The 2011 NFL season is over and it is time to turn our attention to the 2012 Draft.

ESPN’s Todd McShay has just released his first, of what will be many, mock drafts and he has the Cowboys taking troubled cornerback Janoris Jenkins from North Alabama in the first round. Jenkins was kicked off the team at Florida for various offenses.

Jenkins performed well during Senior Bowl practices but his off-the-field issues make him a risk, but McShay said this about him:

“Corner is a top need area, and Jenkins proved at the Senior Bowl that he’s still an elite cover corner after spending a year at the Division II level. Dallas will need to get comfortable with his character issues, though, including legal issues that led to his dismissal from the Florida program.”

While Jerry Jones has not shied away from drafting players with troubled pasts (see Dez Bryant), Jason Garrett has said previously that he doesn’t want players with off-the-field problems in his locker room.

The problem I have with Jenkins is not his off field problems it is his position. It was pretty clear last season that the Cowboys needed help on the offensive line.

And that is the line of thinking that Mel Kiper is pursuing in his first Mock Draft. Kiper has the Cowboys taking Stanford guard David DeCastro with their pick (McShay has DeCastro going to Arizona at No. 13).

What position would you like to see the Cowboys address with their first round pick in the draft?

Check out this quote from Tiger Woods about Tony Romo’s golf game:

“He’s just so fired up about playing.  He’s a hell of a golfer to begin with. He’s a scratch golfer. To him, this is like a dream come true for him to come out and play in this type of event.”

“He wants to not just make the cut.  He wants to win the tournament, so he’s trying to figure out, ‘How many birdies I need to make and blah blah blah.’ And I said, ‘OK, well, why don’t we just both play well at the same time.’”

Honestly?  I wish that Romo worked as hard on his quarterback play as he does on his golf game.  Since the Cowboys didn’t have a great year, they are in the same division as the team that won the Super Bowl, and we don’t see any end in sight to the Cowboys being mediocre, I think it’s time to put our feet down with Romo.  He needs to stop being so selfish and work harder at being a better quarterback. Isn’t that what Brady, Manning x2, Big Ben, and Rodgers do?  I’m not saying you can’t have fun or do things for recreation, but I’m starting to wonder if he works harder at golf than he does at football.

It’s not endearing anymore because the Cowboys aren’t successful.  He’s got a lot to prove and I think he should be texting and calling Steve Young, Roger Staubach, and Joe Montana more than he’s calling or texting Tiger Woods.

Let’s hope that he gets over the golf thing because it’s getting in the way of football.  I know, I sound like a total lunatic, but I don’t think I can stand this much longer.  He needs to get his head on straight, by playing football.

The NFC East has won the Super Bowl again!  I know, it’s not the Cowboys, but there is something to be said for divisional pride.  I have a friend who is a lifelong Redskins fan, and he posted on Facebook, “Hail to the Redskins.  We beat the Super Bowl champions twice this season.”  He’s right, and I think he’s got a point about divisional pride.  The NFC East is pretty stinking good.

Now, what do you do when your divisional rivals are winning and you are not?  Copy them.  That’s pretty much the only way to do this.  You can pretend like it doesn’t matter and you can continue to go about your business as you always do, but it might be smart to start to do business the way they are doing it.

Now, you can’t get Eli Manning, but there is this other thing out there…Peyton Manning.  Since we’re talking about copying the most successful team in your division, get a quarterback called Manning, get a GM that is as wise as Jerry Reese, put in roleplayers like the Giants do, and make sure that you always have depth on defense.  Sure, DeMarcus Ware is awesome, but we’re talking about major depth.

So, could the Cowboys copy the Giants?  Yes.  Will they?  No.  However, getting a Manning for a quarterback, even if it only lasts for a couple of seasons, might be enough to squeak out a Super Bowl title before he retires.  You know Peyton wants to win another one, so why wouldn’t you strongly consider it?  I know, I know, you’ve got Romo, but, come on.  You could draft RG3, sit him behind Manning, waive Romo, and then all would be well.

It would be a very good beginning for a very proud franchise that is in the best division in football today.

Retired star running back Tony Dorsett is one of more than 300 former players suing the National Football League. Dorsett is one of more than a dozen plaintiffs in concussion-related lawsuits with the NFL.

Dorsett says that the league pressured injured players to “get back out” on the field, causing long-term brain damage.

Dorsett recalls a helmet-to-helmet shot that knocked him out cold in the second quarter of a 1984 Cowboys-Eagles game, the hardest hit he ever took during his career.

“Did they know it was a concussion?” he asked rhetorically. “They thought I was half-dead.”

He spread two pages’ worth of brain scans on his coffee table and says doctors told him that red regions in the color-coded scan mean he is not getting enough oxygen in the left lobe of his brain, the part associated with organization and memory. He already forgets people’s names or why he walked into a room or where he’s heading while driving on the highway, and fears his memory issues are getting worse.

“I don’t want to get to the point where it turns into dementia, Alzheimer’s. I don’t want that,” says Dorsett, who ran for 12,739 yards, the eighth-highest total in league history. He is, in that moment, sad and deflated — in others, pumped up and angry, fists flying to punctuate his words. “There’s no doubt in my mind that … what I went through as a football player is taking an effect on me today. There’s no ifs, ands or buts about that. I’m just hoping and praying I can find a way to cut it off at the pass.”

DeMarcus Ware was heavily involved with the Cowboys defense last season which struggled a lot throughout the year. The ‘Boys conceded an average of just over 21 points a game last season, a number that Rob Ryan would have wanted lower.

When Rob Ryan joined the Cowboys as defensive coordinator from the Cleveland Browns, Cowboys fans were optimistic that he could turn the defense into a very strong unit. Over the course of the season, Ryan showed glimpses of what he was about as he held the Patriots to 20 points at Gillette stadium, and contained the Bills at Cowboys Stadium, conceding just 7 points.

Ultimately, Ryan and the defensive unit struggled to gain any consistency throughout the season and struggled against some of the best offenses in the league.

DeMarcus Ware and Jay Ratliff were the 2 players to represent the Cowboys at the recent pro bowl game in Hawaii. They both had great seasons personally, with Ware racking up 19.5 sacks on the season. Sean Lee, the linebacker in just his second season in the NFL, had an awesome season and would have felt unlucky not to have earned a spot in the pro-bowl.

When interviewed at the event in Hawaii, DeMarcus Ware first spoke about the differences between Rob Ryan and Wade Phillips as coaches. He said, “It was a little bit simpler with Wade, he relies a lot on the pass rush. With Rob Ryan, I’m going to say he’s more pass coverage – cover twos and fours – he has a lot of diverse things that he always brings. Like, he’ll have Jay dropping, me rushing, guys mixing it up, a sort of disguise, and that was a big difference.”

He is also spoke about his feelings towards next years campaign, saying, “I think it’s going to be a big improvement having Rob Ryan for a whole another camp and a whole another year, knowing his system, knowing really what’s going on. Having Jason Garrett, the leader, that motivational guy for us, I think it’s going to all just pan out next season.”

So, Ware feels an extended period of time in the off-season with Rob Ryan should do the trick for the Cowboys. I feel Ryan will do a good job with the talented bunch of players that he has at his fingertips. In terms of the offense, they are a team that can be sublime but aren’t quite there yet. If you consider each player on an individual basis, there is some great talent; Tony Romo, Dez Bryant, DeMarco Murray, Miles Austin, Laurent Robinson and Jason Witten to name the majority. They are all phenomenal players, but weren’t on the same page as each other last season.

Ok, the Giants are in the Super Bowl, and though it is hard to watch a team from your division go to the Super Bowl, there is a little bit of pride in the fact that your division has such good teams.  It begs the question:

Is the NFC East as good as we all pretend that it is?

Well, let’s forgive the Cowboys their faults for a minute and realize that they are relevant and they do not suck.  They have good players, and people know they are dangerous.

The Giants, Redskins, and the Eagles occupy the other four slots in the NFC East.  Granted, the division didn’t put three teams in the playoffs like the AFC North, so I’m not saying that the division is the best.  I am saying that we should consider how good the division is.

Each team in the division is relevant no matter what they do.  Everyone will talk about the Redskins, Eagles, Giants, and Cowboys even if they’re all so bad that the division winner is deemed not good enough to go to the playoffs.  That’s how it works.

The best division in football is the AFC North, but the most intriguing division is the East.  The Eagles are a mess, but they always play tough games with their division rivals.  There are no cupcakes in this division, like Cleveland, and that makes this division number two.  When we see NFC East games, I always say that it’s like two boxers standing in place and punching each other in the face.  They just keep taking a beating until the game ends.  That’s how the Giants go to the Super Bowl.

Next year, it could be the Cowboys, that’s why there’s always hope.  We know that teams in this division are just that dangerous.  What, with 11 Super Bowls in the division, you have to take them seriously.

A big deal in Dallas was that the Cowboys hired an OC who wasn’t going to call plays.  Remember that?  Bill Callahan comes to town, he’s had better offenses (and better quarterbacks) than Jason Garrett, but somehow Garrett thinks he needs to call the plays.  I don’t quite get it, but now he says he might give up the play-calling duties someday, just not right now.  However, his explanation is a little bit odd:

“Absolutely, absolutely.  I think you just get to a point where, ‘Hey, I’m going to turn that over to somebody else,’ and you’ve seen that around the league at different times and that’s just part of the process that we’ll go through.”

“I think that[shifting play-calling duties] would have been disruptive to our team.  I think it’s important to be consistent through the good times and some of the times where you struggle a little bit and you certainly want to make change when things don’t go well. We feel like the way we want to progress going forward (is) just keeping the structure in place the way it’s been.”

“I think that’s something that will evolve and that probably evolves for a lot of head coaches as they grow into their role more and more as they assemble the staffs around them.”

“So again our starting points will be how it’s been in the past both in terms of how we set it up in the offseason each week and during the game but I have a tremendous amount of confidence in him and his role will be significant and we’ll see how the whole thing evolves.”

Wait a minute, you mean that you “might give turn that over to someone else” because you’re somehow doing Bill Callahan a favor?  Listen, you need to think really hard before you start patronizing a guy who was running the offense Rich Gannon went to the Super Bowl in.  You can’t do this week-to-week.  You have to get smart and make a good move to make the team more efficient.

This shows a lack of wisdom and it concerns me greatly.  Garrett needs to get over himself.  In a hurry.

Jon Kitna, the Cowboys back-up quarterback for 3 years, said that the 2011-12 season would be his last in the NFL. A back injury meant he missed the last 7 games of the recent campaign and now he has told the Cowboys that he will not be playing next season for definite. Being 39 years of age and the oldest quarterback in the league last season, Kitna’s retirement was around the corner.

He had a very brief stint last season for the ‘boys, coming on for the injured Tony Romo at Candlestick Park to face the 49ers. Despite hitting Miles Austin for a touchdown, Kitna also threw 2 interceptions, which Romo didn’t like the look of. Romo returned to the game despite the bad injury and famously lead the team to victory in OT, which meant Kitna’s last pass in the NFL was an interception.

He represented 4 different franchises in the NFL, playing for the Seahawks, Bengals, Lions and Cowboys and also received the MVP award for the World Bowl in 1997. Kitna had a pretty decent career playing in 15 seasons, recording 29,747 yards and QB rating of 77.4, but struggled to gain any solidity as a starter.

Kitna only had a decent run of games for the Cowboys when Romo went down with a broken clavicle in October 2010. He filled in pretty well as he showed his experience to throw 2000 yards and 16 touchdowns in 9 games, recording a 4-5 record. Kitna couldn’t force Romo out of the starting role though as he took a seat on the bench for the following season, something he did for a lot of his career in the NFL.

Kitna’s retirement now leaves 2 quarterbacks in Dallas, Tony Romo and Stephen McGee. I feel Romo is a hugely talented quarterback and is the man to lead the franchise for a few more years. McGee played pretty much a full game against the Eagles in the penultimate game of the regular season last year and showed glimpses of what he can provide at quarterback. It will be very interesting to see if the Cowboys try and get a quarterback in the upcoming draft or whether they will look to strengthen other aspects of their game such as the secondary which seriously struggled at times last season.

The Dallas Cowboys got off to a slow start in the 2011-12 season, going 2-3 in their first 5 games. However, in game 6, the introduction of a rookie was potentially going to get the ball rolling for the Cowboys and push them towards a playoff spot.

The youngster out of Oklahoma burst onto the scene against the St Louis Rams in week 6. He recorded a massive 91 yard touchdown run which made up a large part of his 253 yards in 25 carries, setting a record for the franchise in running yards a game. His sublime performance showed agility, instinct and a good football brain.

After the opening night loss to the New York Jets at the MetLife Stadium, Tony Romo received a lot of criticism from the Cowboys fan base after not closing the game out with a lead late in the fourth quarter. A game later, Romo suffered a broken rib and punctured lung, but remarkably came back onto the field to lead the Cowboys to an overtime win in San Francisco.

Despite the injury, Romo played the next few games but looked very uncomfortable and struggled to hit receivers regularly. When Murray was introduced into the team, I really thought that he was the changing point of the season. He introduced a brilliant running game that the Cowboys didn’t seem to have with Felix Jones and gave Romo another option on offense to release the pressure on himself.

For anybody who thought that Murray’s standout performance against the Rams was a stroke of luck, he proved them wrong as he went on to record another 2 100 yard games. He racked up a total of 897 yards and 2 touchdowns in 164 attempts before breaking his right ankle in the 37-34 loss to the New York Giants. This turned out to be a huge blow going into the final 3 games, which were make or break for the Cowboys.

Murray’s injury allowed a refreshed Felix Jones to return into the line-up at the backend of the season. To be fair to him, Jones looked good and made some great runs but couldn’t prevent the Cowboys from not making the postseason.

DeMarco Murray was definitely a shining light in what was yet again a poor season for the Cowboys. His consistent performances throughout the year suggest that he will be an elite player for Dallas for years to come. Murray will play under Bill Callahan next season after he was recently given the offensive coordinator role in Arlington.

It’s good when the Cowboys make moves to improve the team, especially on offense, but this is a slightly confusing move.  Bill Callahan was to replace Hudson Houck, and now he is going to be offensive coordinator.  However, he won’t be calling plays.  If Garrett is still calling the plays, what changes?  What is going to be the difference this time around?  I don’t get it.

The problem with Jason Garrett is that he cannot run the clock properly.  He also cannot balance that and calling the plays.  Basically, the things on his plate that needed to be separated, aren’t separated.  They are still there on the plate.  When you want to get your peas away from your mashed potatoes, do you simply move the whole dish to another plate?   No.  You move one item to another plate.

Having Bill Callahan on the staff is good for Garrett, but that doesn’t mean that he can solve problems he will not be charged with.  Unless he’s going to stand right there next to Garrett and whisper in his ear what to do next, then I don’t know what to say.  It’s the kind of thing that I just can’t wrap my head around.

Callahan has been more successful, I guess, than Jason Garrett.  However, calling him in to coach the offensive line, coordinate an offense where he doesn’t call the plays, and possibly teach Jason Garrett to manage the clock does not sound like a really good combination of responsibilities.

Every step we take, I feel like the Cowboys just don’t get it.  They don’t understand that there have to be certain roles filled by certain people.  They don’t understand people’s weaknesses.  They don’t understand how to put a staff together.

I hope this works, but I am not optimistic at all.