One old friend in particular is a woman in her forties who gets more fanatical during a game than her Pomeranians get over the FedEx man. When asked her thoughts on preseason, she told me the games inspired no faith in her. She was exasperated with the team, and it wasn’t even Labor Day. I asked the waiter for more Dr. Pepper and chips.

Look. I’m not going to sit here in the darkness of my efficiency apartment in my pajama pants I haven’t washed in weeks with the Cheeto stains on the top of the thighs and tell you things are fine, like a false Israelite prophet right before the Babylonians come to town. Heck, the Babylonians may still come to town and wreck us over and take us off into captivity. I heard it’s not so bad these days now that they have satellite TV.

All I aim to do with this article is empower you with knowledge; to set on your T-zone a pair of spectacles to help you see reality. I did the same thing back during free agency when everyone wanted to crown every single one of our free agents as great, accomplished, and the answer to our woes. Whenever the fans want to leap over turnstiles and panic over aliens, I want to point out it’s just an Orson Welles radio broadcast. Whenever they want to put a ring on Jamize Olawale’s finger and genuflect before him, I want to point out what a tofu messiah he is for the time being and give it some time.

With apologies to Walter Cronkite, here’s the way it is.

Gerald Sensabuagh's interception against the Raiders was nice to view, but ultimately not that purposeful in preseason play.

Our skill positions aren’t going to do anything spectacular in the preseason. Historically, Romo’s preseason statistics have been trash, usually getting around 300 yards, a touchdown, and a pick for the four games. His touchdowns per attempt, his yards per attempt, and his interceptions per attempt have all been better in the regular season than the preseason. Not every player is going to be like Demarco Murray, clamoring for more preseason action. It’s going to be tempered and uninspiring.

The “Offensive” Line

We do have a special instance this year because of the injuries sustained along the offensive line. The poor play along the offensive line is due to injuries to projected starters. David Arkin isn’t going to be our starting center. Even so, his primary responsibility in training camp and preseason has been to take care of the ball, then worry about his block assignments. And don’t forget that this is the first time David Arkin has played center in his career.

With injuries to Costa, Livings, Bernadeau, Kowalski, and Nagy (who is now with the Lions), you’ve got guys who normally wouldn’t be playing with the first team starting along the offensive line. When you’ve got third-teamers going against guys like Tommy Kelly, sadly, you should expect Romo to get plastered and the run stuffed.

If you look at the starters along the offensive line, whatever starters we have not either battling for a position or their health, they are doing fine. Tyron Smith is holding his own at left tackle. Things will be steady on the left side.

Does this mean our interior offensive line, when healthy, will open up running lanes for Murray and create a clean pocket for Romo? Who knows? But it means David Arkin starting at center more than likely won’t be the norm. We should have a bevy of guys healthy and playing ahead of him.

Wait a Secondary…

It appears to be so exciting when you look at our secondary, whether on paper or on some screen shot from Madden ’13. We’ve got Claiborne, Carr, Jenkins, and Scandrick. We should be shutting down everyone; not so much as a pass should be caught. However, the reality is our secondary really isn’t going to be playing press coverage or doing anything significant until Opening Night against the Giants. Pretty much all you can gauge for now is how they actually track the ball in the air as opposed to face-guarding the receiver and still the no-name wideout from Dodge City Community College makes a grab on 3rd and Infinity.

How Then Should We Watch?

Preseason is about position battles. It’s basically one, big four-episode reality show of how to make the Dallas Cowboys. Even if you think a position is set for years due to who’s starting on the first team, as in the case with quarterback, you can still watch the lower people battle it out for that third string spot. See, these lower tier players aren’t competing against their peers in the position for a roster spot. They’re also competing against other players outside their position. If you’re a Z-string wide receiver, you’re trying to not only make plays in the fourth quarter, but also hustling on special teams so Garrett will choose you over the projected sixth cornerback.

Pick a position and evaluate it.

The most popular position this season to evaluate is the third wide receiver role. There are so many pet cats in that race Jerry Jones might as well strike a deal with Petco or do a halftime show with ASPCA guilt-tripping us on the Jerrytron. You’ve got Kevin Ogletree battling to stay on the roster without at all contributing on special teams. You’ve got Cole Beasley darting around trying to catch passes and fielding tough punt returns. You’ve got Andre Holmes catching everything that’s thrown to him. You’ve got Dwayne Harris steadily making plays to make some noise. You’ve even got nobodies like Tim Benford giving the coaches a reason to give him consideration to make the team.

Another good position battle to watch, even though the cameras don’t track the trenches all that well, is defensive line. We’ve got veterans and younger players battling each other to stay onboard down there. There are the usual perps like Sean Lissemore and Jason Hatcher getting their snaps. Then, you’ve got guys like Marcus Spears and Kenyon Coleman fighting for their roster spots, let alone a starting position. It’s also a chance to see what third-round pick Tyrone Crawford can contribute to the defensive line.

In the preseason, there’s always something to watch besides football.

Don’t let the first team foibles aggravate you or give you a downcast disposition for this season. It’s not that they’re being “vanilla” so much as it is we don’t have the right personnel healthy out there to show anything significant. But we do have some good individual players making plays and lower tier players trying to make the team. Team play in the preseason is like Vegas: what happens there stays there.

It’s what happens on Wednesday night that counts.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I’d like to thank the venerable Couchscout for his insights on the offensive line and the secondary. I’d also like to thank Nation for his preseason stats on our boy Romo. If I were running a Cowboys cult, I would wrest their work as my own. But since I’m a scholar, I have to cite my fellow colleagues in the Cowboys underground media.

In this edition, we’ll be looking at arguably the most gut-wrenching loss these current Dallas Cowboys have given unto the fans. Yeah, I know – there’s so many to choose from with this bunch. But the 2007 NFC Divisional Playoff loss to the eventual Super Bowl Champions, the New York Giants, was devastating. First, the fact I referred to them as Super Bowl Champions says it all; that could have been us. Secondly, we had swept the team during the regular season with aerial assaults and the average margin of victory being 10.5 points. Thirdly, it helped extend our seasons without a playoff win to eleven, which was probably the only statistic the microcephalics in the Dallas-Fort Worth media could quote for the next two seasons. Although, you’ll notice they’ve modified it since 2010 to “only one playoff win in X seasons,” which makes them a combination of Herbert Robbins and Demosthenes all in one pair of slacks and a smart phone.

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Let’s not get crazy with the premise of if Jimmy Johnson staying as our head coach. I know some fans think to this day he should leave the comedic FOX NFL Sunday set and use his extensive knowledge to naturally enhance the Cowboys’ performance as coach. So I’m not going to go there. The parameters of this article are that Jimmy Johnson finishes out his original ten-year contract Jerry Jones gave him in 1989. So we’re only going to speculate on what occurred from 1994 to 1998.

Jimmy Johnson was a radical departure from Tom Landry. He didn’t dress the same as Landry. He had more hair than Landry. Jimmy put football above family, as evidenced by his divorce when he took the Cowboys’ job in 1989. He was outspoken and flamboyant. His success was immediate and temporary. His tenure was only a sixth of what Landry had put into the organization, yet he equal Landry in the number of Super Bowls. Just about the only similarity that Jimmy Johnson and Tom Landry shared was their state of birth. Other than that, they were as opposite as Liberace and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Cowboys fans will never forget where they were when Jimmy Johnson dubiously resigned from the Dallas Cowboys in a “mutual decision.” I think I was trying to beat Jurassic Park for the Sega Genesis or avoiding the outdoors due to my fear of monarch butterflies. Like any tragic event, it always leads people to wonder what the path might have been had the unfortunate happenings not occurred. But I want to change it up especially for this article and talk about what would have transpired the same nonetheless

HOW THINGS WOULD BE THE SAME

1. The Cowboys Don’t Win 3 or 4 Super Bowls in a Row — That’s a favorite amongst fans with a casual knowledge of the team. They think if only we would have had Jimmy Johnson in the 1994 NFC Championship game, why, his impenetrable hair would have propelled us to victory and somehow prevented Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin, and Kevin Williams’ fark-ups from putting 21 points on the board for the 49ers. That’s number one. Second off, very few fans are aware of how burned out Jimmy Johnson was by 1994, and it had nothing to do with Jerry Jones, Big Oil, the military-industrial complex, Nixon, aliens, fluoridated water, or any other hot button issue on Coast to Coast AM. It had to do with the media. When Jimmy Johnson won a Super Bowl, the question immediately became whether or not he could win two in a row. You ever noticed how Sean Payton, Mike McCarthy, and Jon Gruden never had those questions asked of them? Even Landry didn’t have that question asked of him after he led the Cowboys to a Super Bowl VI victory. Jimmy Johnson never had that honeymoon, and Jay Novacek and Mark Stepnoski attested to how tense and cranky Jimmy Johnson was under the pressure. Cutting a Curvin Richards was commonplace in 1993. 1994 would have been a burnout year for Jimmy Johnson and the Cowboys.

2. Michael Irvin Still Gets Busted for Cocaine — “The White House” may have been at its height under Barry Switzer, but Michael Irvin was not there for his arrest; he was at a Dallas hotel celebrating his birthday. Yes, Michael Irvin was indubitably the vocal leader and held players accountable, but he was a party animal off the field ever since arriving with the Dallas Cowboys, who have sex appeal like you can’t imagine. It wouldn’t have mattered who the coach was. Eventually, Irvin was going to get caught. It took ’til 1996 for it to happen. There was nothing Jimmy Johnson or anybody could do to stop it.

3. Free Agency Still Threatens the Cowboys’ Unity — One of the big challenges facing the Dallas Cowboys in the mid-’90s was free agency. And it didn’t matter which one of 500 coaches Jerry Jones hired; this was going to be the new reality for America’s Team and the rest of the NFL. The whole question would come down to how Jimmy Johnson would handle it. But it would still be a significant enough part of the league that he would have to deal with it.

HOW THINGS WOULD BE DIFFERENT

1. More Super Bowls — Just because I said we wouldn’t win 3 out of 4 Super Bowls doesn’t mean the Cowboys couldn’t have added more under Jimmy Johnson’s tenure. He would have had the team competitive and still preached accountability and had a system in place that no business decision-making cornerback could have disrupted. A good comparison would have been the ’70s Steelers. In the years they weren’t winning the most Super Bowls thanks to poor officiating, the ’70s Steelers were still at least achieving a divisional playoff berth. I think the ’94-’98 Cowboys would have done the same under Jimmy Johnson. And it’s all about being in the dance. As long as you’re in the playoffs, you always have a chance to win the Super Bowl.

2. Mike Woicik Stays — Remember when Barry Switzer sent Chris Boniol out to kick a meaningless field goal against the Green Bay Packers on Monday Night Football in a Week 12 contest in 1996 just so Boniol could have the league record for most field goals in a game? Remember how Reggie White protested the kick and Michael Irvin quarreled with him over it? Well, Mike Woicik, our past and current strength and conditioning coach that many credit with being instrumental in those three Super Bowls in the ’90s, was incensed by that incident. It was the last straw for him; he couldn’t work with Barry Switzer anymore. And this was already after Switzer told Woicik Deion Sanders was exempt from doing his workout routines because he was Deion Sanders. The relationship between Switzer and Woicik became acrimonious. It wouldn’t have under Jimmy because Jimmy made the players respect their coaches.

3. The Drafting Would Have Been Significantly Better — From 1994 to 1998, all Jerry Jones has to show for his drafts are Larry Allen and Dexter Coakley, which is like winning 10-grand at blackjack after losing your life savings, your house, and one of your children to being indentured after coming up short the previous seventy-times-seven hands. How would you have liked to have had Jason Taylor instead of Shante Carver? Or how about Sam Madison replacing Larry Brown and Kevin Smith? It’s highly unlikely Jimmy Johnson would have been swayed by the Jones/Lacewell philosophy at the time to draft backups and special teamers because their stars were already so great. Jimmy Johnson would have been churning that roster.

Come back to The Landry Hat next week when I’ll explore what would have happened if the Cowboys won the 2007 NFC Divisional playoffs against the Giants.