Football
We have less than a week to go until the Dallas Cowboys report to training camp in Oxnard, California. For all intents and purposes football season is here.
As exciting as it is to finally get some information about this team following months in the relative darkness, there are some things that we are looking to answer first and foremost once toe meets ball.
What are we looking to answer at the very beginning? The offseason addressed a number of our concerns, but it would be unfair to say that all things have been tended to and that there is nothing left to do. These are three questions lingering with California a stone’s throw away.
At what point will the Micah Parsons extension happen?
There are very few things that garner 90-95% agreement from the entire Dallas Cowboys fanbase. The following sentence falls into that category:
A Micah Parsons extension with the Dallas Cowboys is inevitable.
We agree here, right? With this being the case, it begs a residual question that we have yet to answer and that is when exactly this is going to happen.
History suggests that we are in for a bit of a longer wait. CeeDee Lamb’s deal happened after the Oxnard portion of camp concluded and Dak Prescott’s came in on the day that the season began. Given that those are the last two data points to look at here, any idea that this is happening early on into camp would run counter to the current at play.
In the past we as a fanbase have assumed that a camp beginning would push things over the goal line like they did with the deals that Tyron Smith and Travis Frederick got back in the day (Zack Martin to an extent the first time around). As noted that has not happened with Lamb, Prescott (either time) or Martin the second time around. There is more data to suggest that more time is going to be required here.
If I had to throw out a full guess it would be that Oxnard comes and goes without any action.
What is the situation at cornerback?
Let’s say that Trevon Diggs and Shavon Revel both avoid the PUP list. In this world let’s also assume that DaRon Bland looks solid and that Kaiir Elam plays like he did in Gainesville. If these things happen then the state of the cornerback room is pretty solid.
But what if Diggs and Revel both land on PUP? That won’t be the end of the world in any way, but it will invite some concern. What’s more is it is (obviously) possible that Elam could play like the player that Buffalo was willing to move on from and that DaRon Bland could just be so-so. Suddenly things feel grim.
These are admittedly opposite ends of the spectrum but they exemplify just how intense of a reality the Cowboys secondary could be in at any given moment. Football is a battle of attrition so it is possible that they are at both of these points at some point across the season, but the point of the exercise was questions that we don’t have the answer to.
This answer could be great. Or it could be not great.
How are we missing whatever it is that we will kick ourselves over?
A week or two into training camp we are going to reach a place and have a thought or question where we look back and realize it was staring us in the face all along. Future hindsight is always 20/20.
What is that thing? What is the thing that is incredibly obvious to us at this moment in time that our future selves will be mad at us for missing?
I’ll acknowledge that this isn’t exactly Not In Front Of Us, but my answer is the state of the running back position. About a week into camp there could be reports that nobody is necessarily separating as the leader of the pack and even though that feels pretty obvious in this moment, that future hypothetical could crystalize it.
Perhaps it is something else. Maybe the future hindsight is going to see all sorts of warts that we mistook for sunshine and rainbows. The most important thing is that we are finally about to start finding out.
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