The Cowboys offense when healthy is among the best in the league without question, it’s really not even debatable. You’re absolutely correct in that injuries killed us last season offensively.

The key to our season will be our defense and Wade’s play calling as our DC. I think he’ll be brilliant in that capacity which is why Jerry decided to keep him on as HC.

It drives me nuts when people say that injuries are just an excuse. Oh really? Not having a star or critical player, you know, the guys that makes your squad better than another squad, isn’t a reason that games are lost?

Huh.

Injuries really hurt this team last year.

Out of these 6 teams though, only 2 of them make me nervous.

Those that don’t:
Denver-
they just look like a mess. Orton doesn’t worry me, their D is a wreck, we should win this one easily.
SD-
LT seems to be finally slowing down some, Merriman is a question after the injury, Wade knows them inside out and backwards…
Carolina-
As long as Tnew is healthy, we’ll win this one, he shuts down Steve Smith like no one else which lets the rest of the D focus on stopping the run, their D is a sieve against the run and we have an great collection of RB’s.
GB-
Rogers didn’t impress all that much last year. Running game is still questionable. Switching to a new D scheme, and corners are another year older. The Boys should be alright.

Those that do:
The Ain’ts (wtf?)-
That passing attack is outstanding. The 2ndary will need to come to play…this one could easily turn into a shootout, run run run and run some more, do everything possible to keep Brees on the sideline where he can’t hurt us.
Atlanta-
These guys look like the real deal. Turner was beast in the run game and Ryan was outstanding his first year, and I’d expect him to improve. Their pass D wasn’t amazing, but good and they did well against the rush. Will be a tough one.

Go 4-2 against this group and we should be looking pretty good….though I like the ring of 6-0 and its a possibility if Wade gets this D playing the way they did for a good stretch of last year.

i don’t think anyone ever says otherwise. even the best team can be decimated by injuries.

but good teams can weather them better than bad teams. you can’t have stars backing up every position, but good teams have better depth. teams like the patriots have matt cassell (and brady before him) groomed and waiting when their starter goes down. the cowboys had… brad johnson. we knew going into the season that if romo got hurt, the cowboys were screwed. well, romo got hurt and you know the rest of that story. likewise, no one is saying we shouldn’t expect any drop off when a starting OL gets hurt. but the drop off with proctor was precipitous. interestingly, the cowboys did have the depth at RB, then kept running an injured marion barber out there. go figure.

just punting to injuries /is/ an excuse much of the time. bottom line: injuries matter, but they are inevitable. it takes a bit of luck and solid planning and player development to be a winner.

how the team will do in the win-loss column. Most of the the msm(excluding Jim’s recent piece) has decided to make their assessment based on FA and the Draft moves and will predict the entire season before TC and the preseason. I like your approach, it is not a prediction of how they will do for the entire season, but trying to filter out where the soft spots in the schedule exist, and what needs to be done to get the most out of the potential opportunities for next season.

I’d love to see the breakdown of how those six teams matched up against top defenses.

Just skimming over the schedule, it looks like Denver struggled against the better defenses, the same with Atlanta.

that is some amazing dedication to wanting to improve the ST; considering what campo was able to do with our rookie db’s last year it makes me feel better about picking up Sensi from the jags. A guy with campo’s experience on D and Coach Joe’s commitment would not have vouched for a guy that they could not count on.

Your two ends would be Ware and either Spencer or Ellis, and then the inside DEs would be Spears and Olshansky. Ware basically plays DE on most pass rush downs anyway.

On sure passing downs, we can even get crazy and put Spencer at one of the DT spots, with Ware and Ellis at DEs, and then you’ve got a NYG type of look, where they move guys like Tuck inside on those occasions.