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The most interesting Dallas Cowboys news of the past week had nothing to do with whom they picked or didn't pick in the NFL draft. It was Jerry Jones' post-draft revelation about the increased level of responsibility quarterback Tony Romo now carries. Just a few weeks after signing Romo to a seven-year, $119.5 million contract, Jones said Saturday that Romo would have more input in offensive game-planning throughout the week and play calling in games. That Romo would be spending "Peyton Manning-type time on the job."

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“Tony is more involved in the finished product,” Jones said. “He is more involved, unequivocally. I’m counting that in. That ought to produce some success. It will produce some success. I’m talking about the kind of plays we run, a lot of what we do offensively."

They're not messing around, either. Romo was called in before the draft to review and offer input on some of the players the Cowboys were considering, and the team used its first three draft picks on offensive players to provide support and expanded options for its franchise quarterback.

There are plenty of reasons this makes sense. Romo is an X's and O's nerd whose contribution to the offensive game planning and play calling is likely to be of value. And even if Dallas doesn't end up running the plays he prefers every time, his increased level of investment in the process is likely to help things go more smoothly for him and coach Jason Garrett on game days. This idea is not, on its face, a bad idea.

But it's worth examining what this means for the franchise in the big picture. The Cowboys are now, for better or for worse, all-in on Romo to an unprecedented and precarious extent. Signing him long-term and increasing the power he wields within the building means that Romo, now more than ever, controls the Cowboys' fate for the foreseeable future. The number of things riding on his ability to elevate the team to playoff-caliber and championship-caliber levels has increased dramatically.

Take Garrett, for example. Whether Garrett succeeds as a legitimate NFL head coach rests more than ever on Romo. If Romo isn't up to this new task and the Cowboys flop in 2013, Garrett's job status becomes more tenuous than ever. Maybe Jones doesn't fire him, because he's stubborn and has strong personal feelings for Garrett. But another disappointing year in Dallas would be grist for the theory that Jones is the only one who thinks Garrett has a future as a great NFL coach.

And there's Jones himself, who burst onto the Cowboys' ownership scene way back when as a winner of Super Bowls but has, over the past decade and a half, become the butt of fans' angry jokes and a target of their derision. The extent to which Romo succeeds as Cowboys quarterback is likely to determine whether Jones goes down in Cowboys fans' memory as a perpetually distracted, franchise-wrecking buffoon or whether he can pull a George Steinbrenner-type late-career reputation renaissance.

Romo's success or failure in his expanded role could affect the Hall of Fame chances of DeMarcus Ware. It could determine the career path of Dez Bryant. It will decide the way history views an entire era of Cowboys history -- either paving over the painful memories of flops against the Seahawks and Giants and Vikings and Redskins or allowing them to define a decade's worth of teammates, coaches and anyone else connected with Valley Ranch.

We knew when they signed him to the extension that the Cowboys believed in Romo as their franchise quarterback. He's shown potential for greatness, and their investment in him is their way of saying they believe his ability can and will override his history of falling short in the biggest games. What we didn't know until this past weekend was the unprecedented extent to which the Cowboys were tying their success to Romo as a leader and a football mind.

Given the extent of the financial investment, the importance of the quarterback position in today's game and Romo's own eagerness to participate at this level, it's not a bad move. Offensive play calling has been a problem for the Cowboys, and if you're looking to improve it, why not involve the guy who's got to carry out the plays that are called?

If it works, they'll all be hailed as geniuses during some upcoming Super Bowl week in New Jersey or Arizona or New Orleans or wherever. But in the end, it's still going to come down to the way Romo plays. He and the Cowboys can do all of the improved, streamlined game planning they want to do, but if Romo keeps throwing bad interceptions at the worst possible moments in the biggest games ... well, at this point he's taking everybody down with him.

Let's get this out of the way now: The Dallas Cowboys are not interested in quarterback Tim Tebow. No, not even as a tight end.

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Multiple Cowboys sources gave the answer "no" when asked if the team wanted to sign Tebow. The Cowboys have not been linked to Tebow like the New England Patriots, and you can read about how my guys at ESPNBoston.com answered the Tebow question here.

Adding Tebow to the Cowboys -- and to any team, it seems -- would create a national frenzy.

Let's examine why it's good and bad not to bring him to Valley Ranch. (To be honest, I don't see any good from it).

1. The quarterback spot. Given the public backlash quarterback Tony Romo is receiving for his new contract, if he has a bad game in 2013 -- and believe me he'll have one or two -- it would raise the ire of the fans and push the media into asking coach Jason Garrett about benching Romo for Tebow during a rough performance. Garrett was asked about benching Romo during his five-interception game against Chicago last season when Kyle Orton was the backup. No need to add drama to your team at the quarterback spot. Also, the Cowboys don't seem enamored with using the Wildcat, given the current personnel they have.

2. Moving him to tight end. If Tebow decides to play tight end, he still doesn't fit well. The Cowboys drafted Gavin Escobar, another pass-catching tight end, to add with James Hanna and Jason Witten. The Cowboys need a blocking tight end, and that's not Tebow. While he could become a good blocker over time, his skill set is more of a receiver -- if he makes the position change.

3. Drama, drama, drama. The last thing the Cowboys need is drama. It's one thing to have issues on the field when it comes to wins and losses, but it's another to have Tebow drama. He's a good guy in the locker room, according to ex-teammates, but you have to wonder how his teammates will deal with Tebow getting besieged by reporters on a weekly basis about his thoughts on football and Christianity. It would wear you down after a while.

The way you feel about the Dallas Cowboys' 2013 draft seems to depend on the way you feel about how they handled the first round. Ashley Fox, feels they bungled it badly, and theorizes that they did so because Jerry Jones was distracted by his attendance at the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library earlier in the day.

Now, I understand that Jerry excels at making himself an easy target. And I like Ashley's work. But on this point, I couldn't disagree with her more strongly. The way the Cowboys handled the first round has all the hallmarks of a coherent plan. A distracted decision-maker would have stayed put and taken the highest player on the board at No. 18, even if he didn't think that player was worth such a high pick. What the Cowboys did made sense on a number of levels.

First of all, they trade down with the 49ers, getting the 31st pick of the first round and the 12th pick of the third in exchange for that No. 18 pick. The biggest criticism we've heard is that they should have been able to get more from the 49ers, but different draft-value charts say different things on that and it takes two sides to make a deal. If they didn't have a player they liked at 18 and they saw a chance to get two that they did, then there's nothing wrong with taking that deal.

The player they ended up taking at 31, Wisconsin center Travis Frederick, projects as both an immediate and long-term starter for the Cowboys at either center or one of the guard spots. The second criticism is that they reached for him -- that they could have had him in the second or maybe even the third round. But (a) no one knows that for sure and (b) the 31st pick is practically the second round anyway. It's not as though they took Frederick 10th overall (or even 18th, for that matter). The Cowboys absolutely, 100 percent, more than any team needed anything in this entire draft, needed to come out of the first round with a new starter on the offensive line. They did. And they got an extra third-round pick out of the deal and used it on Baylor wide receiver Terrance Williams, a new vertical threat for Tony Romo in the passing game.

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Along the way, they added second-round tight end Gavin Escobar, who also offers the opportunity to expand their options in the passing game and represents the successor to Jason Witten down the road. With their original third-rounder, they added physical safety J.J. Wilcox, who could push for a starting spot this year. In the fourth they added a cornerback, B.W. Webb, deepening a position at which there's no such thing as too many bodies. In the fifth they took a running back, Joseph Randle, who didn't miss a game in college, to back up the injury-prone DeMarco Murray. And in the sixth they took project linebacker DeVonte Holloman.

They filled needs at good value in rounds two through six, and their second and third picks of the draft will help them add layers to their offense, offering Romo more options from play to play and game to game as his receiving threats become more numerous and varied. If it weren't for the weird way the first round went down, people would be hailing this as a fine draft for the Cowboys. And frankly, too many people are overreacting too strongly to the way the first round went down.

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This was a lousy draft class, people. A bad year. Very little, if any, top-level talent, and if you're picking 18th that puts you in a tough spot. Considering that, and the fact that they needed to get an offensive lineman in the first round, I think the Cowboys acquitted themselves rather coolly. I certainly don't think the way they operated their first round indicates distraction or the lack of a plan. Quite the contrary, in fact.

Fans might be happier today had they gone offensive line again in the second or third round, or if they'd found a defensive tackle early. They could have stayed put at 18 and taken Sharrif Floyd, and perhaps that would have been hailed as a coup, since Floyd had been projected to go much earlier. But this is the part I never get. All we hear going into the draft is how useless all of these projections are, and then while the draft is going on everybody wants to use them to critique the picks. There was some good reason Floyd fell all the way to 23, and Dallas was hardly the only team to pass on him.

If Frederick never starts a game, or turns out to be a bust, then obviously it'll be easy to look back and say the Cowboys bungled this. But in a bad draft year, why not take the players you like instead of the ones the mock-drafters told you to like? I think the Cowboys got five players who could contribute right away, and Frederick could start on their line for the next eight years. I honestly don't see what's to rip.

IRVING, Texas – The Cowboys draft is over but not forgotten, so there’s no time like now than to wonder about things that did and did not happen.

On to 5 Wonders:

** If the Cowboys are going to be a predominantly two-tight end team, like they say they are, then I wonder if they should have taken Notre Dame’s Tyler Eifert at No. 18 and risked the chance that Travis Frederick would be there at No. 47. If they had gone that route, they would have had the best tight end and best center in the draft with their top two picks. The Cowboys had their eyes on Justin Pugh with the No. 31 pick, but he went to the New York Giants at No. 19. They felt Frederick was the final offensive lineman in the draft capable of being a Day 1 starter and did not want to risk losing him or waiting until the second round. That’s a draft for need, which is OK at that point, but Eifert will be somebody worth watching for the next few years.

** I wonder if the Cowboys will alter how they will evaluate defensive lineman after what happened with Sharrif Floyd. He was among the top-10 players on their board, perhaps the highest rated defensive player, and he was staring them in the face with the 18th pick. And they passed on him. Then you hear about the kid’s arm length and lack of sacks. Well, those were things everybody knew before the draft. What it came down to was scheme fit and Floyd wasn’t deemed to fit in what the Cowboys wanted in 4-3 tackles. Had they stuck with the 3-4, then I can almost guarantee they would have selected him. If a player is not a scheme fit, then he just can’t be that high on their draft board.

** I wonder if Jerry Jones understands how even in points of praise he can also hurt. Take Tony Romo as an example. On Friday, Jones said Romo played a part in the selections of Gavin Escobar and Terrance Williams in the second and third rounds. Jones was attempting to show Romo was all-in. Well, what about the current players on the roster at those positions. Should they now think Romo didn’t like them as much? And then Jones said part of the quarterback’s new megadeal meant he had to spend “Peyton Manning time” at the facility. For those who questioned Romo’s commitment, that was all they needed to further their belief that Romo was not fully vested when Romo has always been a “football junkie.”

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**Over the last two years every team in the NFC East has looked at a quarterback-of-the-future/present in the draft. Washington did it last year with Robert Griffin III and also took Kirk Cousins. Philadelphia traded up for the top pick of the fourth round to take Matt Barkley a year after they took Nick Foles. The New York Giants grabbed Ryan Nassib in the fourth round. And the Cowboys chose to pass on the position. Again. Romo turned 33 recently. Kyle Orton is signed through 2014. I wonder if next year is the year the Cowboys look to the quarterback position. No, I do. Really. I had no problem with the club not taking a QB this year, but had Barkley, Nassib and Tyler Wilson dropped to them in the fourth round, I wonder if they would have pulled the trigger this year. Since they passed on Landry Jones, I think we know he wasn’t their guy. Is it too early to think about A.J. McCarron or Aaron Murray or any other QB? And, yes, I realize Johnny Manziel could be draft eligible. A quick aside: For those wondering why the Cowboys didn’t go after Tyler Bray, think about it. His coach, Derek Dooley, is on this staff now. Don’t you think the team would need to know all (stress all) there would be to know? And if the kid panned out at Tennessee, then Dooley would still be the Vols coach.

** I hope Marcus Lattimore turns into a great success. His story would be a terrific inspiration for everybody. But he wasn’t what the Cowboys needed. I wonder if people realize San Francisco was able to take a flier on Lattimore, who is coming back from a horrific knee injury, because it had so many picks. The Niners had the opportunity to offer up a redshirt year for Lattimore. The Cowboys, who entered the draft with six picks and added one through a trade with the Niners, didn’t. They needed a running back to help right now and they got Joseph Randle in the fifth round. If Lattimore becomes a star, then good for San Francisco but I would not use that as a knock on how the Cowboys ran their draft.

The Dallas Cowboys lost both games to the Washington Redskins in 2012, and Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III let his fans know about it during an after party for the White House correspondence dinner that was attended by Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo and New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz on Saturday.

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"We made Cowboys Stadium our home," he told the crowd, according to Associated Press. "And that's what we want to continue to do. ... Rehab's going great. We're having a great draft right now, and I'm all in for Week 1 -- just like you guys are."

In the first meeting between the teams, Griffin threw for 311 yards and four touchdowns in a 38-31 victory on Thanksgiving Day.

Griffin is recovering from reconstructive knee surgery and played with a brace in the regular season finale against the Cowboys at FedEx Field.

During the rally Griffin ran in place and did some jumping jacks.

"I'm good. You guys saw me jumping. I mean, I can run a little bit," he said, running in place some more. "I'll be good. No worries. I'll take it slow, but at the same time, I'll be ready to go."

IRVING, Texas – Historically the Cowboys have never shied away from small-school players.

They found Hall of Famers at Fort Valley State (Rayfield Wright) and Sonoma State (Larry Allen) and a Ring of Honor player from Ouachita Baptist (Cliff Harris). You can add Tony Romo (Eastern Illinois) and Miles Austin (Monmouth) to the list of recent small-school successes.

But the recent run on small-school defensive backs has not paid off. Akwasi Owusu-Ansah (Indiana, Pa.) never got a footing, and Matt Johnson (Eastern Washington) was not able to get on the field last year. The jury is still out on Johnson, who will have the opportunity to compete for a starting spot this year.

On Friday the Cowboys drafted safety J.J. Wilcox in the third round from Georgia Southern and on Saturday they took William & Mary cornerback B.W. Webb in the fourth round. Wilcox and Webb played in the Senior Bowl and showed they could handle the jump.

“You want to evaluate them against the best competition you can in a game setting,” coach Jason Garrett said. “You probably weigh those games more than others. But again, it is the whole package of evaluation that you are trying to do. Certainly the smaller school guys, almost by definition, have further to go and thus become a little more risky. But if you can get your arms how they played against bigger competition and how they stack up physically, I think you pull the trigger on them if you like the player.”

IRVING, Texas – The Cowboys still aren’t ready to announce their offensive play-caller, but one thing is clear about that process.

Quarterback Tony Romo will have much more input on which plays are in the game plan.

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Owner/general manager Jerry Jones said part of his agreement with Romo, who signed a seven-year, $119.5 million contract extension this offseason, was the quarterback would spend “Peyton Manning-type time” at the facility.

That isn’t meant to imply that Romo hadn’t been appropriately dedicated in the past. The point is that Romo will have extraordinary responsibility in helping to create game plans in the future.

“Tony is more involved in the finished product,” Jones said. “He is more involved, unequivocally. I’m counting that in. That ought to produce some success. It will produce some success. I’m talking about the kind of plays we run, a lot of what we do offensively."

The logic is that the Cowboys want to tailor the game plans to Romo’s skills and preferences as much as possible. Every play in each game plan will essentially have Romo’s seal of approval.

Romo will work alongside head coach Jason Garrett, offensive coordinator Bill Callahan and the other offensive coaches during hours when the vast majority of the roster isn’t at Valley Ranch.

“I can speak for Jason in this respect: Everything he is about wants more buy-in and more participation from the player,” Jones said. “So if Tony, for instance, would be here Monday through Saturday and be here from seven in the morning to six o’clock at night all over this place, then that’s better than the way it’s been. We’ll have more success, and Jason believes that. It’s certainly at quarterback but he believes it at the other positions, too.

“Tony is going to have more time, more presence. Not only is having in the offseason but when the season starts, beginning Mondays, assuming we played Sundays, he’s going to have more time on the job.

“A part of what we agreed with was extra time on the job, beyond the norm. That doesn’t mean that he didn’t have a lot of time on the job, but extra time on the job, Peyton Manning-type time on the job.”

IRVING, Texas -- With Matt Barkley, Ryan Nassib, Tyler Wilson and Landry Jones available in the fourth round Saturday, it looked like the Cowboys could have had to chance to do something they don’t do often and draft a quarterback.

By the time they picked at No. 114, only Jones was available and he went to Pittsburgh with the next pick.

Barkley went No. 98 to Philadelphia, Nassib went to the New York Giants at No. 110 and Wilson went to Oakland at No. 112.

The last quarterback the Cowboys drafted was Stephen McGee (fourth round) in 2009. Since 1990 the Cowboys have drafted only three quarterbacks: Bill Musgrave (1991), Quincy Carter (2001) and McGee.

The Cowboys have Tony Romo, who turned 33 earlier in the week, Kyle Orton and Nick Stephens on the roster and agreed to a deal with undrafted rookie Dalton Williams on Saturday.

“I think every team wants to develop a quarterback,” coach Jason Garrett said. “You want a guy coming along. We feel really good about the quarterbacks we have on the roster right now and what their roles are. If one of those top guys had fallen further we would’ve had another conversation about it. We felt those guys were good players and maybe good value but maybe not for us where we were picking.”

IRVING, Texas – Since coining the term, “Romo friendly,” Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones has had a funny way of showing that friendliness.

That’s changed in this offseason, and perhaps it has to do with the six-year extension Romo signed last month.

If the Cowboys’ first three picks are any indication, then Jones has taken a “Romo friendly” approach.

Quibble with what they got in return from San Francisco, but the Cowboys were able to address the interior of the offensive line with Travis Frederick with the 31st overall pick. Frederick will come in as a starter

“What he really is, is a foundation there in the middle that when we have him and (Tyron) Smith on the outside, we can fill in the blanks as we go along over the next few years, if he is the player we expect him to be there,” Jones said. “We needed that face. Romo called and said, ‘Thank you for my extra half second.’ That is going to mean more to us than anything I can say.”

Second-round tight end Gavin Escobar has to represent a significant shift in offensive philosophy. The Cowboys will be a heavy two-tight end team, but they say it will look differently than the ones they ran with previous second rounders Anthony Fasano and Martellus Bennett.

Escobar gives the Cowboys options, potentially down in the red zone, even if he is not a strong blocker at the moment.

Wide receiver Terrance Williams, the third-round pick gained in the San Francisco trade, is a potential big-play receiver. With the uncertain health of Miles Austin and Dez Bryant the last two years, the Cowboys needed to have a suitable outside receiver if their top-two receivers miss multiple weeks.

Williams caught 97 passes for 1,832 yards and 12 touchdowns at Baylor last season.

“I think he is a mature player,” coach Jason Garrett said. “He plays with poise, he understands how to run routes, and he’s very good at making contested catches. One of the big jumps for a lot of young receivers in the NFL is the physical nature of the game. Often times in college there is some space out there. You are going to get contested by corners in the National Football League. The size and strength that you need to go along with the quickness and speed is critical. Getting off a press and making contested plays at the top of the route. He has demonstrated all of that.”

It's the making-of-the-sausage aspect of the NFL draft that's the problem. If the Dallas Cowboys had begun this offseason with picks 31, 47, 74 and 80 and drafted these same four players, the fans' reaction would have been quite different (though they'd still probably be mad about having lost the Super Bowl). The reason everybody was so upset about the Cowboys' draft 24 hours ago was this trade they made with the San Francisco 49ers in the first round and the idea that they didn't get enough in return for the No. 18 pick.

But from here? From the tail end of Friday night, with three rounds and four Cowboys picks in the books? To me, it looks as though the Cowboys are having a pretty good draft.

The first and most important thing they needed to do, above all else, was find offensive line help in the first round, and they did. You might not like Travis Frederick as a first-rounder, but the fact is this draft was weak at the top. And if you're sifting between sub-optimal options, why should you feel compelled to pick the guy other people have agreed to like as opposed to the guy you like? "Trust your board," is every team's pre-draft mantra, and if the Cowboys' board called Frederick their answer, there's nothing wrong with taking him with the 31st pick.

What happened next seemed weird because it was offense again with the first two picks Friday night. A team that has Jason Witten used its second-round pick on a tight end its fans had never heard of, Gavin Escobar, instead of a safety or a tackle or another offensive lineman. So the crying began anew, as well as the same old jokes about how the owner needs to fire the GM when we all know there's no chance of that ever happening. Then, in the third round, with the pick they got in that first-round trade, they went offense again, taking Baylor wide receiver Terrance Williams.

But then a funny thing happened. The outlines of the plan began to congeal in front of everyone's eyes. And through the prism of a pick that finally felt like a really good one, it all started to make sense. The Cowboys just signed their franchise quarterback, Tony Romo, to a gigantic contract extension. When you do that, you're inclined to build up the offense around him. And by taking an interior lineman in the first round and a pair of dynamic passing-game weapons in the second and third, that's what the Cowboys were up to in the early part of the 2013 draft.

Recall the common complaints about the Cowboys' offense. (The non-Romo ones, if you will.) It's unimaginative. It stalls in the red zone. It doesn't have a reliable No. 3 wide receiver, and its No. 2, Miles Austin, is always hurt. The picks of Escobar and Williams address all of that. Escobar is a considerably better player than James Hanna, last season's sixth-round pick, and the ability to put him on the field along with Witten will offer the Cowboys options they didn't have on offense last season. Escobar is a reliable pass-catcher who can outfight defenders for the ball in traffic, and that will serve him and the Cowboys well up and down the field, but especially in the red zone. Williams is a big-play outside receiver who allows them to use Austin in the slot when they go three wide and can be a game-breaker if teams overcommit to Dez Bryant on the other side. They have found fresh options that offer more variety for an offense that too often limits its quarterback's options in key spots. And by taking the lineman first, they've helped shore up Romo's protection, as well.

Some wanted a running back, but you can always get one of those, and there are still plenty on the board with four rounds to go. Some wanted a tackle or a guard, and I couldn't have argued if they wanted to overaddress the line. But you're more likely to find a usable offensive lineman in the fourth or fifth round than you are to find a big-play tight end or receiver there. Eric Winston and others remain on the free-agent market as possible answers at tackle. They did something about the line with their first pick, and the opportunity to do more exists for them.

Some wanted defense in the second round -- a three-technique defensive tackle or a playmaking safety. They ended up with a physical safety in J.J. Wilcox with their original third-round pick, and they like what he offers in terms of upside. But the basic theory with the Cowboys defense appears to be that the changes on the coaching staff, the switch to a 4-3 front and improved health will deliver improvement. They lost six defensive starters to injury last season, and if those guys all come back and thrive in their new 4-3 roles, those are their big additions on defense.

No, spending the early part of the draft on help for Romo was a completely worthwhile choice of priorities for the Cowboys, who came out of the first three rounds with three offensive players they like and can find multiple ways to use (plus that new safety). They're focused on putting Romo and coach Jason Garrett in the best possible position to succeed by expanding the boundaries of the offense's capabilities from play to play and week to week. If you're Romo and Garrett right now, you're thinking up new plays and personnel formations that weren't available to you last season when Bryant, Austin and Witten were your only reliable pass-catchers, and you're excited.

The draft is about hope that things will get better. A look back at the first three rounds offers the Cowboys a number of ways to imagine a more fun and productive offense. It doesn't really matter how it started or how they got here. So far, the Cowboys have to feel as though they're having a pretty good draft.

IRVING, Texas -- Dallas Cowboys officials summoned quarterback Tony Romo to the Valley Ranch facility on Friday to look at some tape of prospective draft picks before the start of the draft.

Romo told Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones he liked what he saw from tight end Gavin Escobar, and wide receiver Terrance Williams, who eventually became draft picks.

Escobar was drafted in the third round and is projected as a pass-catching tight end who allows the Cowboys to possibly use three tight ends. Williams was picked up in the fourth round, and he's an outside receiver who gives Miles Austin the ability to play as a slot and outside receiver.

Romo also told Jones he liked the pick of center Travis Frederick, the first-rounder from Wisconsin. Romo told Jones he now feels he'll have that extra second he needs to make plays because Frederick is a big, strong center who Jones said can become the foundation of the line.

"We were very interested in seeing specifically spend our time with Tony on Escobar and Terrence Williams and one other receiver," Jerry Jones said. "We just wanted him to spend some time looking at it, and he does a good job of that. We wanted to visit about the very thing that [coach] Jason [Garrett] has addressed, and that is Escobar: 'How confident will you be? What do you think with that package with [three] tight ends in there?' He's got a good perspective."

It's not the first time Romo or other former Cowboys' quarterbacks have looked at prospective draft picks to give their opinion as to whether or not they can work with them.

Hall of Famer, Troy Aikman also worked out some draft picks for the Jones family when he played for the Cowboys.

"We took Troy to workouts sometimes," team executive vice president Stephen Jones said. "It's input, and like Jerry said, spend a small amount of time, but it's interesting to get another perspective."

NEW YORK -- Well, I'm not going to rip the pick. I made a promise, and I'm keeping it. I wrote for weeks and weeks that the Dallas Cowboys needed to come out of the first round of this year's NFL draft with an offensive lineman, and they did. So I'm not getting on their case for it.

But man, did the Cowboys play the first round strangely.

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First of all, they traded their pick, No. 18 overall, to the 49ers for the 31st pick and the 74th pick (which is the 12th pick of the third round). Then, with the 31st pick, they selected Wisconsin center Travis Frederick, who was … not a guy anybody was talking about.

Who is Frederick? Well, Scouts Inc. ranked him the top center in this year's draft (which is good) and the 70th player overall (not so good, if he went 31st). Among offensive linemen, he ranked 12th in this draft, according to Scouts Inc., and he was the ninth one off the board. Those still on the board who got higher Scouts Inc. grades included tackles Menelik Watson and Terron Armstead and guard Larry Warford.

Couple that information with the fact that the traditional NFL trade-value chart says the Cowboys should have been able to get more than just an extra third-rounder for that No. 18 pick, and it's easy to say they overpaid for Frederick. You might even be able to argue that they could have had him in the second round if they'd waited.

But I don't know. Maybe it's the music here at Radio City Music Hall or the fact that the weather's getting nicer outside or that I finally feel like I'm getting back in shape after a couple of years of overeating and under-exercising. I'm looking at this pick, and I'm thinking these very positive things about it:

• They needed interior offensive line help more than any team in the NFL needed anything in this entire draft, and this guy is an interior offensive lineman. He can challenge Phil Costa for the center's job or either starting guard for his.
• He's a giant -- 6-foot-3⅝, 312 pounds -- and known as a physical presence in the run game. Run blocking might be a higher priority for the Cowboys in their ongoing hunt for line help than pass protection is, since left tackle is the one spot at which they're set and Tony Romo is pretty good at protecting himself and making plays on the run.
• Just because Scouts Inc. ranked Warford 53rd and this guy 70th doesn't make the pick ridiculous. You pay your scouts to find guys who fit what you want to do, and then you trust them. All week, everybody told me the Cowboys needed to trust their board, and it appears what happened here was that they didn't have anyone they liked at 18 so they snagged an extra pick and moved down to take a guy they did like. If you think all that's left to you is second-rounders, then why not just start the second round two picks early and add a third-rounder that might help you maneuver into that second round Friday night?

As I always say, I can't predict the way these guys will play, and neither can the Cowboys or anyone else. And if you want to argue that they didn't get great value for their first-round pick, I really don't have a response. But this was a weird year for the first round. The top six offensive linemen went in the top 11 picks -- something that hadn't happened in the history of the NFL draft. Clearly, this was a year in which offensive linemen were being overvalued, so this pick kind of lines up with that.

Had they stayed put at 18 and picked Justin Pugh or Kyle Long, who went at 19 and 20, respectively, to the Giants and Bears, that might have felt like a reach, too. There was not a lot to like about this year's first round. And while they might have been clumsy about it, the Cowboys came out of it with something they apparently do like and definitely need. Can't rip it.

Where they're picking: No. 18

Conventional wisdom tells us the top six offensive linemen will be gone by 18, depriving the Cowboys of the chance to address their most significant short-term and long-term need. The mock drafts in which this happens have the Cowboys taking a defensive tackle such as Sheldon Richardson or Sylvester Williams at No. 18, and some are still connecting the Cowboys with Texas safety Kenny Vaccaro, since safety is a need as well. Everybody seems to agree that the Cowboys' dream scenario is that they get one of the draft's top two guards, either Chance Warmack or Jonathan Cooper, but no one seems to think either will fall to 18.

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History tells us that the conventional wisdom is wrong. The last time six offensive linemen went in the top 17 picks was 1966, when the league only had 15 teams in it. Guards don't tend to go early, since most teams don't assign top-half-of-first-round value to that position. History tells us the Cowboys will be able to get offensive line help if they want it in the first round. But history also tells us that the Cowboys tend to pick out a guy they really like in the first round (Dez Bryant, Tyron Smith and Morris Claiborne are the recent examples) and do what they can to get him.

They probably won't end up with Vaccaro. First of all, it's possible he goes earlier than 18 (say, to St. Louis at 16). Second of all, their needs on the lines and the comparative value at those positions likely will push them to take a linemen of one sort or the other in a draft whose second round is packed with starting-caliber safeties. Sure, it's possible Vaccaro is this year's Jerry Jones crush and there's nothing anyone else in the braintrust can do to talk him out of it. But I'd be surprised if they end up with the Texas safety.

They could shock us by taking a tight end. The Blogfather, Matt Mosley, says he's been hearing the Cowboys love Notre Dame tight end Tyler Eifert, and if that's the case they could be making plans to move up to get him. While that would seem silly with Jason Witten still in place and at the top of his game, it's not completely crazy to find another weapon for Tony Romo in the passing game. If Eifert is the Cowboys' best player available, they could go for it. It would be foolish, and would leave them too short in too many other areas, but I'm not sure that would stop them.

My prediction: I'm leaning on history here and saying the mocks are all wrong and the Cowboys are going to be able to get one of those guards. Since we're making a pick, I'll say it's Chance Warmack who falls either all the way to 18 or at least into the 14-15 range that would allow them to make a sensible, cost-effective trade-up to get him. Not like last year's trade for Claiborne, which cost them their second-round pick, but maybe for a later-round pick or even a 2014 one.

The Cowboys like starting running back DeMarco Murray, but he has had injury issues and there are questions about whether he can stay healthy over the long term.

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It means the Cowboys could be in the market for a running back in the middle rounds of this weekend's NFL draft.

Montee Ball, Johnathan Franklin, Giovani Bernard and Mike Gillislee could be available in the middle part of the draft.

Currently, Lance Dunbar and Phillip Tanner are the backups to Murray. The Cowboys have praised Dunbar's work, but they still could be looking for more help in the backfield.

"There's a lot of things that can help our football team," Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones said on San Antonio's KZDC-AM on Tuesday afternoon. "If you do look, unfortunately, at DeMarco's history, he had (health issues) at Oklahoma, though he was very productive. He's had (health issues) here. So obviously without Felix Jones in the fold right now, we don’t have that answer in terms of having a complementary back to DeMarco, so that will be something we will have our eyes on as well."

Murray missed six games last season because of a severe bruise on his left foot and finished with 663 rushing yards. The Cowboys' rushing attack finished No. 31 in the NFL last season, leading to the release of running backs coach Skip Peete and raising questions about the offensive line.

The Cowboys need to improve this area if they're going to take pressure off quarterback Tony Romo in 2013.

The Cowboys moved up from the No. 14 spot of the 2012 NFL draft to select LSU cornerback Morris Claiborne with the sixth overall pick.

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Claiborne was the second-highest rated player on the Cowboys' draft board, following quarterback Andrew Luck.

Will the Cowboys move up in 2013?

Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones doesn't believe it'll happen.

"I don't think so, but I wouldn't totally rule it out," Jones said on KZDC-AM San Antonio on Tuesday afternoon. "Typically you save those big move ups for your skill players ... whether it's a corner or a pass-rusher on defense, a quarterback, running back, receiver. You're usually willing to give up a player later in the draft to really get a guy you want. I don't necessarily see that for us this year."

This year's draft is deep along the offensive and defensive lines and at defensive back.

The Cowboys have needs at those positions, but with the draft being so deep in certain areas, Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones said he's willing to trade down from No. 18. But they do have priorities.

"I think protecting our big investments probably first and foremost, our commitment of resources we made to (Tony) Romo," Stephen Jones said on KZDC-AM. "What you want to do is keep him standing up and healthy, and if the right situation occurs there to help protect him in the offensive line, you've got to take a look at that. At the same time, you can't compromise the integrity of your board."