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Yes, the start of training camps is two months away, but it’s never too early to consider the coming season. A look at the best-case and worst-case scenarios for the Cowboys in 2012.

Dream scenario (12-4): The issue in Dallas is the extent to which the defense improves. If the improvement remains incremental, they'll lose some games they should win and have to scrap to stay in the division race. But if the defense takes a dramatic step forward in its second year under defensive coordinator Rob Ryan and with Brandon Carr and Morris Claiborne having been brought in to upgrade the secondary, the Cowboys become a Super Bowl contender quite quickly. In the Cowboys' dream scenario, Tony Romo has another big year at quarterback, Miles Austin and DeMarco Murray stay healthy and Dez Bryant takes a big developmental step forward of his own, using his considerable physical ability to dominate matchups in other teams' secondaries and the end zone. The new guys on the offensive line tighten things up in the interior, the move back to right tackle makes Doug Free more comfortable and Tyron Smith transitions seamlessly to left tackle. And in the dream scenario, the improvements in the secondary help the defensive front seven get more pressure on the quarterback, with outside linebacker Anthony Spencer playing the way he did in December of 2009 and DeMarcus Ware playing like... well, like he always does.

Nightmare scenario (6-10): The Cowboys' nightmare scenario, as is the case with anyone's, includes injuries. In this scenario, Austin and Bryant struggle to stay healthy, and the team actually does find itself missing the surprisingly effective replacement Laurent Robinson provided in 2011. Murray also gets banged up, forcing them to rely once again on Felix Jones and little else at running back. Claiborne struggles, as young corners often do, to adjust to the speed and intensity of the NFL game, and Spencer muddles along once again, content to be a pretty good but not great player opposite Ware. In the nightmare scenario, Romo has a bad year, riddled with turnovers and the kind of inconsistency that gives his critics actual evidence for their criticism, and raises legitimate questions about how much longer the Cowboys will remain committed to him. The nightmare scenario includes a slow start against a very tough-looking early portion of the schedule, and sees the Cowboys succumb to the tension and negativity that's always so quick to cling to them in times of trouble. And no, because you're asking, I don't think that even the nightmare scenario puts Jason Garrett on the hot seat. Jerry Jones loves that guy.

Mort and Suzy discuss the Bears' offseason issues, Max and Marcellus rank the teams in the NFC East, and Herm and Bill Polian show off their dance moves.

The appeal of NFL-imposed cap reductions to the Washington Redskins ($36 million) and Dallas Cowboys ($10 million) has ended. Arbitrator Stephen Burbank dismissed their claims today -- for reasons described below -- and the teams have raised the white flag, issuing a joint statement accepting the decision. Interestingly, the two NFL owners who enjoy a good fight the most -- Jerry Jones and Daniel Snyder -- have decided to go quietly here, choosing to use this as a chip for political capital down the road.

The NFL claimed the teams gained competitive advantage by maneuvering cap money into the uncapped 2010 year, clearing the deck for future spending without encumbrances from bloated contracts of Albert Haynesworth, DeAngelo Hall, Miles Austin and others. Were the teams given a chance to argue, they would have emphasized that there were no written warnings against their conduct, and that the contracts were approved upon submission to the NFL management council (NFLMC). However, they will have no such chance, as the case was dismissed.

Commissioner power

Burbank rejected the teams’ arguments that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was not authorized to act on behalf of the NFLMC, the unit of the NFL that gave strident verbal warnings about their cap maneuvers and suggested discipline. Burbank intimated -- but did not expressly hold -- that the articles and bylaws of the NFLMC contemplate the commissioner acting as an agent for them. Thus, the commissioner’s powers may extend past the playing field into the contract and cap decisions made by teams and their ownership.

NFLPA on board

The March 11 letter announcing the reduction (reallocation letter) was executed by both Goodell and NFLPA chief DeMaurice Smith. Smith was agreeable as long as league-wide cap room remained the same, with the $46 million reallocated to the other 28 teams (the Saints and Raiders were denied reallocation because of similar, but lesser violations). The union’s buy-in -- forged with assurances from the NFL that the team cap number in 2012 would not dip below that of 2011 -- was a factor in Burbank’s dismissal.

Teams on board

With the NFLPA signing off, the March 27 resolution by 29 NFL teams (the Bucs abstained) to ratify the reallocation letter became, in Burbank’s eyes, a valid amendment to the collective bargaining agreement. Therefore, the Cowboys’ and Redskins’ claims of unilateral changes in the cap and collusion by other teams were denied. The key line from the decision reads in part: “the March 27th Resolution effectively ratified the Reallocation Letter, which therefore is binding on the Redskins and Cowboys as an amendment to the CBA.”

Thus, Burbank essentially gave his blessing to two agreements that served to bind and penalize the Redskins and Cowboys without them being a party to either. Commissioner power is strengthened again, 28 teams have additional cap room, and the NFLPA protects its players’ cap room league-wide. Everyone is satisfied except, of course, those two owners.

Something tells me that -- although they are accepting the decision -- they won’t soon forget this episode.

I don't know. Maybe this is for the best.

The effort by the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins to recover a combined $46 million in salary-cap penalties won't even get off the ground. Stephen Burbank, the NFL's independent arbitrator, granted the league's request to dismiss the complaint. And the teams released a joint statement saying they would respect the decision, so that's that. The Redskins lost a total of $36 million and the Cowboys $10 million in cap room over the next two seasons, and they're just going to have to deal with it because it's what the other NFL owners think is fair and the arbitrator found their argument that the complaint not be heard to be a persuasive one.

There's no way that any sensible, thinking person who's not an NFL owner can honestly feel that the league acted justly in penalizing the Cowboys and the Redskins for spending their money and structuring their contracts the way they did during the uncapped 2010 season. But it doesn't matter, because the NFL plays by its own rules and no one else's, and that's the lesson for today.

But in the end, maybe it's for the best. Maybe Burbank is doing everyone a favor. There's no one on any side of this dispute who can feel good about the way they've conducted themselves. It's a badge of shame for the league and the union, and it's not even really a badge of honor for the two aggrieved parties. So maybe, even though it's not fair, Burbank is being nice by telling everyone to just stop.

This all started because NFL owners agreed, in secret, to limit spending in 2010 even though there was no cap -- to continue to structure contracts as though there were a cap, because the lockout they were about to impose was basically a thinly veiled attempt at union-busting. They knew all along they'd ultimately have a new agreement with a new cap and they didn't want anyone to have gamed the system to their advantage in the meantime. In the real world, we call this collusion -- all of the business owners in a given industry agreeing among themselves to impose restrictions on wages. But in the NFL, it's OK, because the collective bargaining agreement the owners have with the players spells out which types of collusion are allowed and which aren't.

The Redskins and Cowboys got in trouble because they didn't go along with this game, instead using the lack of a salary cap in 2010 to structure contracts in such a way as to spare themselves from salary-cap trouble in future years. The sense is that many, if not all, teams did this, and that the Redskins and Cowboys just did it to such an egregious extent that some of the other owners insisted they be punished. They'd been warned, after all, that anyone who failed to honor the secret agreement discussed in the last paragraph would be punished. Giants owner John Mara, the chairman of the management council, said at the owners meetings in March that the Cowboys and Redskins got off easy -- that they were lucky they didn't lose draft picks.

Which is baloney, of course, because you can't break rules when there aren't any. But let's not go too far in letting our hearts break for Jerry Jones and Daniel Snyder, who weren't exactly acting on charitable impulses here. They didn't break with the rest of the owners because they felt the policy was unfair to players. They did it because they thought it would give them an advantage, and that they could get away with it.

And then there's the NFLPA, for which this is anything but a shining moment. The players' union, which should be fighting such collusive behavior, instead capitulated and agreed to the sanctions against the Redskins and Cowboys because the owners threatened to reduce this year's salary cap if they did not. The union believes that was the right decision for its membership, and in the end it may well have been. But it is not a decision of which the union can be proud, and the fact the NFLPA allowed itself to be outmaneuvered by the league on this matter likely contributed to Burbank's decision to dismiss the complaint. The league's argument was based, largely, on the fact the sanctions were agreed upon by the league and the union. And jeez, if those two agree on something, how can it not be OK? Right?

It's all just plain ridiculous, the whole thing, and it's probably for the best that it all goes away. Everybody associated with it should be ashamed of themselves (though, sadly, no one seems to be). And while it's unfair that only the Cowboys and Redskins suffer for the arrogance of a group of people who continue to play its paying customers for willing patsies, the truly sad part is that anyone in this situation gets to walk away feeling as though he was in the right.

Our NFL columnist, Ashley Fox, has a neat little graphic element up on the site about 10 NFL quarterbacks who are "on the spot" in 2012. I didn't know Ashley was so graphics-savvy, but take a look. One of those slideshow deals where you scroll through and there's a photo and a blurb on each guy.

Anyway, No. 1 on the list is Michael Vick of the Philadelphia Eagles, and No. 4 on the list is Tony Romo of the Dallas Cowboys. Pretty good representation of our little division, no? Here's Ashley's take on Vick:

The Eagles are built to win this year, but Vick will have to stay healthy and limit his turnovers. He missed three games in 2011 and had 24 turnovers -- and Philadelphia went 8-8 and missed the playoffs.

As we have written many times here, Vick and his turnovers were a bigger part of the problem in Philadelphia last season than was mentioned much at the time or has been discussed much since. As the season draws nearer, I expect the focus on Vick and the pressure he's under to intensify. I agree with Ashley that no quarterback in the league enters 2012 under more pressure than does Vick.

Here's Ashley's take on Romo:

Last season, Romo threw for 4,184 yards with 31 touchdowns and just 10 interceptions. But in six years as the Cowboys' starter, he has won just one playoff game. Romo is 32 years old. Jerry Jones won't be patient forever.

I tend to think Jones might actually be patient with Romo forever, if that's what it takes. Romo and Jones are close, and the Cowboys' owner takes great pride in the fact that the undrafted quarterback to whom he gave this opportunity has blossomed into one of the best quarterbacks in the league. I don't believe that Jones feels remotely as critical toward Romo and his oft-cited poor playoff record as Dallas fans and the conventional NFL wisdom do, and I really do think that Romo's play would have to drop off considerably in order for the Cowboys to consider replacing him. I do not think it's possible for that to happen within the course of the coming season.

That said, I do agree that Romo belongs on any list of NFL quarterbacks "on the spot," because few get more attention, and the longer he goes without delivering some playoff success (be it his fault or not), the more he squanders the opportunity to take control of the narrative about his own career. He might not care what people say about him now, but someday he will, and if these shadows remain unchanged (hat tip, Mr. Charles Dickens), the story of Romo's career will be that of promise unfulfilled, not that of an undrafted guy who exceeded expectations.

NEW YORK -- My feelings are a little bit hurt. Either Jerry Jones doesn't read my blog or he just doesn't think I know what I'm talking about. I know for a fact I wrote, right here a few hours ago, that the Dallas Cowboys needed to stay boring tonight, keep all of their picks and draft as many good players as possible because of all of their depth issues on defense. But they didn't listen. The Cowboys traded their first-round pick and their second-round pick to the St. Louis Rams to move up eight spots and select LSU cornerback Morris Claiborne with the No. 6 pick in the draft.

In terms of the pick itself, I like it for Dallas. Yes, they spent big on free agent cornerback Brandon Carr and they already have Mike Jenkins and Orlando Scandrick at the position. But they were stone-cold horrible in the secondary last year. Jenkins is chronically hurt, and his contract's up at the end of the 2012 season. Claiborne is viewed as one of the elite players in this draft, and he will be an asset immediately and down the road.

My issue is with the price. Dallas was not in a position to spend its first two picks on one player, no matter how good that player is. They cannot address the pass rush, the offensive line or the No. 3 wide receiver spot until the third round at the earliest. The Cowboys made themselves better at cornerback, which is fine, but they failed to improve in a couple of other areas where they need help. They could have stayed at 14 and selected a very good player who would have helped them this year, and obtained another such player in the second round. Now, they have fewer high picks with which to address needs. I wouldn't have done it.

PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Dallas Cowboys coach Jason Garrett is aware that his team didn't sign the biggest-name, highest-pedigreed offensive linemen available on this year's free-agent market. That wasn't the goal.

"None of these guys were brought in and told, 'You are the anointed starter,'" Garrett said Wednesday morning at the NFL owners meetings. "They're here to create competition on our team, and we feel like they're the right kinds of guys, individually as people but also with their talent. They can come in and compete for those spots and make us a better football team."

The newcomers are guards. The Cowboys like both of their starting tackles, though they are switching their roles, with Tyron Smith slated to move to left tackle and Doug Free back to right tackle in 2012. But where they really struggled last year was on the interior of the line. So they signed Mackenzy Bernadeau from Carolina and Nate Livings from Cincinnati, and they're throwing them into the mix with the two guards -- David Arkin and Bill Nagy -- they drafted last year along with centers Phil Costa and Kevin Kowalski, and they're going to see what happens.

On Bernadeau, Garrett had this to say:

"He's a guy that we liked coming out. He's a young guy from a small school who we feel has the physical traits to be a really good player in this league. He has not been a consistent starter for [Carolina]. He has been a starter, but he's had some injuries and some different things that he's dealt with. We're just excited about the kind of kid he is and the upside that he has. So we feel like putting him into the mix will help our team."

And on Livings, this:

"Nate had been a started the last couple of years in Cincinnati. He's a big guy. He played at LSU. And he's one of those guys who was a college free agent and who had to really earn his way in the NFL. When we put the tape on, we just liked how he played. And we feel like, if you bring a guy like that in as well, he can get infused into our roster and hopefully create some competition up there."

Neither of the new guys is looked at as a potential solution at center, so that position is likely to come down to Costa and Kowalski and possibly Nagy if they don't add anyone else. But Garrett's point is that the Cowboys have enough bodies at those interior positions that it's fair to expect a strong offensive line to emerge. The players are young enough that, assuming they do find the right five-man mix, the line can grow together over the coming season and seasons and become a strength of the team. There are no guarantees, of course, but that's the hope and the plan, and the Cowboy have hand-picked some guys they believe can help produce those kinds of results.

Garrett also echoed the sentiment that owner Jerry Jones articulated the day before in a session with Dallas-area reporters here -- namely, that the work they've done on the offensive line through last year's draft and this year's free agency makes it more likely that they'd take a defensive player in next month's first round than an offensive lineman such as Stanford guard David DeCastro.

"We'd have to take into consideration that we've done pretty well in free agency relative to our offensive line," Garrett said. "We'd have to take that into consideration if we had the alternative of taking defense. So you're not off-base if you ask whether it's likely that we would take a defensive player."

PALM BEACH, Fla. -- The NFL's owners didn't have to vote to uphold the salary cap sanctions the league's management council imposed against the Washington Redskins and the Dallas Cowboys. But after Daniel Snyder and Jerry Jones addressed their fellow owners to air their opposition to those sanctions Tuesday, the rest of the owners did vote on the matter. By a vote of 29-0, the owners supported the sanctions, which the Cowboys and Redskins are challenging through arbitration. One team abstained (The Washington Post reports that it was the Buccaneers), and of course the Redskins and Cowboys were not part of the vote.

What's this mean? Not a lot. The management council has the power to impose the sanctions without a vote of the full body of ownership. But since everyone's here for the owners meetings anyway, and since Snyder and Jones stood up to express their dissatisfaction and ask if everyone really thought they should be punished for the way they structured some contracts in the supposedly uncapped 2010 season, they decided to take a vote to establish a show of support in advance of the arbitration hearing. Surely, if there was opposition to the sanctions among the owners, it would hurt their case. If 29 of the sport's other owners all agree that the Redskins and Cowboys did something wrong, that's something they can use in their arguments in front of the arbitrator.

No date has been set for the hearing, which will be in front of arbitrator Stephen Burbank, and it remains unclear what the possible resolutions are. The Redskins and Cowboys are seeking an elimination of the penalty, but it's conceivable that Burbank could reduce the penalties if not completely eliminate them. The Redskins were docked $36 million in cap room over the next two years and the Cowboys $10 million in cap room over the next two years for violating a secret agreement owners made with each other not to structure 201o contract payments in such a way as to gain an advantage against the cap in future years.

The league announced Monday that it would have no further comment on the issue, and to date the Cowboys and Redskins have declined to say much publicly about it.

PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Those Washington Redskins and Dallas Cowboys fans hoping to get some explanation from the NFL about the salary cap penalties levied against their teams are going to be waiting for a while. Asked about the matter in his news conference Monday night at the NFL owners meetings, commissioner Roger Goodell declined to comment.

"We put out a release on this, and we're not going to have any comment beyond that," Goodell said.

The NFL released a statement Monday afternoon, and the statement ended by saying the league and clubs would have no further comment on the matter. Redskins owner Daniel Snyder and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones did discuss the matter with the league's other owners in a morning meeting, according to a source with knowledge of what happened in the meeting, and those two owners were then asked to leave the room so the remaining 30 owners could discuss the issue among themselves. It's unclear what was discussed, other than the apparent decision not to talk about the matter publicly so long as it remains a pending case for arbitrator Stephen Burbank.

This is, in the opinion of this reporter, pretty weak. Goodell spent a good portion of his news conference talking about the importance of increased transparency to fans. There were 19 fans invited to sit in on the afternoon session of the meetings and discuss issues with the owners in an open forum. Four of those fans were invited to speak to the media at the end of Goodell's Monday news conference (though, to their credit, nearly all of the media exited the room rather than function as props for the league's propaganda effort).

Fans of the Redskins and Cowboys are looking for further explanation about what their teams did to deserve to lose $36 million and $10 million worth of salary cap space, respectively, over the next two years. For the league to talk about transparency one minute and to hide that explanation behind a mutually agreed-upon gag order the next feels like a failure to practice what they preach. Giants owner John Mara, who chairs the NFL Management Council that imposed the penalties, discussed the issue Sunday before the gag order went into effect, but more detail is needed for fans to truly understand what went on, and the NFL does not, apparently, believe it needs to offer it.

The Cowboys and Redskins also were declining comment Monday, though Goodell did say Snyder and Jones were welcome to speak to the media about what they said in their address to their fellow owners if they so chose. As I wrote earlier in the day, the way the Cowboys and Redskins are acting about this makes me think they believe they have a strong case and can win in front of Burbank. The way Goodell and the league are acting about it reinforces my belief that they just wish it would go away.

PALM BEACH, Fla. -- John Mara, the owner of the New York Giants and the chairman of the NFL Management Committee, which imposed $46 million worth of salary-cap penalties on the Washington Redskins and the Dallas Cowboys for the way those teams structured contracts during the uncapped 2010 season, just walked through the lobby of The Breakers here on the day before the start of the NFL's annual meetings. Let's just say he's not having second thoughts.

"I thought the penalties imposed were proper," Mara said. "What they did was in violation of the spirit of the salary cap. They attempted to take advantage of a one-year loophole, and quite frankly, I think they're lucky they didn't lose draft picks."

The Redskins and Cowboys have filed a grievance against the NFL and the NFLPA over the matter, and Mara said he was aware of that. But he does not appear to be worried that the Redskins and Cowboys will prevail. While there was no salary cap in 2010 and no rule prohibited teams from spending whatever they wanted to spend that year, Mara said the issue "came up several times in our meetings," and that there was an agreement not to engage in the kind of behavior in which the Redskins and Cowboys behaved by dumping big cap hits into the uncapped year in order to save against the cap in future seasons.

"We all knew the cap would come back," Mara said. "We were not going to enter into any agreement with the NFLPA if there was not a salary cap in it."

Outside of the NFL, which has its own agreed upon and collectively bargained rules regarding collusion, what the league did in 2010 would be regarded as collusive behavior -- all of the business owners in an industry conspiring and agreeing to limit the earnings of the workers in that industry. But Mara laughed off the word "collusion" when it was brought up this afternoon.

"This has nothing to do with collusion," he said. "It has to do with teams attempting to gain a competitive advantage through a loophole in the system. They attempted to take advantage of it knowing full well there would be consequences. There was nothing wrong with the individual contracts, but when you look at the overall scope of what they did, they were trying to take advantage and they were told not to."

This is clearly not the end of this argument. In fact, Jerry Jones checked into the hotel while Mara was talking to us, so I'm headed back to the lobby now to see if he's around and has anything to say about this. My guess is he'll disagree with what Mara thinks. Just a hunch.

Upset about the NFL's decision to penalize them a combined $46 million against the salary cap over the next two years for the way they conducted business during the 2010 season, the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins have filed a grievance against the NFL and the NFLPA. The grievance was first reported by ProFootballTalk.com.

The grievance will be heard by system arbitrator Stephen Burbank, and it's unclear what possible outcomes exist. It's conceivable that Burbank could alter the amount of the penalties imposed, even if he doesn't eliminate them entirely. Or he could find that the league was justified in imposing the penalties, in which case the only remaining option for the Cowboys and Redskins would be an antitrust lawsuit, which is an extremely unlikely course of action for either Jerry Jones or Daniel Snyder to pursue against their fellow owners.

Nearly two weeks ago, ESPN's Adam Schefter reported that the league had stripped the Redskins of $36 million and the Cowboys of $10 million in cap space (half of each penalty to be taken this year and half next year) for the manner in which they structured contracts in 2010, which was the year in which there was no salary cap. That year, sources have told me, the league instructed teams not to front-load contracts or restructure contracts in such a way as to take significant 2010 hits in order to provide themselves with salary-cap relief down the road. There was no actual rule in place that prohibited this, but the people to whom I've spoken say the league issued multiple warnings and that the Redskins and Cowboys were the most egregious violators of those warnings.

Some of the other owners were upset at the way the Redskins and Cowboys ignored the warnings, and they pushed the league to impose punishments against them. The NFL Management Council, which is chaired by New York Giants owner John Mara, was the entity that officially imposed the penalties. The reason the NFLPA is named in the grievance is that the NFLPA had to sign off on the penalties before the league would establish the 2012 salary cap. As we reported on this blog on March 12, the league was threatening to reduce the salary cap by several million dollars this year if the union did not agree to the penalties against the Redskins and Cowboys. The union agreed in exchange for the league keeping the salary cap roughly the same as it was last year and redistributing the penalty money among the other teams. Every NFL team besides the Redskins, Cowboys, Saints and Raiders gets an additional $1.6 million added to its salary cap over the next two years.

Again, it's unclear what the Cowboys and Redskins can hope to gain from this grievance, but the arbitrator's ruling will be binding according to league rules. The fact that they filed the grievance with the arbitrator indicates that they don't plan to pursue what would be a costly and potentially very ugly antitrust suit.

It's been nearly two weeks since the NFL slapped the Dallas Cowboys with a $10 million salary-cap penalty and the Washington Redskins with a $36 million salary-cap penalty for violations of amorphous spending guidelines during the supposedly uncapped 2010 season. The league has said nothing about it publicly, and the Redskins have made a little bit of noise about disagreeing with the penalty and planning to fight it. On Friday, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones told the Dallas Morning News that he plans to fight it, too:

"We will and have expressed that we don't agree with that," Jones said Friday at the Hilton Anatole, where the AWARE luncheon, a fundraiser for Alzheimer's disease, was taking place. "What we're doing is a combination procedural and legal and all of that"

Jones added that the Cowboys are "talking with not only the league but the Redskins and whoever we can visit about it....The Cowboys are resisting that to say the least and don't agree with that and how it was figured. I guess the Redskins feel the same way. We're trying to work through that"

Obviously, it remains to be seen whether the Cowboys and Redskins can get any satisfaction on this. They could file an antitrust action against the league and their fellow owners, who engaged in what would be deemed collusion in any other business by agreeing to limit spending in a year that had no salary cap. But that's unlikely, since they ultimately need to maintain some sort of relationship with the league and their fellow owners. Jones, for example, may want another Super Bowl at Cowboys Stadium at some point in the future.

They won't get help from the players' union, because as we reported here on March 12 (before anyone else did), the punishments were the result of a negotiated settlement to which the union agreed when the league threatened to lower this year's salary cap.

There has been some talk that the Cowboys and Redskins could take this to arbitration, and I think it's possible that could happen and the penalty could get reduced. This is the kind of thing that could pick up steam next week at the league's annual meetings in Palm Beach, Fla.

But at this point, I think we've heard enough from the Cowboys and the Redskins about how unhappy they are with this situation and that they plan to fight it. They should be unhappy, and they should fight it. But if all they're going to do is say they're going to fight it, that's going to get pretty uninteresting pretty quickly. If they're going to take any action, I think it's about time they did so.

Look, I'd love to keep hammering the NFL for its ridiculous decision earlier this week to strip the Washington Redskins and Dallas Cowboys of $36 million and $10 million, respectively, in cap room over the next two years. The league deserves to be hammered, and almost everyone else (just as the league hoped they would) is ignoring the story in favor of free agency. But the fact is that there is almost nothing the Redskins or Cowboys can do about this, and the few avenues available to them are avenues they're extremely unlikely to pursue.

When the story broke Monday, my first thought, as I wrote at the time, was that the owners appeared to have engaged in collusion by conspiring to limit spending in the uncapped 2010 season and that the Cowboys and Redskins were being punished for not going along with that plan. So I reached out to ESPN legal analyst Lester Munson and asked him if I was on the right track. Here's his response:

The NFL collusion clause (Article 17, P. 119) in the new CBA is very narrow in its definition of collusion. It applies only to certain contract procedures and any agreement among owners that would restrict the offers made to players. It is limited to multi-team decisions on whether to negotiate with a particular player, whether to submit an offer sheet, whether to offer a contract, and whether to include a right of first refusal. It is nothing like the broad anti-collusion clause that became famous in MLB. There is nothing in the NFL definition of collusion that applies to the Dallas and Washington frontloading of contracts. What the league did certainly sounds like what we normally think of as collusion, but it does not appear to violate anything in the CBA. If Dallas or Washington want to do something about the penalties, they would be forced to rely on an antitrust action, an enormous undertaking. It would be similar to the numerous cases that Al Davis filed over the years. I doubt that either Jones or Snyder would be willing to undertake so massive an effort.

I share his doubt. The idea of Jerry Jones or Daniel Snyder bringing an antitrust suit against the other members of a cartel of which they themselves are members is farfetched to say the least. I know that the Redskins, at least, have made inquiries about how they can fight these penalties, but the odds are that nothing ends up happening on that front.

The NFLPA isn't going to be any help either. They agreed as part of the Brady settlement at the end of the lockout to drop all pending litigation against the league, including the collusion charges they were intending to pursue. And while they could technically revisit those charges in light of the stunning new evidence the league has presented that it did, in fact, engage in collusive behavior during the uncapped year, don't hold your breath. The NFLPA (as we also reported Monday) agreed to these penalties last weekend in a settlement after the league threatened to cut this year's salary cap by $4 million or $5 million per team. It's highly doubtful the union, which was blindsided by this whole thing, is eager to open those negotiations back up.

The NFL is remorseless in its arrogance and its hypocrisy. It doesn't believe it has to answer to anyone. The lockout (which was clearly a sham, since we now know the league was instructing teams on how to behave while awaiting what it considered an inevitable solution) was more proof of that than anyone should ever need. This latest incident is just a far more narrowly focused example of the same thing. The Cowboys and the Redskins did something the rest of the owners didn't like, so the rest of the owners ganged up on them and took away some of their money. Mob justice, sanctioned by the commissioner. It's not right. It's not fair. But in the end, there's almost nothing the Cowboys and Redskins can do about it.

The Dallas Cowboys haven't made it official yet, but the sense is that they will designate outside linebacker Anthony Spencer as their franchise player today. That's the sense Spencer has, at least, according to what he told The Dallas Morning News:

Spencer

Anthony Spencer has mixed emotions over what will happen Monday afternoon.

The outside linebacker wants to stay with the Cowboys. But he'd prefer to do so with a long-term contract rather than the franchise tag the club is expected to use to prevent him from hitting the open market.

"It looks like they are going to put the tag on me,'' Spencer said. "That's a good thing and a bad thing.

"It's good because it shows how much they think of me. But you don't want to be playing on a one-year contract. You want a longer deal and the security that gives your family.

"But hey, I understand. It's a business.''

As David Moore points out in his story, the Cowboys have only used the franchise player designation twice under Jerry Jones, and both times they agreed with the player on a long-term deal before the start of that season. It's certainly possible they will do the same with Spencer. Heck, it's possible they'll do that with Spencer today, before the franchise deadline. But Spencer's an interesting and somewhat unique case, and it's not an open-and-shut deal for the Cowboys to lock him up long term.

Spencer is good against the run and in pass coverage, but he's not the pass-rusher the Cowboys would like to have at the outside linebacker spot opposite DeMarcus Ware. The man playing in that spot should be able to get to quarterbacks -- especially given the extra attention Ware draws from blockers. But Spencer is a disappointment as a pass-rusher, and his sack numbers aren't what the Cowboys hoped they would be at this point in his career.

Nonetheless, unless they're going to get into the Mario Williams market -- a market that's likely to result in Williams being the highest-paid defensive player in NFL history -- there are very few options at pass-rusher for the Cowboys in free agency, and it's hard to find one who'd represent a clear upgrade over Spencer. They could cut him loose and take their chances that they can find a pass-rusher in the draft or turn up a discarded potential gem the way the Jets did last year with Aaron Maybin. But they appear to have decided to hedge their bets and hold onto Spencer.

The question is: For how long? Locking up Spencer would seem to be equivalent to rewarding mediocrity, as several of our ESPNDallas.com writers have pointed out. Franchising him and letting him have one more year to bring the sack numbers up isn't a bad idea on its face, but it's going to cost them $8.8 million guaranteed to do that, and unless they do a long-term deal that lowers his 2012 number, that could hurt them against the cap as they hunt for the cornerbacks, safeties and guards they need.

It's a thorny situation, but it appears as though the Cowboys have decided the good with Spencer outweighs the disappointment, especially in light of other options. It's a tough business decision, and it's not likely to play well with the fans, but franchising Spencer right now is the right thing to do.

Calvin Watkins did some talking with Jerry Jones down at the Senior Bowl this week, and one thing he's learned is that the Dallas Cowboys' owner is very happy with the team's current salary cap situation:

The Cowboys have $12.6 million under the cap and that's before the team restructures any deals or cuts any of their current players. The team also has $28 million in dead money based on numerous players who were released last summer such as Leonard Davis, Marion Barber, Marc Colombo among others.

Stephen Jones, the executive vice president, and his staff did a good job of creating cap space so the $28 million of dead money won't bother the Cowboys in terms of making moves when free agency starts in March.

Calvin goes on to point out that more space can be created by restructuring deals for players like Doug Free and Orlando Scandrick, and that such maneuvers could result in the Cowboys having nearly $20 million in cap space by the time free agency starts.

In terms of need positions, the top free agents the Cowboys could pursue at guard include Carl Nicks of New Orleans and Ben Grubbs of Baltimore. The top free-agent cornerbacks include Atlanta's Brent Grimes, Tennessee's Cortland Finnegan and San Francisco's Carlos Rogers. If they can address both of those positions in free agency, the Cowboys might be able to take one of the draft's top pass-rushers with the No. 14 pick.