What A Difference This Time

Pro Bowl News

SAN ANTONIO - My, my, what a difference four years makes.

OK, the Alamodome hasn't changed. There's still no sunlight in here. There's still people everywhere down and around the Riverwalk. And these San Antonioans still are crazy about their Cowboys, people actually showing up here at the Dome at noon when the doors weren't going to open until 6 for the Kick-off Spectacular starting at 7. Man.

But we're talking football here, the Dallas Cowboys, who will embark Wednesday on yet another era of too many eras since last winning a Super Bowl title during the 1995 season when training camp officially begins with a 2:30 p.m. practice.

Last time we were here in 2003, Bill Parcells' first season, the Cowboys were coming off three consecutive 5-11 seasons and hadn't had a winning season the past four.

Last time we were here the Cowboys weren't positively sure just who their starting quarterback would be, Quincy Carter and Chad Hutchinson going head to head for the job, and now they aren't even in the league anymore.

Last time Larry Allen and Bill Parcells were butting heads, Allen spending the majority of his Riverwalk experience riding a stationary bike, the forerunner to last year's you-know-who, and now he's not even on the team anymore.

Last time Troy Hambrick was the starting running back, and he, too, is no longer in the league.

Last time the Cowboys had defensive starters named Willie Blade, Dexter Coakley and Mario Edwards, and as far as we can tell, they no longer are in the league either, and of the 22 usual starters that season, only three still are with the team on defense (Greg Ellis, Terence Newman, Roy Williams) and three on offense (Flozell Adams, Andre Gurode, Terry Glenn).

Last time the Cowboys were here they had one Pro Bowler returning from the previous season, matching their fewest in a single season since none in 1989.

Last time we were here the Cowboys were coming off a season ranked 30th in offense, 31st in passing offense and having scored a whopping 217 points, the fewest since scoring 204 in the 1-15 season of 1989.

The last time . . . well, you get the idea right, pathetic. This had been a franchise crippled by its yearning to recapture a past it never could no matter how hard it tried, causing enormous hits instead to the salary cap and consequently the organization's pride.

What a mess.

So when Cowboys owner Jerry Jones spoke of a "new era" here on Tuesday when the Cowboys officially kicked off their training camp return to San Antonio with an hour-long press conference, it wasn't as if the Cowboys were starting from scratch all over again.

On the contrary. While they might have a new head coach, Texas native Wade Phillips taking over for the now retired Parcells, and a new season-opening starting quarterback, Tony Romo almost assuredly continuing his 10-game starting streak from the end of last season, their intent is to continue progressing onward and upwards.

All causing Jones, who seems tickled to death he has a Texas native who played his high school and college ball within the state's borders and who also coached in high school, college and pros in the Lone Star state, to claim he's "fired up."

Now it would not be earth-shaking to say Jones is optimistic heading into the start of training camp. In fact, he kind of outed himself on that.

"By nature I come out of the shower optimistic," Jones said. "I go in that shower sometimes so low - lower than a crippled cricket's butt. OK? Now all I'm trying to say to you is that it is not natural to be optimistic all the time. I work on that. I really work on that real hard. So I do it to help maybe things move along."

Well, look, no matter what a soul says, Parcells help things move along from where they once were, and Jones ticked off in rapid-fire fashion exactly why he seems so, well, "optimistic" once again:

* He likes the prospects of entering the season with the player (DeMarcus Ware) who set the club record for sacks by a linebacker (11½) last year.
* He likes having seven returning Pro Bowl players, the most since the 1996 season.
* He likes that his quarterback, Tony Romo, is the first NFC East quarterback not named Donovan McNabb to be named to the Pro Bowl this decade.
* He especially likes that Tony Romo became the Cowboys' first Pro Bowl quarterback since Troy Aikman last held that honor in 1996.
* He likes the team is returning two guys coming off 1,000-yard receiving seasons and a running back coming off a 1,000-yard rushing season - only the second time that's happened in club history and the first since 1979.
* He likes that Julius Jones is the team's first 1,000-yard rusher since Emmitt Smith last turned the trick in 2001, and that Terrell Owens led the league with 13 touchdown catches, matching the second-most in club history, and that backup running back Marion Barber led the NFC with 14 rushing touchdowns, most by a Cowboys player since Smith stuffed a club-record 25 into the end zone in 1995.
* He likes that his team scored 425 points last year, most since that 1995 season.
* Jones didn't say this, but certainly he liked what he saw from his defense over the first 11 games last year, resting there ranked fourth in the NFL.
* And darn tootin' Jones likes that his team is coming off consecutive winning seasons for the first time since 1995-96, that it's constructed three winning seasons in the past four years for the first time since 1995-98 and that it has been to the playoffs in two of the past four seasons.

That's progress, and Jones is excited, and while this is not a perfect team heading into Wednesday's first workout of training camp by no means, this certainly seems to be a team on the right track.

Now I'm guessing there are 31 other teams rather optimistic at this point, er, maybe just 30, since the Atlanta Falcons can't be feeling too good about losing quarterback Michael Vick indefinitely and possibly for good, and the fact star running back Warrick Dunn just underwent back surgery the other day. How much should one team have to take?

So for proper perspective on just where this Cowboys team is today, please scan back; please realistically see the progress. Because man, when I look back to the start of that 2003 training camp and recall where this team Parcells inherited was and where it had been, this had been the first time since 1986-90 this club had experienced four consecutive non-winning seasons since the five 1986-90.

Progress has been made.

And now that handoff to Phillips, unlike most teams' new head coaches, not facing a tear-down-rebuild, but more of an improve. He just needs to run with the team a little bit better.

And you should have seen the smile on the owner's face when Phillips made it perfectly clear he's not just happy to be a head coach once again, only the third time he's had that opportunity in this his 31st year of coaching.

"I will go down as a great defensive coach, but I'd like to go down as a great head coach," Phillips said somewhat surprisingly since he normally seems so modest and understated. "And I'm going to do it for him."

So a 60-year-old guy who has worked in coaching 30 years and has been in the NFL since 1976 is still trying to prove himself? Still has the fire in his belly, not looking at this as some ease-into-retirement job or a lark coming off his couch?

"Sure, sure, I think I can prove I'm one of the best coaches in the National Football League," Phillips said, eventually pointing out, "this is a great opportunity for me and a great opportunity for the players."

All meaning, this is a great opportunity for the Dallas Cowboys to capitalize on what's been of late. And what's been of late is incredibly better than what was here when Parcells last got a glimpse of the Riverwalk.