As you may recall, I checked out on the NFL last year.  The initial draft of this preview, (which I was going to pass on to another Cowboys fan this year, but the only person who stepped up was an Eagles fan, and while I would dearly like to step back from all things NFL, there are limits, people; there are are limits.), contained a six paragraph diatribe of me going off on a holier-than-thou rant about why I hate the NFL, and some good lines about UConn going to the Who Gives A Fuck Bowl, but something was bugging me about it.  So I poked around and, it turns out, I already did that.  So, yeah.  I mean, it’s fine for Stephen King to write the same story over and over, but I don’t have that kind of fan base so I just deleted it.  Long story short I plan to spend a lot less time watching football this year and a lot more time outside.  Or reading.  Or learning to boil water without setting the house on fire.

Get your shit together, NFL.  And please sell the Cowboys to a more reputable owner, JJ.  Maybe Paul Manafort.

So, that out of the way, how will the Cowboys do this year?  Fuck if I know.  They lost Dez Bryant and seem to think that Cole Beasley is going to take over as the #1 WR, which, no.  That is not going to happen.  Cole Beasely is a nice 3rd option but that’s as far as he goes.  Terrance Williams is a nice #2 option, assuming you only have two receivers.  Otherwise, much like a bridge in Genoa, Italy, he’s going to let you down.  Jason Witten finally retired, going out right before the draft and setting up what might have been the best troll job of all time when the Eagles traded down to take the best TE in the draft right in front of Dallas.  And the guy was named Dallas!  The Cowboys are replacing him with 4 guys who combined for 9 catches for 94 yards and 0 TDs in their entire careers.  So, yeah, WR/TE is probably going to be enough of a dumpster fire that Cleveland Browns fans will buy Cowboys’ season tickets out of sheer confusion.

Dak Prescott remains the QB.  Dak seems like a hell of a nice guy, and he loves him some anthem, but he definitely took a step back last year, and that was when he had Bryant and Witten to throw to.  I’m not wildly optimistic about how he’s going to do throwing it to Allan Hurns’s corpse, Terrance Williams’s granite mitts, and whatever the hell a Rico Gathers is.  There’s some (misguided) optimism that Prescott’s legitimate threat as a running QB will alleviate the pressure on his unbelievably shitty WR corps, but the backup QB is either Cooper Rush or someone named Mike White, so best hope that Dak doesn’t tweak any of his anthem-lining toes or it all goes to hell.

Zeke Elliott remains the RB, and when he remembers to keep his hands to himself he’s a Top 3 NFL RB.  The Cowboys traded for Tavon Austin and want to get him involved 10-12 plays a game, but make no mistake, Elliott is the RB and Dallas goes as he goes.

Sports Illustrated still thinks the Cowboys have an elite offensive line, ranking them #1 in the magazine preview I read at the gym earlier this week, and talking them up on the web-site as well.  They’d be right if everyone was healthy but that is most definitely not the case.  Tyron Smith hasn’t been healthy in two seasons, Travis Frederick is out indefinitely with an auto-immune disease, and Zack Martin hurt his knee in the second preseason game.  As pointed out here, when the Cowboys were missing even one of those three last year, the opposing defenses basically just ran train on Dallas. If all three of them are limited/out I’d expect to see opposing defensive front sevens having the kind of success a band of Huns could only dream about.

The defensive front has Demarcus Lawrence coming back from a breakout year that saw him rack up 14.5 sacks.  They’re also excited about 2017’s 1st round pick, Taco Charlton, who is apparently going to come back from wherever the witness protection program stashed him last year; getting Randy Gregory back from a year long drug suspension, (but he’ll stand for the anthem, right Jerry?); and David Irving, who racked up 8 sacks in 7 games but is, oh yeah, suspended for the first four games for drugs.  So, yeah, if the front four is all together and pissing clean they could be pretty good, but Lawrence was playing for a contract last year, Charlton was barely on the field, Gregory really likes marijuana, (which should be legal and don’t get me started on how the NFL is more than willing to load these poor bastards up with opiates but God forbid someone take a hit to get past that back pain), and I don’t even know who David Irvin is.

The linebackers could be good.  Sean Lee is fantastic in between concussions, but if he plays past Week 6 before his next one I’d be surprised.  Jaylon Smith might be even more improved from nearly losing his knee back in college. The Cowboys expect big things from 2018’s first-round draft pick, Leighton Vander Esch, who could rack up 22 sacks and 17 INTs with 8 TDs and I’d still mistake him for the smarmy villain from the worst season of Dawson’s Creek.

The Cowboys have “completely remade” the secondary, and maybe that’s even true, but I seem to see that phrase very year and the secondary is nearly always a dumpster fire so I don’t expect anything different this year.

Dan Bailey is the kicker.  He’s good.

Jason Garrett is the head coach.  He’s terrible, but he’s smart enough to keep his mouth shut and let Jerry take all the credit for anything good the Cowboys do, so he keeps coming back and cashing checks.  Frankly, I admire that.  It takes a special kind of determination to keep failing up like that and Garrett’s got it.

The end result?  Welp, the O-line is banged up, the QB has no one to throw to because the receiving corps is a figment of JJ’s imagination, the RB is going to be looking at 8 men in the box on every play, the defensive front-line is going to be useless after 4:20 pm, the linebackers are either WASP bad guys or have permanently reserved handicapped parking spots, the secondary is, well, a Dallas secondary, and the Coach has shown absolutely no ambition to do anything other than smile and nod while cashing checks.  The whole thing smacks of 5-11 to me.  Maybe they beat Washington for not-last place in the NFC East.

Someone tell  me how it ends.