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Well, you know what they say about the best-laid plans of would-be holiday weekend slackers...

Just as I thought we were done for the day, Adam Schefter reports that the Indianapolis Colts are working hard to try and acquire disgruntled cornerback Mike Jenkins from the Dallas Cowboys:

Cowboys coach Jason Garrett said this week that Dallas would not trade Jenkins. But another NFL source familiar with the situation said he believed a trade could be worked out for the right price.

...

A Colts official declined comment, yet a person connected to the team said Indianapolis has been trying to pry loose Jenkins with an offer that one source said "many teams would think is compelling."

Of course, what many teams would think doesn't matter much here, does it? The Cowboys must find it compelling, or they will not be compelled to do it.

As I've written at length, I don't see what the Cowboys' incentive is to trade Jenkins. Teams need to be deep at cornerback these days. Jenkins has proven to be a very good cornerback when healthy. One of the Cowboys' projected starters is a rookie, first-round pick Morris Claiborne. Unless they really get blown away by an offer, I would be very surprised to see the Cowboys deal Jenkins just because he doesn't want to be there anymore. Just because the Colts want him doesn't mean the Colts can get him.

But of course, I have been wrong before. My wife just brought a pineapple home from the grocery store, and this reminds me of one of the more egregious such instances from this past NFL season. So we'll keep our eyes peeled, ears to the ground, etc., and if there's movement on this over the weekend I promise I will hop on the blog and let you know what I think. Meantime, carry on with your long weekends.

Dallas Cowboys coach Jason Garrett said Wednesday the team isn't going to trade disgruntled cornerback Mike Jenkins. We didn't post on it here because we already knew this. Everybody already knew it. Even Jenkins, though he's let it be known he's unhappy with his contract and his new role as the team's No. 3 cornerback and would like to be traded, probably knew it too. He'd have to be blind not to.

Jenkins isn't making so much money that the Cowboys would want to dump him like the Eagles did with Asante Samuel. He's too good for them to trade for a late-round draft pick and not quite good enough to convince a team to offer an early-round pick. The result is that the team, as it tends to in NFL contract situations, holds all of the cards and is required to make no move at all in response to Jenkins' decision to skip offseason workouts. If he wants to stay home, he stays home. If he wants to skip mandatory workouts next month or part of training camp, they can fine him. If he wanted to sit out a whole season, they'd just run Brandon Carr, Morris Claiborne and Orlando Scandrick out there and take their chances. They're better with Jenkins in that mix and would like to have him, but they're not desperate enough to even consider granting him his wish.

Jenkins finds himself in NFL contract limbo, and if he's looking for a sympathetic shoulder on which to cry he doesn't even have to look outside his own division. The New York Giants' Osi Umenyiora is basically in the same situation -- unhappy with his contract, not thrilled to be the No. 3 defensive end on his team and would rather play elsewhere. But he's not getting traded either, because (stop me if this sounds familiar) he's affordable, he's too good to trade for peanuts and he's not going to bring back a first-round or second-round pick in a deal. The Giants are better off keeping an unhappy Umenyiora around than trading him for pennies on the dollar. It's the decision they made when he raised the same fuss a year ago, and they got 12.5 sacks out of him in 13 games (counting postseason) for their patience.

If either Jenkins or Umenyiora really wanted to push this, there are two somewhat extreme ways they could go. The first is that they could sit out the meaningful stuff, like training camp and regular-season games. If they prove that they're willing to do that, then circumstances could, theoretically, improve their leverage. Say Jenkins is sitting at home in late August and Claiborne gets hurt, or Umenyiora's sitting at home Week 2 and Justin Tuck gets hurt. In cases like those, the need for the player may become great enough to warrant a new deal. But that's a big risk to take, because injuries are unpredictable and in the meantime the player has allowed the team the chance to get used to life without him.

The second option in this case is to make a nuisance of yourself -- to show up, but put your contract situation into the spotlight in an annoying and disruptive way. The all-time visual symbol of this may well be Terrell Owens doing push-ups in his driveway. Jenkins or Umenyiora could choose to simply continue being a pain, in the hope that the annoyance might prod the team into trading him for less than they think he's worth. But this carries risk as well -- the basic one being the risk of giving the outside world (and potential future employers) reason to believe you're a jerk.

The Giants don't fear this from Umenyiora, because they trust their coaching staff and their veteran locker room to effectively ignore potential disruptions. And the Cowboys know Jenkins, and I think they're betting on the idea that he's not the push-ups-in-the-driveway sort.

What these guys are doing now -- skipping voluntary workouts and letting it be known through third-party sources that they're upset -- is the simplest way to make their particular point. It costs them nothing right now to stand up for themselves, and they should.

If you're unhappy at work and you feel your bosses aren't treating you fairly, it's important to find a proper and effective way to let them know. That goes for you, me, NFL players and everyone else. But in the end, in the cases of Jenkins and Umenyiora, there's not going to be anything either one can do.

This is the nature of their profession, and the working conditions under which NFL players operate. It's not fair, because teams can end contracts on a whim and the risk of injury is incredibly high, but a history of players crossing picket lines and caving in on labor negotiations has constructed a system in which the teams hold all the cards and the player rarely finds himself in the position of strength. Unfortunately for the players, this isn't Major League Baseball.

Jenkins and Umenyiora are both eligible to be free agents next year, and I don't think either has to fear the franchise player designation. The franchise numbers for cornerbacks and defensive ends are over $10 million, and it's unlikely that either the Cowboys or Giants would want to commit so much to their No. 3 player at those positions.

It's too far into the future to predict for certain, but the odds are they won't be in limbo again this time next year. Right now, all these guys can do is decide how much fine money (if any) they're willing to spend to make their point, and once they reach that number, show up, practice, hope they don't get hurt and play well enough to convince some other team to give them big contracts in 2013.

It may not be great. May not be fair. But for Jenkins, Umenyiora and so many others like them in the NFL, they unfortunately don't have much choice.

While pondering whether there's a decent blog post to be made out of this, I noticed this, which is an ESPNDallas.com story about Dallas Cowboys' cornerback Mike Jenkins not planning to show for the team's organized team activities that begin this week. Calvin Watkins' source is telling him that Jenkins, who wants a long-term contract but has likely become the team's No. 3 cornerback after the free-agent signing of Brandon Carr and the draft night trade-up for Morris Claiborne, isn't going to be there:

Jenkins, recovering from offseason shoulder surgery, has attended only a handful of voluntary workouts, and while team officials wish he would come to Valley Ranch to work out, they have said it's not a requirement.

Now, I debated whether to post on this at all. On principle, I'm not a believer in ripping guys -- even suggestively -- for skipping voluntary workouts. They're voluntary, and if a guy wants to skip them because his shoulder hurts or because his niece is graduating high school or because the flight's too long or because he's behind on "Game of Thrones" and wants to stay home and catch up, that's his perfect right. Coaches (and those occasional media members) who get on a guy's case for skipping voluntary workouts are out of line and should stop. So that's not what I'm doing here.

However, on the off chance that Jenkins is skipping the workouts as some sort of protest over his contract situation or his tumble down the depth chart, I'm going to offer him some advice: Not the best idea, Mike. If the coaches have asked you to show up and you're not going because you're trying to prove some sort of point, I think it's got a pretty good chance to backfire.

The Cowboys have no incentive to give Jenkins a contract extension right now, not with all they've sunk into Carr and Claiborne, and even Orlando Scandrick. And skipping workouts isn't going to change that. Claiborne is recovering from wrist surgery and isn't even likely to see the field before July, so it's not as though the rookie's going to be out there struggling while Jenkins sits home and says, "See what I'm talking about? You need me." The Cowboys are going to make it through June on the assumption that Claiborne will play and play well for them in 2012, and they're probably right. Barring an injury to Claiborne or Carr (and even then assuming health from Jenkins, which is a big assumption), Jenkins isn't going to be a starting corner for Dallas this year. While that might hurt his chances to get a new deal from the Cowboys or some other team next year, pouting would hurt worse.

Again, it's entirely possible that Jenkins has a good reason for not showing up this week. But if -- and I mean if -- his reason is some kind of protest about his current situation vis-a-vis the team, I don't think he's making a wise decision. The best thing for Jenkins' market value is to prove he's healthy and look like a team-oriented guy. He's good, and if he's healthy, they'll find ways to get him on the field. But he's not in a very strong position right now, and upsetting team management isn't going to make it any better.

Have the Dallas Cowboys really fixed their defense?

I'll give them cornerback. With the free-agent signing of Brandon Carr and the surprising trade up in the first round of the draft to pick Morris Claiborne, the Cowboys have worked hard to make sure that this year's starting cornerbacks will be much more difficult for Giants fullbacks to jump over. Assuming Claiborne is the instant-impact guy he was drafted to be, he, Carr, Mike Jenkins and Orlando Scandrick make one of Dallas' weakest 2011 units a 2012 strength.

But questions remain at other places on a defense whose total system failure was the sole reason the Cowboys lost four of their last five games and the division title. Is Brodney Pool an upgrade over Abram Elam at safety? Can they get reliable production from that other inside linebacker spot from the combination of Dan Connor and Bruce Carter? Will Anthony Spencer be a more effective pass-rusher? Do they have a plan for limiting the wear and tear on nose tackle Jay Ratliff, to help him maintain a high level of performance throughout the second half of the season?

The Cowboys' active and productive offseason has done nothing to directly address the pass rush. There is a theory that the improvements at cornerback will help the pass rush, since better coverage of receivers could give the men up front more time to get to the passer. And that may well be true. But any and all improvements the Cowboys have made on defense remain theoretical until we see that defense on the field. Last year, the party line in Dallas was that the defensive personnel were good and had underachieved and would improve in the first year under new coordinator Rob Ryan. That turned out not to be the case, and now some of the personnel have been changed. But it remains up to Ryan to put it together as a cohesive unit more capable of stopping opponents than the 2011 version was. Right now, we're taking the Cowboys' word that the new faces are dramatic enough upgrades to pull that off. But aside from the money spent on Carr and the high draft position of Claiborne, there's little outside evidence to support it. More could have been done to improve at safety, outside linebacker and defensive line, and it was not. Although Ryan may be able to make it all work, it's hard to feel too certain about it on May 3.

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The only NFC East team that didn't trade up in the first round is the one that just won the Super Bowl. That gives you a sense of how hungry the division's other three teams are to catch the New York Giants and take their shot at the Lombardi Trophy they were holding up in Indianapolis a few months ago.

The Washington Redskins made their trade-up a month early, dealing away three first-round picks and this year's second-rounder in order to secure the man they believe will be their franchise quarterback. The Dallas Cowboys made theirs Thursday night, when they decided it was worth spending their first- and second-round picks this year to secure the best defensive player in the draft. And the Eagles made theirs a short time later, when the defensive tackle they wanted, Fletcher Cox, fell further than they expected him to fall and the price to move up and get him became reasonable.

But after the top half of the first round, the NFC East teams' drafts went very different ways. The Cowboys, in need of 2012 help at various places on the roster, oddly began picking project players and unknown safeties. The Redskins made some head-scratchers in the middle rounds before getting workmanlike about their offensive line late. And the Eagles had one of those drafts where everything seemed to be falling their way. Time will tell, of course, and there's no way right now to know how any of these players will perform. But here are some thoughts on how it looks in the very early post-draft light.

BEST MOVE

Washington's trade to get quarterback Robert Griffin III and Dallas' trade to get Morris Claiborne were the headline-grabbers, and I believe that each team will be happy with its first-round pick. But the four high picks the Redskins gave up and the two high picks the Cowboys gave up keep me from labeling either of these the division's "best move" from this year's draft. Washington doesn't have another first-rounder until 2015. And Dallas, which needed help at multiple positions, spent its first two picks on a position they'd already addressed at great cost in free agency. Not enough value in either deal for it to be called a shrewd move.

So I'm giving this to the Eagles' deal to move up and get Cox. Philadelphia arrived at the draft Thursday convinced Cox was the player they wanted, and they believed they might have to move up to No. 6 or 7 to get him. To do that, they likely would have had to surrender at least one of their second-round picks, and they didn't want to pay either of those or their third. Once Cox fell to No. 12, the Eagles were able to move up by surrendering their first-rounder, a fourth-rounder and a seventh-rounder, securing the player they felt was their top target without giving up the picks they wanted to preserve. So while, yes, of course, I consider Griffin and Claiborne better players, I think the Eagles made the best first-round move of any NFC East team -- getting a player who can make a difference for them in the short-term as well as the long-term without handicapping themselves for the draft's second night.

On Friday, the Eagles converted their two second-round picks into a speedy outside linebacker (Mychal Kendricks) and a pass-rushing defensive end (Vinny Curry) and took the quarterback prospect they wanted (Nick Foles) in the third round. That Day 2 haul, compared with what the Cowboys and Redskins were able to get with their Day 2 picks, is what made the Eagles' trade-up the best overall move of the draft in the NFC East.

RISKIEST MOVE

This is a close contest between the two moves that lost out in the first category. It'd be easy to say Griffin, because he cost so much more. But I'm giving this to the Cowboys' trade-up to get Claiborne. It's a tough call, because I think Claiborne may be the best player any NFC East team got in this draft (barely, if at all, ahead of Griffin) and he cost less than Griffin did. But I'm basing this call on the circumstances specific to each team.

The Redskins are taking a big risk, sure, by picking a kid to be their franchise quarterback and telling him they don't have a first-round pick in either of the next two years with which to build around him. But the Redskins had no choice. Their need for Griffin was overwhelming, and they were right to let it overwhelm their priority list for this draft and the next two. Washington hasn't had a franchise quarterback in 20 years, and once they were convinced Griffin could be one, this was a risk worth taking for them.

I do not think, however, that Dallas' need for Claiborne was nearly as great as Washington's need for Griffin. Yes, the Cowboys' secondary was the obvious weak spot of their team last year -- the main reason they fell one game short of the Giants in the division race. But they'd already spent their big free-agent bucks on Brandon Carr and had Mike Jenkins and Orlando Scandrick at cornerback. Does Claiborne have a good chance to be better than any of them? Yes. Could that happen as early as this year? You betcha. But with needs at safety, linebacker, defensive line and offensive line, the Cowboys should have conserved their picks to address multiple needs. They weren't one great cornerback away from being a championship team in 2012, and by trading their top two picks for Claiborne, and then picking project players and reaches the rest of the way, they decided to operate as though that were the case. It's a big risk, and if lingering weaknesses at those other spots do them in this season, they could regret it.

MOST SURPRISING MOVE

Without a doubt, it was the Redskins' selection of Michigan State quarterback Kirk Cousins with the seventh pick of the fourth round Saturday. It was Washington's third pick of the draft and the second that had been used on a quarterback. Their reasoning is that quarterback is a vitally important position at which it's impossible to be too deep, and as long as they make it clear to the players involved and to their fan base that Griffin is the starter and Cousins is the backup, it can work. They can develop Cousins in the backup role, have a player they like in reserve in case Griffin gets hurt and perhaps eventually trade him for something of great value in a league in which quarterbacks are the most prized commodities.

FILE IT AWAY

Nobody in this division does the draft better than the Giants, and it'll be worth remembering that the wide receiver (LSU's Rueben Randle) they picked at the end of the second round was a player they considered taking at the end of the first. Randle is a dynamic talent who now gets a chance to develop behind brilliant and selfless starting wideouts Hakeem Nicks and Victor Cruz and with the help of quarterback Eli Manning, who has an outstanding record of getting the best out of his receiving targets. Randle could not have been drafted into a better spot for his own development, and he could potentially be an immediate asset for the Giants in the passing game, because he can play the outside spot vacated by free-agent defector Mario Manningham and allow Cruz to stay in the slot position from which he exploded onto the scene in 2011. The Giants managed to combine need picks and value picks at almost every turn in this draft, and their second-rounder may turn out to be their biggest prize.

One of the reasons I love Twitter, as part of my job, is that I believe this blog needs to be a constantly ongoing, evolving discussion about these four teams, and Twitter is a useful extension of that. Case in point: Thursday night, the Dallas Cowboys make their trade up in the draft to pick Morris Claiborne. I write a quickie reaction post saying I don't like the trade (the trade, not the player, mind you), and my Cowboys fans on Twitter are very upset about it. Hey, I get it. I rained on your parade. You're sitting there with the best defensive player in the draft and I'm telling you they made a mistake. I understand the reactions. Completely.

But overnight, and this morning, my conversations with you all on Twitter have helped me crystallize my thoughts on this matter. And rather than continue to try and explain them in 140-character snippets, I figured I'd do a blog post explaining my reasoning in a more in-depth fashion than was permitted by an instant-analysis post filed from the frantic floor of Radio City Music Hall. So here goes.

First of all, I love the player. None of my criticism of this move should be construed by anyone as criticism of Claiborne himself. I believed the Cowboys needed to draft the best defensive player available to them, and they drafted the best defensive player available to anyone. It is my opinion that Claiborne will be an excellent player for Dallas. I think he'll be the best corner on the team by Halloween, and if not for the wrist injury that's going to cost him the OTA portion of the offseason I think he could have been that even sooner.

The problem, of course, is that I don't know how good he'll be, and neither do the Cowboys and neither does anyone else. High draft picks bust all the time, and sometimes they're guys who looked as though they couldn't miss. That's why, in most cases, it's important for teams to be careful with their picks -- to try and get as many good-looking prospects as possible, especially in the early rounds, as a hedge against the possibility that one or a couple of them don't pan out. Sure, there are teams that find themselves in position to make bold moves to jump and go all-in for one player. But I don't think this year's Cowboys are such a team, and that's why I wouldn't have done what they did if I'd been in their position -- no matter how much I liked Claiborne.

One of the results of the move, as many of you have pointed out, is that the Cowboys -- who were utterly dreadful in the secondary last year -- now have one of the deepest and most talented cornerback groups in the league. With Claiborne joining free-agent addition Brandon Carr and holdovers Mike Jenkins and Orlando Scandrick, they have succeeded in turning a killer weakness into a strength. All of that is true, and given the manner in which secondary play sunk their 2011 season, I can understand the temptation to go over the top to fix it.

But there are other results of this move that are more detrimental to the Cowboys' offseason plans than Claiborne himself is beneficial. They still need help for the pass rush and the defensive line, and they could still use an upgrade at safety. Making this trade means they'll get to the end of the second round without having addressed any of those areas. Jason Garrett said just the other day that he believes you get your starting-quality players in the first three rounds. This deal means they've decided to use this draft to get only two of those instead of three. Given their many areas of need, in the short and long terms, I consider this unwise.

Also, there's a report out this morning that they're now trying to trade Jenkins. They're not going to get anything decent for Jenkins now. He's coming off shoulder surgery, couldn't stay on the field last year and, after they spent two picks on a cornerback Thursday night, everybody in the league knows Jenkins is an extraneous piece for them. They won't get good value for him. If they'd wanted to replace him, they should have traded him last week and then moved up to take Claiborne. This is a team that has totally changed its plan on the fly in the past 24 hours, and that's not a good way to do offseason NFL business.

One comparison many of you have used in arguments against me is the Redskins, who clearly gave up much more to move up four spots and draft Robert Griffin III than the Cowboys did to move up eight spots and draft Claiborne. The Redskins, you say, have even more needs, and therefore even more reason to play carefully with their picks. And that is also true. But every team's situation is different, and the Redskins' crying need to do something big at quarterback drove their decision. The Redskins absolutely had to make the trade they made to get Griffin. And as good a player as Claiborne is, and as bad as Dallas was in the secondary last year, they did not absolutely have to make a big move to go up and get him. Not in the same way the Redskins needed to address quarterback. Not even close.

Will any of this matter? Who knows? You can't judge a draft in the first 24 hours or even the first 24 months. If Claiborne is the next Deion Sanders, nobody will care that the Cowboys didn't make as many 2012 picks as they should have made. And you'll remember me (if you remember me at all) as the clown who ripped the pick when they made it. All I can do is sit here right now and read the situation as I see it. The way I see it, the Cowboys had no business using their first two picks on just one player who plays a position they already addressed -- in a major, costly way -- in free agency. That's not a great use of resources. And as much fun as it is to pick out the player you like most in the draft and go get him, it's usually smarter to view these draft choices as resources. The Cowboys don't have as many of them now as they would have had if they'd stayed put, selected one of the very good defensive players still available at 14 and held onto a potentially useful second-round pick. In my opinion, they don't have as many of them as they still need.

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.

Yeah, that's right. The ESPNDallas.com position series makes a stop today at cornerback, which is a position of extreme need for the Dallas Cowboys. As Tim MacMahon writes, Terence Newman is a sure thing to be cut, and the fact that the Cowboys gave Orlando Scandrick a contract extension during the 2011 season indicates that maybe they're thinking about making him the starter opposite Mike Jenkins. Tim doesn't think that'd be wise:

The Cowboys cannot make the mistake of just handing Scandrick a starting role just because he's paid at that level. He hasn't done anything to prove he's capable of being anything more than a nickelback. Acquiring a cornerback to pair with Jenkins should be one of the Cowboys’ top priorities.

Agreed on all points. In fact, given Jenkins' injury issues, it might not be a bad idea for the Cowboys to sign a free-agent corner and draft one in the first round, assuming they address the pass rush and the offensive line in free agency somehow. They've poked around on Stanford Routt, who's visited several teams but has yet to sign with one after being released by the Raiders this month for contract reasons. And they should be players in the markets for Brandon Carr, Brent Grimes and Cortland Finnegan.

It is simply imperative that the Cowboys find a Newman replacement over whom the Giants' fullbacks can't jump, and pieces that deepen the depth chart so that Scandrick can remain the nickel corner and an occasional injury fill-in for one of the starters. That's his role, and he needs to get better at it before he deserves to be a starter himself.

» NFC Wrap-ups: East | West | North | South » AFC: East | West | North | South

Arrow indicates direction team is trending.

Final Power Ranking: 13
Preseason Power Ranking: 14

Biggest surprise: Laurent Robinson. Signed as an afterthought by a team that didn't have a No. 3 wide receiver and wasn't sure it needed one, Robinson became a star in the passing game for quarterback Tony Romo. He caught 54 passes for 858 yards and tied for fourth in the league with 11 touchdown catches. With Miles Austin hurt for much of the season and second-year wideout Dez Bryant still developing amid a slew of off-field issues, Robinson was a big reason the Cowboys found themselves in the division race at all.

Biggest disappointment: The 1-4 finish. Even after crushing early-season losses to the Jets, Lions and Patriots -- each a game the Cowboys should have won -- Dallas stood at 7-4 and in position to take control of the NFC East with the Giants going through a second-half fade. But they gave away the game against Arizona with poor late clock management and a bizarre sequence on which head coach Jason Garrett iced his own rookie kicker, and from there it was a mess. Two losses to the Giants in the final four games sealed the Cowboys' fate, and the only game they won in their final five was against a Tampa Bay Buccaneers team that had quit on its coach. The defense collapsed late in the season and must be addressed, and the offensive line had a hard time protecting Romo. This was a system failure, and there are multiple personnel issues that have to be handled in advance of next season if they want to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Biggest need: The Cowboys need to get better in the secondary, which is weird because they addressed that last year by signing two free-agent safeties. But they knew Terence Newman wasn't going to be good enough at cornerback, which is why they tried to sign Nnamdi Asomugha, and they were right. Mike Jenkins played well but can't stay healthy. And while they signed Orlando Scandrick in the hope that he could take over for Newman as a starter next year, he doesn't necessarily look ready for a role like that. Cornerback, then, is a major need, and it wouldn't hurt if they did something about the pass rush. Anthony Spencer is a free agent at the outside linebacker spot opposite DeMarcus Ware, and Spencer does not appear to be the long-term answer.

Team MVP: DeMarco Murray. Yes, Romo had a great year and put up huge numbers. But he was also directly responsible for at least two of the early-season losses. And when you lose the division by one game, that has to matter. The Cowboys were at their very best when they were running the ball with Murray, their powerful rookie running back who ran for 897 yards in spite of not getting the starter's job until Oct. 23 and suffering a season-ending injury on Dec. 11. The Cowboys went 5-2 in the games that Murray both started and finished, and that's why I'm putting him here ahead of both Romo and Ware, each of whom had great years but vanished a bit when it counted.

Better, right? The trend arrow points up because the Cowboys won two more games in 2011 than they did in 2010. But the season left a bitter taste in the mouths of many fans and a lot of questions about the future. Is Garrett as talented a coach as Jerry Jones says he believes him to be, and will he get better and correct his mistakes as he gains more experience? Did Rob Ryan as coordinator really improve the defense, and can it take the next step if he gets a few more pieces in place before next year? Did Romo really learn from his early-season mistakes? He threw only three interceptions in the team's final nine games and may have taken a big step in his own career in spite of the fact that the defense and the offensive line crumbled around him. Will he continue to be a responsible and effective leader in 2012? The Cowboys appear to be in better shape than they were at this time last year, but it's hard to really see it through the disappointment of the final month.

Tim MacMahon of ESPNDallas.com has a column up, and it's about the Dallas Cowboys' defense. Specifically, it's about first-year defensive coordinator Rob Ryan, who Tim says is struggling to coach something out of the same cast of characters that helped get the previous coach and defensive coordinator, Wade Phillips, fired a little more than a year ago.

Tim's hypothesis is that maybe it's not the fault of the coach or the scheme in Dallas, but that maybe we've all been overrating the players the Cowboys have on the defensive side of the ball:

The truth is that this defense has three cornerstone players -- outside linebacker DeMarcus Ware, nose tackle Jay Ratliff and inside linebacker Sean Lee -- and a whole bunch of question marks. Throw a dart at the defensive depth chart and you're pretty much guaranteed to hit a draft need.

Cornerback Mike Jenkins has first-round talent and deserves credit for fighting through injuries all season, but he's on-again, off-again. Outside linebacker Anthony Spencer, another former first-round pick, has flashes of brilliance that are lost in long stretches of mediocrity.

Cornerback Terence Newman is way past his prime and looks like he's on his last legs after a few weeks of actually playing well enough to earn his massive contract earlier this season. Inside linebackers Bradie James and Keith Brooking are tough, old warriors whose glory days are long gone.

The rest of the defense is filled with JAGs, to borrow a term from Bill Parcells. The just-a-guy list includes safety Gerald Sensabaugh and [Orlando] Scandrick, even though they've been given five-year, $20-plus-million contract extensions this season.

It's an interesting point, for sure. Two years ago, when the Cowboys turned it on this time of year and won a division title, Spencer and Jenkins played like stars. They have not done so since, and as a result there are very few players on the Cowboys' defense who are. It's one thing when you have five or six guys playing like stars. It's quite another when you have only two or three.

The theory behind hiring Ryan was that the Cowboys underachieved on defense last season and needed a fresh voice to coax the talent out of all the talented players they already had in place. And while he's been able to get something out of Spencer and Jenkins (and, earlier in the season, Newman) that wasn't there a year ago, Tim's right that none of those guys is playing at a star-caliber level. Can they the rest of the way? Sure. We've seen it before for brief stretches with some of these same guys. But once this is all over, it seems the Cowboys are going to have to make some more serious and sober assessments of just what exactly they do have on defense.

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FALLING

1. Rob Ryan. The Dallas Cowboys' defensive coordinator was a hot name on the head-coaching rumor mill a couple of weeks ago. But lately, Ryan's defense hasn't been able to stop anyone. He seems to blitz when he shouldn't blitz, to not blitz when he should ... the kinds of things that happen when your coverage in the secondary is failing you. And it's failing Ryan big-time right now. Terence Newman has regressed throughout the season. Mike Jenkins looks like an injury waiting to happen. And the guys behind the starting corners aren't playing well at all. Of all the Cowboys' collapses this year, the one that might haunt them the most if they don't end up in the playoffs is blowing a 12-point lead in the final six minutes against the Giants on Sunday night.

2. New York Giants secondary: The Giants as a whole are rising, as they're back on top of the division by virtue of a tiebreaker and in spite of the four-game losing streak they just ended. But if you watched Sunday's game, you noticed the Cowboys weren't the only team in it that couldn't get a stop on the back end. Giants coach Tom Coughlin called his team's coverage issues a "grave concern," and the Giants need to get some things fixed in the secondary these next two weeks against Rex Grossman and Mark Sanchez before they see Tony Romo & Co. again in what could be a critical Week 17 rematch.

3. Santana Moss, Redskins receiver. Normally one of the Washington Redskins' most solid and reliable offensive performers, Moss cost his team a chance to send Sunday's game against the Patriots into overtime. An offensive pass interference penalty moved the Redskins back as they were driving for the tying touchdown, and Grossman's final throw of the game went off Moss' hands and into the arms of Patriots linebacker Jerod Mayo for an interception that ended all hope. It hasn't been the greatest year for Moss, who missed games earlier in the season with a broken hand, but Sunday was a low point.

RISING

1. Eli Manning, Giants quarterback. He's been here before, but Manning just keeps on rising and rising and rising. His 400 passing yards in his latest comeback victory established a new single-season career high. He's over 4,000 yards for the third year in a row and one of four quarterbacks who are threatening to surpass Dan Marino's single-season NFL record of 5,084 yards. If Aaron Rodgers hadn't already locked up the award, Manning would be in the MVP race. He's led five game-winning touchdown drives this year for a team that has only seven wins. If the Giants' run game can look as good as it looked Sunday behind a resurgent Brandon Jacobs, the way Manning's playing could make them one of the best offenses in the league in the final month.

2. Felix Jones, Cowboys running back. Sadly for Cowboys rookie running back DeMarco Murray, his season is over because of a severe ankle injury he suffered in the first quarter of Sunday's loss. That means a lot more carries for Jones, who was the starter earlier this season before he got hurt and Murray took over. Jones looked fresh and spry and more than capable Sunday. The problem now is that they have practically nothing behind him, so the priority has to be keeping Jones from getting hurt. I imagine the Cowboys will throw the ball more over their final three games, but when they run, they'll ask Jones to do the running.

3. Philadelphia Eagles defense. They totally cooled off a red-hot Miami team Sunday, knocking quarterback Matt Moore out of the game and shutting down the Dolphins after an early Brandon Marshall touchdown. First-year defensive coordinator Juan Castillo is working new guys into new roles and expanding what the defense is capable of doing. It was the best the defense has looked all year and the way the Eagles had hoped they'd be able to play consistently this year. The talent is there, and if the scheme and focus issues are settled, it may be enough to carry the Eagles to a strong finish, even if it is too little too late.

So you know how much I like to mix it up with all of you on Twitter. It's the first thing I check when the wheels of the plane hit the ground, and when that happened at Newark Airport this morning I saw that @EZ_Money13 had sent me this bit of 140-character wisdom:

This loss isn't by any means on Romo but it's gonna b "the talk of the town" bc it was n December

And @EZ_Money13 is right, of course, but what I told him and what I believe is that that's plain silly. Not only that, it goes to show how silly all of this obsessing over Romo's December record is. Romo was 21-for-31 on Sunday for 321 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions. That's not a good game for a quarterback, it's a great one. And if you're a quarterback and you throw a touchdown pass that puts your team up 34-22 with less than six minutes on the clock in a home game, you have every right to consider that game won.

The problem, as later tweeters pointed out, was that Romo missed badly on a third-down toss to Miles Austin just before the two-minute warning that would have, if completed, either padded the Dallas lead or at least allowed them to chew more time off the clock. But (a) Austin said he lost the ball in the lights and (b) are we really going to hit Romo for one of his 10 incompletions in a game in which the Cowboys scored 34 points?

No, the only way this loss is on Romo is if they asked him to go in and play nickel cornerback on the last two Giants possessions and he refused. Or if he had a mirror on the sideline and was reflecting light into the eyes of all of his defensive backs, rendering them unable to cover anyone in a Giants' uniform in the game's final five minutes. This loss was on the defense, plain and simple, and anyone who watched the game knows that.

This was on Rob Ryan, the first-year defensive coordinator who had the defense clicking so well in September but has been unable to find ways to stop teams at critical times in the past month. But it goes deeper than that. The Cowboys have personnel issues in the secondary that are costing them. Terence Newman has faded terribly after a hot start. Mike Jenkins makes plays, but he seems to get hurt or at least nearly get hurt every time he does. The mixing and matching of blitzes has resulted in miscommunications and coverage busts in the secondary, and Sunday night they paid for it at the hands of Eli Manning, who's having one of the best seasons of any quarterback in the league.

The Cowboys knew this was going to be a problem. Remember, they tried hard to sign free-agent cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha in the offseason before the Eagles snatched him away. They were going to cut Newman to make room for Asomugha in their lineup and under their salary cap, and they believed he'd be a major upgrade. Asomugha hasn't played up to his hype in Philadelphia, but it's no stretch to believe he'd be doing better at this point than Newman is.

This is an area the Cowboys must adjust in the next offseason. They appear set to part ways with Newman and go with Jenkins and Orlando Scandrick as starting cornerbacks. They're committed to safeties Abram Elam and Gerald Sensabaugh. But they need depth in the secondary, and they need to add a playmaker or two, because the major problems they're dealing with now are personnel problems more than they are scheme problems.

Make no mistake: Ryan deserves his share of the blame and will surely accept it. The talk a couple of weeks ago about him as a head coaching candidate has cooled and will continue to do so as long as teams can throw and score at will against the Cowboys in the fourth quarter. But the Cowboys knew they were going into this season shorthanded on the back end of the defense, and lately it has begun to show up. Sunday night, it showed up big time, and it -- not the Cowboys' quarterback -- lost them a pretty important game.

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FALLING

1. Giants' offensive line. It hasn't really been any good all year, but now it has begun to cost them games. The Giants were absolutely manhandled up front by the Eagles' defense Sunday night, unable to find anything at all in the run game or give Eli Manning enough time to throw. Brandon Jacobs is getting booed by the home fans, but he can't make the holes himself. The Giants look like a team that will continue to be in every game they play, including the tough ones, but it's going to be difficult for them to put together a winning streak against their schedule if they can't win those physical battles in the trenches.

2. Cowboys' secondary. They hung on to beat Washington, but Rex Grossman had a pretty good day against them. They miss cornerback Mike Jenkins, and if the injury to safety Gerald Sensabaugh is serious enough to linger, they'll have a tough time patching it together in time for Thursday's game. The good things for Dallas are that its offense is good enough to outscore teams and its next two opponents aren't big-time passing teams. But the Cowboys' defense did show some cracks Sunday, especially on the back end.

3. Redskins' running game clarity. Actually, it seems kind of clear to all involved that rookie Roy Helu is the team's best back. But Mike Shanahan keeps giving Ryan Torain the starts and bringing in Helu later. Shanahan said this week that part of the reason for that is not wanting to give the rookie too much too soon -- a strategy that speaks to where Shanahan and the Redskins are right now as a franchise. They're thinking long-term, and they don't want to overload Helu mentally or beat him up physically if he's part of the long-term plans. So while it may feel frustrating right now, it's all designed to make things better in the long run.

RISING

1. Tony Romo, Cowboys quarterback. This was a game in which a number of things that had been going right for the Cowboys did not. They didn't dominate physically in the run game as they have been lately. They didn't make the stops they needed to make on defense. And yet, rather than force things the way he was when he was making so many costly mistakes earlier in the season, Romo was smart and efficient and deliberate and made all of the throws he needed to make to deliver a division win. He's in the middle of an excellent season.

2. Vince Young, Eagles quarterback. Man, did he look shaky for the first three quarters. He even looked shaky at times on that game-winning drive. But he made the plays he needed to make to deliver a win. And even if Michael Vick comes back healthy this week and Young doesn't start another game all year, he showed teams he added a win to his record as an NFL quarterback, which now stands at 31-17. That's Young's biggest selling point -- not the relative prettiness of his passes -- and if he wants to go find a starting job somewhere next year, that win is one more thing he can try to sell.

3. Eagles' and Cowboys' offensive lines. Maligned for much of the season as a weak spot, the Eagles' line has actually consistently ranked among the best run-blocking lines in the league. Sunday night, it also gave Young the time he needed to make plays. Their playoff chances are, at best, on life support, but their physicality up front on both sides of the ball is going to make them a tough team to play the rest of the way. As for Dallas, it is still shaky at center, and Doug Free isn't having a very good year. But the return of Montrae Holland to play left guard has really helped solidify things for them in the middle, and there's reason to think they'll continue to improve as the year progresses.

As you get ready for Sunday afternoon's home game against the Seahawks, here's one reason for Dallas Cowboys fans to be feeling good and one reason for concern:


Feeling good: The Cowboys' passing game should be back today. Seattle defends the run very well, so I wouldn't expect a huge game out of DeMarco Murray. But the Seahawks aren't strong in the secondary, and this should be the day quarterback Tony Romo once again begins to find wideouts Miles Austin and Dez Bryant down the field. They couldn't do that on a frustrating night last Sunday in Philadelphia against the Eagles' talented cornerbacks, but they should have more chances to hit big plays in this one.

Cause for concern: Oddly the way the Cowboys should be able to beat the Seahawks is the way the Seahawks might be able to give the Cowboys trouble as well. Seattle quarterback Tarvaris Jackson has actually been a pretty good downfield passer when he's been healthy this season, and he's got a real rhythm with wide receiver Sidney Rice from their days together on the Minnesota Vikings' second-team offense. With cornerback Mike Jenkins and inside linebacker Sean Lee out with injuries, the Dallas defense could be weaker than usual at the second level and will have to limit the Seahawks' big plays in the passing game.

The headline injury news of the day in our division is that of New York Giants running back Ahmad Bradshaw, who according to various reports has a broken bone in his foot. Now, Adam Schefter has reported that sources tell him it's not serious and Bradshaw could play Sunday. Others are reporting that Bradshaw is telling teammates he'll miss two weeks and could need season-ending surgery. Giants coach Tom Coughlin said he didn't know what was going to happen, so it looks like we'll just have to monitor this one. If Bradshaw can't go, expect Brandon Jacobs to take the lead role in the NFL's 30th-best rushing offense with D.J. Ware backing him up.

The rest of the injury-report news from the NFC East on Thursday:

Giants

Defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul was a surprise addition to the Giants' injury report with a neck injury, but the Giants are saying they don't think it's serious. Wide receiver Hakeem Nicks sat out practice with a hamstring injury, and it's starting to look as though the Giants won't be able to count on him Sunday in New England. Center David Baas missed practice with a knee injury. Osi Umenyiora was limited and Justin Tuck practiced in full.

Philadelphia Eagles

The Eagles don't play until Monday Night, so this was their first practice and injury report of the week. Running back LeSean McCoy missed practice with an "illness," but coach Andy Reid said it shouldn't cost him any more time. Tight end Brent Celek sat out practice with a hip injury, and linebacker Akeem Jordan remains out with a concussion. Other than that, the Eagles seem pretty healthy.

Dallas Cowboys

Right guard Kyle Kosier seems to be the new question mark this week in Dallas. He missed practice Wednesday and was limited Thursday with a foot injury. Remains to be seen if he'll be able to play, but if he isn't, their already challenged offensive line will be in even more trouble than usual. Sean Lee, Felix Jones and Mike Jenkins all missed practice with their wrist, ankle and hamstring injuries, and all seem rather unlikely to help Sunday against the Seahawks.

Washington Redskins

Left tackle Trent Williams and tight end Fred Davis were both limited in practice because of their ankle sprains, and as badly as the Redskins need them both, it's tough to tell whether either will be able to play Sunday against the 49ers. Safety O.J. Atogwe missed practice with his toe and knee injuries.