In a desperate plea for attention that is the sportswriter’s equivalent of a leaked celebrity sex tape, Calvin Watkins asks whether the Cowboys should trade Dez Bryant. Deserved mockery follows. Still, like a Colombian drug mule who doesn’t want to know what’s in that balloon he swallowed, there is something valuable hidden in Watkins’ asininity.

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Hank Hill convincingly argues in his Fan Post of the Week that our failed season is traceable to failure in evaluating our own roster.  The logical extension of his analysis is to ask why our roster evaluation was so poor. I’m bored by the easy talk-show answer ("Jerry sucks. He needs to hire a Real Football Man as GM"). In the Land of Realistic Solutions, this offseason we will go to war with the GM we have. Bill Polian ain’t walking in the door. So the constructive question is: "are there systemic biases in our player evaluation that can be corrected by our existing front office personnel?"

I believe the answer is yes.

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In 5Blings season preview, he dubbed 2010 "The Year of Jerry." He's right, and it has the makings of an epic disaster. Worst of all, the course correction that we would hope would happen appears to be nowhere in sight, as exemplified by Jerry's quote in response to why he's keeping Buehler as PK despite even Wade saying his confidence was ebbing: "Because I want to."

http://espn.go.com/blog/dallas/cowboys/post/_/id/4672346/owners-instincts-say-keep-david-buehler

Now, a few more thoughts:

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Everyone is connecting this Dez decision with the bypassing of Moss in 1998, but I think there are more recent NFL draft comparisons...

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Remember where our team was headed before Tony got rolling vs. Carolina in 2006? Remember where our team was headed before Austin got rolling in Kansas City in 2009? The parallels are eerie, and there are reasons for optimism that the success will be sustained.

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For anyone who thinks Wade is an adequate HC, I ask you: even if Wade were 7 years younger, would any NFL team now hire him as a head coach if he were on the open market? Obviously no. I’m not even sure Wade is a good coordinator in the absence of a HC who creates a disciplined organizational culture. I don’t hate on Wade for the aesthetic reasons that some do (Tony Sparano and Rex Ryan are also fat, and I’d much prefer them as coaches.) And I even think Wade’s firing might (marginally) improve our chances this season. So why in the hell am I rooting for him to finish the season? Read on…

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I've been doing this every week, so without further ado...

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Anyone who hasn't watched the Romo video needs to go, and needs to go now. It's highly entertaining, but also highly instructive about what happened during the game. Five thoughts...

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The (mostly stupid) national media has us missing the playoffs, and smarter but still myopic Football Outsiders has us (as usual) at 8-8. Their rationale is that from 2005-2007 Dallas has had really good "injury luck," but we struggled when we had a league average games lost by starters in 2008. The problem is that "games missed by starters" is an imprecise stat. We have about 6 indispensable players (Newman, Romo, Ware, Flozell, Witten, now Ratliff) where the dropoff to backups is huge. Newman missed 8 games and was hobbled in others, Romo missed 3 games but his hand affected his accuracy in others, and Flozell played hurt 1/2 the year.

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It's obvious that when it comes to Romo, people's strong feelings about the Cowboys color their views somewhat. This post is dedicated to them.

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Short thought: the Eagles are the 2nd best team in the NFC, and have a chance to be the best in the NFC by the end of the year. Still, sometimes it's hard to have perspective on one's own team, particularly after a tough loss. So allow me to give you three positives and three negatives that go beyond the obvious "Desean Jackson is good!" stuff...

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