps. Almost nobody plays the plain vanilla 3-4 that Parcells’ Giants used so effectively with Taylor and Carl Banks 20 years ago.

Ellis has already proven he can play inside in a 4-3. Dallas has been using him as a tackle on rushing downs for years. Given his intelligence and adaptibility, not to mention the adaptibility of the 3-4 as a scheme, perhaps Ellis should not see himself as the square peg in the round hole.

Three In the Ring

After years of cleaning up the backlog of neglected Cowboys from the ’70s (seriously, why weren’t Lee Roy Jordan, Bob Hayes and Rayfield Wright inducted before 1988?), Jerry Jones got his chance to induct some of his players. And he did it in typical Jones’ style, announcing that the famed “Triplets,” Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith would all enter the Cowboys Ring of Honor together. The trio will be inducted at halftime of the Cowboys-Redskins Monday Night game September 19th.

The move should give Irvin a minor boost in his quest to enter the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In recent years the Canton candidacies of Hayes, Wright and Cliff Harris were derailed by critics who pointed out that none had even entered their team’s pantheon.

My thanks to reader Sean who asks, which other ’90s heroes will Jerry induct?

Rumor Hunting

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once claimed of his time in academia that “the arguments were so intense because the stakes were so small.”

A similar argument may be be going on in Dallas. Ranch Report writer and Metroplex sports radio personality Mike Fisher is reporting that a friend of a friend of Greg Ellis heard that Ellis and Parcells had a heated discussion in the coach’s office today. The spat was apparently over Ellis’ role in the 3-4, or rather Ellis’ misgivings over his role in the 3-4 defense.

If the story is true, the coach told Ellis to get bent, or a slight variation on that theme. Ellis apparently (there are way too many apparentlys here) raised the prospect of a trade.

Pardon me if the whole story fails to move me in any way. Read the Fisher piece. It reads like the type of “I’m not sure, but gee my friend heard it third hand, and he’s a good guy, so maybe it’s real” feel that Skip Bayless’ pieces had in the early ’90s.

But even if Fisher happens to have a scoop, so what? Really, what leverage does Ellis have at the moment? He’s got to play hard and if it becomes clear that he’s not a good 3-4 fit, he won’t have to request a trade. Parcells will give it to him. What’s more, Ellis is known 4-3 asset. Parcells should not and will not trade him out of duress. That’s how you get fleeced.

On the other hand, if Ellis pouts and dogs it he’ll damage his chances of leaving, if in fact that’s what he really wants to do.

The pads have yet to be put on, but I’m on the verge of losing some respect for Greg Ellis, if the now many rumors of his disenchantment are true. I don’t want a defensive “leader” who is afraid of a challenge. One who whines before he even gives something new a chance.

Then again, the rumors are likely bogus. It’s mid-July, and the media is every bit as hungry as we are for news.

Bring on camp.

Fresh Crumbs

Clarence Hill of the Star-Telegram offers crumbs of info for a hungry Cowboys nation today. Among the morsels:

Larry Allen may move to right tackle, but it is not a certainty. Cowboys VP Stephen Jones tells Hill that the team will put its five best o-linemen on the field, in some combination.

FS Damien Robinson will not be signed now. The team will wait to see how Izell Reece, Lynn Scott, Keith Davis and Justin Beriault perform.

Quincy Morgan’s shoulder rehab is progressing on schedule and he should be 100% for camp.

Hill offers a correction on the compensation for Pete Hunter: Dallas will receive a sixth in 2007 or a fifth rounder in 2006 if Hunter meets certain incentives. The years had previously been reported in reverse.

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