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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.

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.

Good and interesting insight in this story from Albert Breer on NFL.com about what, exactly, upset the other teams in the NFL about the way the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins spent their money in the uncapped 2010 season. The NFL stripped the Redskins of $36 million and the Cowboys of $10 million in salary cap space over the next two years, and those two teams have filed a grievance against the league and the NFLPA to dispute the punishment. But to this point, it has remained unclear what, exactly, the other teams felt they did wrong.

Albert writes that, by structuring the contracts of Miles Austin, Albert Haynesworth and DeAngelo Hall in such a way as to inflate 2010 base salaries and save money in future years, the Cowboys and Redskins inflated the franchise-player numbers for wide receivers, defensive tackles and cornerbacks. As a result, the Chargers had a hard time keeping Vincent Jackson, the Ravens were handcuffed by the contract they wanted to give Haloti Ngata and the Bengals were unable to keep Johnathan Joseph. For example:

Austin's contract was instrumental in pushing the receiver number from $9.5 million in 2010 to $11.3 million in 2011. San Diego franchised Vincent Jackson at the latter number in 2011. The leverage Jackson gained from having an $11.4 million tender made him difficult to sign to a long-term deal, and the resulting 2012 franchise figure -- by rule, 120 percent of the previous number, which came out to $13.7 million -- made it even harder to tag him again for the club.

So San Diego, which likely would've tagged Jackson again if the number had been more affordable, let Jackson walk. He signed a five-year, $55.6 million contract with the Buccaneers this offseason.

Many thanks to Albert for shining some light on what, exactly, the other owners found wrong with the way the Cowboys and the Redskins behaved in a year that was supposed to have no spending restrictions. The Cowboys and Redskins are arguing that there was no rule against what they did, and while that may be true, Giants owner and NFL management committee chairman John Mara said last month that all teams were warned that they could be punished if they did what these two teams did.

But for a couple of reasons, I continue to believe the teams that are complaining about this are full of it. First of all, commissioner Roger Goodell said at the owners' meetings last month that the reason for the penalties was that the teams in question had attempted to gain a competitive advantage in future years through their 2010 actions. But what Albert writes (on the league's own web site) is something quite different. Albert's reporting indicates that the reason the other teams got upset at the Cowboys and the Redskins was because their actions required them to spend more money than they wanted to spend to pay their own players. And if that's the case, then the artificial, unwritten guidelines the owners tried to put in place to control spending during the uncapped year were not an effort to maintain future competitive balance (as they have claimed publicly), but rather clearly an attempt to control player salaries.

Furthermore, it's important to remember that there never would have been an uncapped 2010 season -- or any reason to cut backroom deals to regulate spending therein -- if the owners hadn't decided to lock out the players in 2011 in an effort to restructure the CBA in a manner more favorable to themselves. Had they negotiated in good faith prior to 2010, they could have put a new CBA in place that would have imposed a salary cap and clear spending rules for that season. But because they had decided long before to impose a lockout strategy and not negotiate until they had the players backed up against the wall, the 2010 season arrived without a salary cap, as the prior CBA said it must if it were to be the final league year.

The entire concept of the uncapped 2010 season was an avoidable mess of the owners' own making. The lockout was an unnecessary act of pure greed, as evidenced by a new CBA that solved almost none of the competitive-balance issues raised by small-market owners. And the idea that the teams could whisper together behind closed doors about acting as though there was a cap when there wasn't and expect every owner to go along with the plan is (and always was) utterly foolish. The salary cap penalties against the Cowboys and Redskins are part of the fallout from the clumsy way in which the NFL's owners executed their negotiating strategy, and I continue to see no common-sense reason why those teams shouldn't expect to get some sort of restitution from the arbitrator.

Have you seen what the New York Giants have been up to in free agency? No? Me neither, and I cover the division!

Ah, we kid, we kid. Jokes about the Giants' offseason inactivity are so 2011. It is what it is, as they say in places where Giants fans live, and after the way last season ended, there's no reason to think it's going to change. Those of us who ripped Giants general manager Jerry Reese for not doing enough to improve his team last summer (and yes, of course, I very much include myself) are full to bursting from all the crow we had to eat once Reese's bunch won the Super Bowl. And the Giants' uninspiring list of 2012 free-agent pickups to date -- let's call them Martellus and the Special Teamers -- isn't worth getting worked up over now that even the doubters understand the way the Giants look at the NFL world.

See, the issue last year was that those of us who criticized got caught up in the impatience that defines our times. My point, after watching the Giants stubbornly ignore immediate needs at every level of the draft and do nothing in free agency to address the exodus of seemingly important passing-game targets, was that their philosophy wasn't working. Although it was admirable that they were determined to stick to a plan about which they felt strongly, that plan had produced two straight years without a playoff appearance and was therefore fair game for questioning.

But Reese and the Giants were looking at the landscape more broadly, and that's to their credit. The Giants don't use the draft to address immediate needs. They believe that's a poor use of draft picks -- that rushing to plug a hole with a first-round or second-round pick reduces the value of those picks. The Giants view the draft as a means of building, augmenting and maintaining a deep roster -- the kind of roster that can withstand free-agent defections, plug holes from within and consistently challenge for a playoff spot. The kind of roster that, in the years when it does reach the playoffs, has what it takes to win postseason games and the Super Bowl.

The Giants don't view free agency as some huge shopping mall stocked with all kinds of desirable goodies. Sure, if they see someone they like who plays a position where they need help, they're not above making an aggressive move to get him. Antrel Rolle is a good example from two years ago. Last year, they targeted a center, David Baas, and got him. This year, they targeted a tight end, Martellus Bennett, and locked him up on the first day. But their approach in free agency is measured, focused and patient, and that's the way they believe it should be.

Patience is a hard sell in today's sports culture, where two years without a playoff appearance can feel like an eternity even if the people running the team are the same ones that brought you a Super Bowl title not long before. So last year, the Giants' front office found itself under attack for inactivity. But Reese insisted that inactivity was the right path. The Giants believe in their system, in their coaching staff and in the core of veterans in their locker room. Reese told everyone he'd had a 10-win team in 2010 that missed the playoffs and believed his 2011 team could be better by just enough to get in this time. Lots of us thought he was nuts.

To his credit, at the Super Bowl, Reese declined to accept the accolades. He pointed out more than once that his 2011 team had won only nine games -- one fewer than the previous year's team -- and that he found it funny that somehow he was a genius this time around. Again with the big-picture viewpoint. Reese know there's some good fortune involved -- that if the Eagles hadn't kicked away so many September games or if Miles Austin had caught that pass down the sideline late in the game in Dallas, the Giants very well could have been looking at three straight years without a playoff game. This NFL is a razor's-edge business, and one can do very little to control the placement of that fine line between success and failure.

But what the Giants do is position themselves the best they can to take advantage when fate smiles on them. They don't want their season to ride on the worthiness of a couple of big offseason signings. They don't want their season to rise and fall on the immediate readiness of their first-round draft pick. If the Giants get an opportunity, they want to know they have a roster, driven by gutsy, respected leaders like Tom Coughlin, Eli Manning and Justin Tuck that's deep and talented and experienced and driven enough to spot it and take advantage of it.

That's what last season was. The Giants weren't the best team in the NFL in 2011. For most of it, they weren't even close. But they may have been the toughest. And when the time came for that to matter -- for the toughness and the depth of their roster to deliver -- that's exactly what happened.

So here the Giants are again, sitting idly by while the rest of the league rushes out to grab free agents. Do they have some holes they could fill? Sure they do. Might not filling them cost them a game or two this season? Absolutely. But the Giants know who they are and what they have. And after winning a second Super Bowl title in five years, they feel very good about it. They could win the Super Bowl again next year. They could go 8-8 and miss the playoffs. But these are the Giants, and they know one year won't define them. It's a lesson that a lot of other teams -- and a lot of us who analyze and predict this league -- would do well to learn.

The Miami Dolphins traded Pro Bowl receiver Brandon Marshall Tuesday to the Chicago Bears. Vincent Jackson, Reggie Wayne, Robert Meachem and Pierre Garcon were all taken off the market quickly on the first day of free agency.

So who, exactly, will be the No. 1 receiver for Miami next season?

The Dolphins had two months to craft their offseason plan to build a title contender in 2012. But after one day of free agency, their plan looks confusing, particularly at wide receiver.

Miami is reportedly interested in Dallas Cowboys free-agent receiver Laurent Robinson. He had a career year replacing Miles Austin last season. Can Robinson be the No. 1 receiver for the Dolphins?

Or will Miami look to the draft? Oklahoma State receiver Justin Blackmon is a top-10 pick. The Dolphins hold the No. 8 pick and now have a huge need at receiver. Should this be Miami’s next target.

What about Dolphins receiver Brian Hartline? He’s been decent opposite Marshall in the starting lineup. Is Hartline ready to take his game to the next level in Miami’s new West Coast offense?

Using our SportsNation poll, predict who will be Miami’s No. 1 receiver next season. You can also share your thoughts in the comments section below.

You guys know I'm active on Twitter (@ESPN_NFCEast and, to a lesser extent, @DanGrazianoESPN). I'm there to answer whatever questions I can, and at times like these the activity is more intense than it is at other times of the year. So I'm on there in between blog posts to help out. You can ask questions, vent, call me names, whatever. I'm there for you.

Some of the questions I get on there become so frequent that they take on lives of their own and become worthy of their own posts. Such is the case, I feel, with the question of Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Laurent Robinson, who is making free-agent visits to places like Jacksonville and appears unlikely to return to Dallas.

To hear Cowboys fans on this topic, you'd think we were talking about the second coming of Jerry Rice. I mean, Robinson played very well for the Cowboys last year, and only three players in the league caught more touchdown passes, but I refuse to buy into the idea that replacing his production would become a major offseason priority for the Cowboys if and when he signs elsewhere.

Possible options for replacing Robinson include:

1. Throwing the ball to Jason Witten, Miles Austin and Dez Bryant more.

2. Finding a third wide receiver in the bargain bin, which is where they found Robinson last summer when no one else wanted him.

This isn't rocket science. Robinson became Tony Romo's favorite red zone target and ended up with 11 touchdown catches, but that doesn't mean Romo would be crippled in the red zone without him. Witten used to be his favorite red zone target, and there's no reason to think he can't be again. If they can keep Austin healthy and Bryant (still just 23 years old) continues his development, they won't need a No. 3 wide receiver to produce the way Robinson did. Robinson's production was a pleasant surprise, but it's not as though Romo and the Cowboys would have been lost without him.

The Cowboys need help on defense and on the offensive line. They're pretty well stocked at receiver. Falling in love with Robinson and overpaying him off of his first good season would be a free-agent gamble, and given their strengths and their needs, it's one the Cowboys would do well to let some other team make.

You guys want some answers on this deal where the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins are losing millions in cap space for spending as much as they wanted in an uncapped year. I'm here for you. I have spoken to a couple of sources close to the situation, and this is what I have learned:

Q: What exactly did they do?

A: During the uncapped 2010 season, teams were repeatedly warned by the league not to structure contracts so that big money was assigned to 2010 in order to attain future-years cap relief. They were told there would be penalties if they did this. The Cowboys and the Redskins, to a greater extent than the league's other 30 teams, ignored these warnings and engaged in such behavior anyway. Miles Austin's contract with the Cowboys, which included a $17 million base salary in 2010, is being brought up as the prime example.

Q: How did they get caught?

A: The complaints against the Cowboys and the Redskins for engaging in perfectly legal behavior that violated no actual rules but only the collusive backroom dictates being issued by the league came not from the league office but from the other 30 teams, who were doing what they were told while the Cowboys and the Redskins were not. The other teams demanded action, since they were the good soldiers, and so the league decided it needed to take some.

Q: Why isn't the union challenging this?

A: While this behavior seems to fit the very dictionary definition of collusion, as multiple teams were engaged in discussions to limit the earning potential of their employees and prospective employees, do not expect it to be challenged in court. The decision today, in which the Redskins were docked $36 million in cap space and the Cowboys $10 million, is the result of a settlement between the NFL and the NFLPA. One reason the union has no problem with it is that the money lost to the Cowboys and Redskins is not taken out of the overall 2012 spending pool — each of 28 other teams gets $1.6 million extra in cap room, so there's no net loss league-wide. Another reason the union won't push on it is because they agreed, as part of the settlement of last year's Brady vs. NFL federal lawsuit, to drop all pending legal action against the league. That included their claims that the league engaged in collusion in 2010.

Q: Why is this happening now, the day before free agency?

A: The answer to that lies in the reason it took so long for the league to establish and announce this year's salary cap. The union must sign off on the cap before it is approved, and it obviously took issue initially with the idea of punishing teams for spending money in an uncapped year. But the league was toying with the idea of lowering this year's salary cap, and used this issue as a bargaining chip with the union. Basically, if the union agreed to the punishment for the Redskins and Cowboys, the cap would be $120.6 million, as it is now. But if they refused, the league was prepared to make the cap lower. I don't know by how much, but say for the sake of argument they wanted to drop it to $116 million per team. That'd have been a total of $128 million when spread across 32 teams — a significant loss to the players if they agreed to it.

More to come on this, of course, but that should help answer some of your questions for now.

Yeah, I saw the story that Randy Moss wants to come out of retirement and play in the NFL again in 2012. And yeah, it's the offseason, so my first reaction was to do a post about whether he'd make sense for any of the teams in the NFC East. I'm not proud. It's content. It's a big name. It hits all four teams. And hey, you're reading it.

However, before we go any further, I must make one thing clear: I do not believe Randy Moss will ever play in the NFL again. The guy washed out with three different teams in 2010, couldn't find a job in 2011 and now, at the age of 35 and in a free-agent market flooded with good wide receivers in their primes, he thinks a team is going to take a chance on him? Agree to disagree, Randy. Agree to disagree.

That said, I have (as many of you are fond of pointing out) been wrong before. And so, if by some chance Moss can prove he still has enough speed to be a legitimate deep threat -- to get separation from defensive backs and perform as a difference-making downfield option for an offense, as he could not do in 2010 for three different teams -- would he make any sense in our division? My team-by-team ultra-fantastical hypothetical answers follow.

Dallas Cowboys: No. Not even a little. The Cowboys need a No. 3, first of all, and that's only if they let Laurent Robinson walk. If Dez Bryant and Miles Austin are healthy, Moss is an upgrade over neither one. And do you really want him around Bryant? No.

New York Giants: No. Not even a little. Go back and read the Cowboys answer and replace "Laurent Robinson" with "Mario Manningham" and replace "Dez Bryant and Miles Austin" with "Hakeem Nicks and Victor Cruz." No. Not a Giants kind of thing to do, this.

Philadelphia Eagles: Interesting, but only if they decide to move on from DeSean Jackson, as I believe they might. If Moss shows the deep-threat ability that made him such a weapon with Minnesota and New England at various points in his career, and if Jackson is out of the picture, the must-win-now-or-everyone's-getting-fired Eagles wouldn't be a ridiculous landing spot. Again, lot of "if"s, but don't be surprised to see this connection made again if Jackson isn't back.

Washington Redskins: The 2007-09 version of Moss is exactly what the Redskins need. But (a) this is the 2012 version, and (b) Moss doesn't respond well to being in losing environments. Even if he could flash that 07-09 form, the Redskins would have to be a lot more set at quarterback and offensive line than they are right now. And the quarterback would have to be a veteran like Peyton Manning or Kyle Orton and not a rookie or first-time starter like Robert Griffin III or Matt Flynn.

The Dallas Cowboys didn't see Laurent Robinson coming last summer, but thanks to Miles Austin's hamstrings and the speed with which he and Tony Romo developed a red zone rapport, Robinson became an important part of Dallas' offense. Now, he's an unrestricted free agent, and the team faces a difficult decision on what to do about him.

In the third installment of their position-by-position look at the Cowboys, ESPNDallas.com tackles the wide receivers. Bryan Broaddus acknowledges Robinson's contribution but "would not be surprised if the front office allows Robinson to walk."

He's made it clear that he wants to return to Valley Ranch and has indicated that the Cowboys wouldn't necessarily have to be the top bidders to keep him. What the Cowboys would be willing to pay for a No. 3 receiver who has proven he can be a quality fill-in starter isn't clear. If the Cowboys don't re-sign Robinson, they'll need to find another third receiver, whether it's in the draft or another free-agency bargain.

I remember No. 3 receiver being a concern for the Cowboys last August in training camp, and I remember talking to Bryan about this issue. At the time, we agreed that it was a small concern, in part because there was always a chance they could find a decent No. 3 wideout on the street (as they did) if they didn't like their internal options, and in part because of tight end Jason Witten's abilities as a receiver.

Witten this past season posted his lowest reception and yardage totals since 2006. I believe part of that was due to the emergence of Robinson, especially as a red zone option. I also think it had something to do with the Cowboys' offensive line struggles, which may have required Witten to spend more time as a pass-protector than a pass-catcher. It's entirely possible that, should the Cowboys let Robinson go, they can replace his production by throwing to Witten as much as they did in prior seasons. And if that's the case, internal options such as Jesse Holley or Raymond Radway might be sufficient replacements. Or they could find next year's Robinson in the free-agent bargain bin again.

The Cowboys need to spend money to upgrade the line and the secondary, and they could stand to spend some on a pass rush. If Austin and Dez Bryant can stay healthy, their concerns at wide receiver are small compared to those in other areas. So if Robinson wants more than No. 3 wide receiver money, or if he wants a long-term commitment, I'm with Bryan in that I wouldn't be surprised to see them let him go.

» 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.

Amid all the pre-holiday chaos, I almost forgot. The Dallas Cowboys' media relations staff was kind enough to get me a phone interview this week with wide receiver Laurent Robinson. And if I don't share it with you guys, what was the point, right?

I asked Robinson, who's been a surprise star for the Cowboys this season as the No. 3 wideout and very effective fill-in for Miles Austin during Austin's injury, why the Cowboys' receivers don't seem to mind the fact that they all have to share catches. Wide receivers do tend to bristle at such things, historically, and Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo is spreading the ball around a lot lately. In last week's victory over Tampa Bay, Robinson, Austin and Dez Bryant each caught a touchdown pass. Now that's a way to make sure to keep all of your wide receivers happy.

"We love that Tony spreads the ball around," Robinson said. "We've just got a good group here of selfless players, and I think everybody likes being a part of this offense and helping it click the way it's been clicking."

It certainly has. Romo has thrown 18 touchdown passes and just two interceptions in the Cowboys' past seven games, and the team is 5-2 in those games. If the Giants lose and the Cowboys beat the Eagles on Saturday, or if the Cowboys beat the Giants next Sunday, Dallas will be division champs. The passing game is a big part of the reason why.

Over the past eight games, when the Cowboys are in three-wide receiver sets, Romo has 11 touchdowns and no interceptions. Robinson has caught seven of those touchdowns. ESPN Stats & Information tells me that Robinson has caught all seven of the passes in which he's been targeted in the end zone, and that only Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski has more catches this year (11) when targeted in the end zone.

"Tony's just doing a good job in the pocket, moving his feet and keeping those plays alive," Robinson said. "And when I see him scramble, all I'm thinking is, 'Get open,' because I know he'll find me if I do."

It didn't take long for Romo and Robinson to develop a connection. Robinson said he made sure to grab a seat next to Romo in team meetings as soon as he showed up, and that the biggest early hurdle to their relationship may have been the fact that Robinson had gone to Illinois State and Romo to rival Eastern Illinois. But once they gave each other a hard time about that, the rest was easy.

"I just have a great feeling about wearing the star every day," Robinson said. "I always knew I could play in this league with the right opportunity and the right chance, and that's what this is here. I don't worry too much about who's the first guy or second guy or third guy. I just want to go out and play hard and show what I can do, and this is definitely a place where, if you do that, they're going to throw you the ball."

Robinson's living proof of that.

He has surely had more spectacular games in his career, but if you're a fan of the Dallas Cowboys the game Tony Romo played Saturday night was an absolute thing of beauty. Romo was 23-for-30 for 249 yards, three passing touchdowns and a rushing touchdown in a nearly uncontested 31-15 victory over a dead Tampa Bay Buccaneers team. He was efficient. He was in control. He was ruthless and reliable and made sure that the Cowboys put one of their easiest wins of the season in their pocket when they needed a win in the worst way.

The Cowboys move to 8-6, temporarily a half-game in front of New York pending the Giants' game Sunday afternoon. If the Giants win, Dallas will have done little Saturday night but hold serve. The victory doesn't dramatically help their playoff chances, but a loss would have damaged them severely. Romo deserves credit for making sure it was never a reasonable possibility.

He wasn't perfect, of course. No one is. The fumble on the first possession of the second half was careless. And I didn't think he made the wisest choice on his first touchdown throw to Miles Austin in traffic at the goal line. But Austin caught the ball for a touchdown, which made the throw look great. And Romo responded to the fumble by engineering a 12-play, seven-minute field-goal drive that denied the Bucs any shot at momentum.

Sure, Felix Jones had 108 rushing yards. But the Cowboys played ball-control all game, even when they were throwing it. Romo took no irresponsible shots downfield. He played completely under control. He took sacks when he should have, and he did a great job of extending plays with his feet until receivers got open. He completed passes to seven different targets, with no one making more than five catches and no receiver gaining more than Jason Witten's 77 yards. It was a clinic in levelheaded quarterback play, and while a Tampa Bay team that has now lost eight in a row might not have been much of a challenge, Romo's been playing like this against everyone lately. He has thrown 18 touchdown passes and two interceptions in his past seven games, and the Cowboys are 5-2 in those games.

Talk that coach Jason Garrett and the Cowboys don't trust Romo is ridiculous. Watching Romo on Saturday night, you saw a guy who was in complete control of his offense. A guy who was picking among fantastic targets and had the confidence and competence to find the right one. Heck, all three of his touchdown passes came from inside the 10-yard line. You don't keep throwing the ball from the 8 and 9 if you don't trust your quarterback.

Romo's reputation is a tough one to shake, but he's done nothing wrong in the second half of this season. He is not the reason Dallas lost to Arizona and New York in the two games before this one. And as the Cowboys look ahead to their final two games of the season, knowing they win the division if they can win them both, they do so with a great deal of well-deserved confidence in their starting quarterback.

Some more observations from the Cowboys' Saturday night victory:

• Jones looks great running the ball, and maybe more importantly Sammy Morris looks like a guy who can reasonably spell Jones and keep the Cowboys from having to overwork him during the next couple of weeks. We'll see how they perform against a defense that doesn't allow 5 yards per carry, but the signs from the run game were encouraging for the Cowboys.
• I thought the defense was encouraging too, at least while DeMarcus Ware and Jay Ratliff were in there. The unit pressured Josh Freeman and were able to run a lot of those moving, confusing fronts to rattle the Bucs' offense into mistakes. And I had no problem with Garrett holding Ware and Ratliff out in the second half to rest them and decrease the risk of further injury. That game was over at halftime, no matter how scared Cowboys' fans were about their team's second-half issues. And if it had become legitimately close, they could always have put Ware and Ratliff back in, right? I think the Cowboys managed that situation intelligently.
• The difference between this game and the Detroit game (other than the vast differences between Detroit's offense and Tampa Bay's) was that, when Romo made the costly turnover right after halftime to give the other team points, he didn't make another. Sounds simple, but it's important. The way you recover from your mistakes says much more about you than whether or not you make one.
• The sight of right tackle Tyron Smith on the ground at the end of the game had to be upsetting for Cowboys fans. He walked off on his own power and seemed fine, but Smith would be a devastating loss for an already-shaky line on which he's been far and away the best player. Smith has played tackle at an elite level this year, and would be irreplaceable.
• Next up for Dallas is a crucial home game next Saturday against the Eagles, who beat them 34-7 in Philadelphia in Week 8.

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.

ARLINGTON, Texas -- Well, we thought there would be a lot of points in tonight's divisional showdown between the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys, and the first half did not disappoint. Even though it was the Giants' defense that scored the first points when Jason Pierre-Paul sacked Tony Romo in the end zone for a safety, the offenses didn't take long to get in gear, and the Cowboys hold a slim 17-15 lead with the Giants set to get the ball back to start the second half.

Giants quarterback Eli Manning is only 9-for-19, but he's made some very nice throws under pressure and has already hooked up with Hakeem Nicks fro 105 of his 146 passing yards. A couple of drops by Victor Cruz have hurt the overall numbers and cost the Giants yards. Romo is a more efficient 10-for-14, but for only 104 yards as he has so far been unable to work wideouts Miles Austin and Dez Bryant into the mix. Romo loves him some Laurent Robinson, though, especially when it's time to score a touchdown, and the Dallas run game doesn't look like it's lost much with Felix Jones subbing in for an injured DeMarco Murray at tailback. Guess all of that hype about the impact of fullback Tony Fiammetta's return was on the mark.

If one of these defenses is able to make some halftime adjustments and some second-half plays in coverage, that team could well run away with the game. But right now it seems more likely that the offenses will continue to rule the night and that many more points await before this one's over.

Some more thoughts on the first half:

• Real curious to see whether Giants running back Ahmad Bradshaw plays in the second half. Word is he was benched for blowing curfew, but he's dressed and eligible to play. In his absence, Brandon Jacobs looks like a complete animal, running over people and inflicting pain on would-be tacklers the way he did early in his career.
• With the exception of the Gerald Sensabaugh pass interference penalty that led to Jacobs' touchdown, the Cowboys have to be happy about the way their red zone defense has played. They've held the Giants to field goals twice, including in the final two minutes of the half after Jones' ill-timed fumble gave them the ball at the Dallas 14-yard line. Earlier in the game, they held on after a 64-yard Manning pass to Nicks set the Giants up with first-and-goal on the four. Some credit for that stand, however, goes to questionable playcalling by the Giants, who called end zone corner fade routes on first and second downs and a weak draw play with D.J. Ware on third.
• Injuries are mounting for Dallas. Center Phil Costa is out with a concussion. Murray left with an ankle injury, and it doesn't sound as though they expect him back, which is why Jones is getting the carries. Hey, at least Jones should be fresh after sitting behind Murray all of these weeks.
• And from the irony department: Dan Bailey's 49-yard field goal with 15 second left in the half was 49 yards long -- same distance as the one he made and then missed at the end of regulation last week in Arizona.

ARLINGTON, Texas -- If it's to be a shootout here tonight between the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants, each team will have its full complement of receiver options. Giants wide receiver Mario Manningham, who has missed the last two games with a knee injury, is active for tonight's game. So is Cowboys wide receiver Miles Austin, who has missed the last four games with a hamstring injury, and Cowboys fullback Tony Fiammetta, who has missed the last three games due to illness.

The return of Fiammetta should help a Cowboys run game that's averaging 2.3 more yards per carry with Fiammetta in the lineup than without him. And the return of Austin to go with Dez Bryant, tight end Jason Witten and 2011 surprise standout Laurent Robinson, should help Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo pick apart a Giants secondary that's playing without its best player, safety Kenny Phillips.

But the Cowboys' secondary hasn't exactly been stopping anybody lately, and Giants quarterback Eli Manning will have Manningham back to help him attack it with Hakeem Nicks and Victor Cruz, who have been two of the best receivers in the entire league this season. Manning needs 295 yards for his third straight 4,000-yard passing season, and since the Giants are rushing for only 83.2 yards per game, it's possible he'll have to get that many tonight to keep the Giants in the game.

I'll be here all night with your updates, and we'll be live-chatting the game, so hang out here for all of your Giants-Cowboys needs as we chronicle this critical NFC East showdown.