Chris Cooley, tight end for the Washington Redskins, was recently interviewed on radio. When asked about blocking DeMarcus Ware, Cooley, one of the best quotes in the NFL, didn't disappoint. I'll let it speak for itself.

You guys face Dallas on Monday Night Football. That defense has Demarcus Ware. Have you faced him in the past? Do you get matched up against him? What is it like?

“Literally we have dug out game clips from 2006 and 2007 of me playing against Demarcus Ware. I mean I have played against him every year and the dude is so tough. They have Anthony Spencer on the other side and he’s phenomenal. It’s a huge challenge for the tight ends this week. Obviously it is a big challenge for everybody. I think a couple of their best players are their linebackers who we will see every single down, so there’s a lot of study that will go in for us. There’s a lot of technique ideas and game plan ideas to help us block them, to help us get off, because I am 240 pounds and he is a little bit bigger and stronger than me. I gotta outsmart him.”

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I recently had the opportunity to interview one of my favorite Dallas Cowboys, Jay Ratliff. The affectionately-monikered Rat is a feel good story, a guy who was drafted in the late-rounds, fought his way onto the roster, and as he reminds us below, got an opportunity because of injury and seized it. Now he's an All-Pro nose tackle, and a disruptive force on game day.

Jay was participating in the "The Monday Night Football Tour Driven by GMC". As I mentioned in my previous post about the interview, the Cowboys did their part in the promotion this weekend. But, the tour moves on with every Monday Night game, so if you're in another city and MNF is coming to your town, check out the schedule and see which players will be appearing courtesy of GMC.

On to the interview:

Blogging The Boys: How comfortable have you guys gotten with Rob Ryan's scheme? The lockout robbed you of some time to learn it, so are you guys comfortable or is it a learning process?

Jay Ratliff: We feel really comfortable with it, at the same time we're still learning a lot. Learning about what he expects and the defensive scheme. For the most part it's fun, and what we do know has allowed us to play fast, it's very player-friendly, we know that Rob is going to put guys in position to make plays. If you can play, you're going to play, that's his motto so we're just doing that.

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"That game last Sunday, that's not how we play football. Too many mental errors, mental mistakes, But for Cowboys fans and true believers... there's no bandwagon fans here, either you're with us or your not with us... You're gonna have some ups and some downs... but the true fans are like family. They're with you through the ups and downs, they're supporting you, they're picking you back up."

A 2009 fourth-round draft pick out of Oregon State, Victor Butler is now knee-deep in his third campaign with the Dallas Cowboys. However you feel about the America's Team slogan, there is no denying that the allure of the franchise has an expansive reach. The internet brings us close together from all corners of the globe, perfectly exemplified by the geography behind this staff's construction.

The Cowboys Nation. Butler has known nothing else for his professional career. When the chance arose for BTB to take up a few minutes of his time, his passion for the game, this team and its fans leaked out of every response.

Over the summer, we started getting a sense that Butler had that fight you look for in a player. He described defensive coordinator Rob Ryan's instructions as "Go hunt. Go eat. Whoever's got the ball, kill them." Heading into week two, not much has changed.

"The general atmosphere is we practice like it’s a game. Guys putting bodies on guys, helmet to helmet, shoulder pads are rapping, It’s a great practice atmosphere, but [Ryan] still keeps it kind of cool, laid back, fun.

He wants you to enjoy playing football, cuz when you enjoy playing football, when you’re a competitor and you enjoy what you do, your gonna do it to the best of your abilities. Cuz your having fun. Its just like a kid out there playing Call Of Duty til 5 o'clock in the morning. He makes football fun for you, Coach Garrett does the same thing. He makes football fun so you want to do it for longer, you want to do it better, you want to do it harder, because your having a great time doing it.

That’s our practice atmosphere so you can imagine when you take that and multiply it by 1,000, that’s the game atmosphere for us. That’s why you got guys like Sean Lee hunting down LT or hunting down whoever's got the ball trying to make big hits on them because that’s how we practice."

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Every year, Football Outsiders produces and excellent Almanac that covers all the NFL teams, and is a wealth of advanced stats information. We love reading their stuff, so after devouring their Cowboys section, we wanted to ask some questions. FO was more than happy to oblige us, so we had the following Q&A exchange with FO writer Mike Tanier that covers all kinds of Cowboys topics. Enjoy!

The 2011 Football Outsiders Almanac is for sale as a PDF document or in print edition.

Blogging The Boys: You famously caused quite a ruckus last year when you predicted a 7.5 win season for the Cowboys, and with the Cowboys closing the season at 6-10, I'd say that's pretty close. How have your other predictions held up?

Football Outsiders: Our Chiefs prediction last year was our best "positive" prediction. We had the Saints coming back to earth, and we predicted a big year for the Patriots at a time when it had gotten fashionable to shovel dirt on them. Not all of the picks were quite that good. The Cowboys pick last year was a tough one. I wrote that chapter and really had to be talked into the numbers we came up with. The great thing about having a statistical system is that the system is blind: it is not always right, but it is always more objective that any individual person can be.

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Recently the NFC East blog at ESPN has been taken over by Dan Graziano. We've been noticing that he's been linking to some of our stories here at BTB, as well as some other blogs around the Internet, including other SB Nation blogs. We always appreciate when members of the "mainstream media" (I'm beginning to hate that term) recognize and promote the job that those of us in the so-called "new media" are doing, mainly fan-centric communities and other non-professional types.

No longer are they turning their noses up at our contributions, but are now seeing that we have a lot to offer to the discussion about sports teams and leagues. So when I saw Dan linking to BTB over the last few weeks, I sent him a note letting him know I appreciated it. After that, I decided to find out more about him and what he's doing over at the NFC East blog for ESPN.

The result is the following Q&A. It's not every one's cup of tea, so if you're not interested in this type of thing, feel free to skip on by. Otherwise, check it out below.

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Earlier today, I posted Part 1 of my interview with Dallas Cowboys linebacker Sean Lee, who was down at the 2011 Super Bowl with Pepsi MAX. Here's Part 2 of our Q&A.

Blogging The Boys: Was there a big difference between Wade Phillips and Jason Garrett in terms of meetings and practices?

Sean Lee: I think there was somewhat of a difference, I think what Coach Garrett really did was instill confidence back into everybody. I think that at that point of the season we had lost our confidence in a lot of areas, there had been some injuries, and things seemed to be spiralling downhill. He kind of restored our confidence and you could see that in the last part of the season. We were practicing better, playing better. And really, you take a few plays in a  few games and we could have had two more wins I think, or three more wins. We were in every game. And you look at the beginning of the season, we were playing well but finding ways to lose games, then all of a sudden  in the middle, we played three or four games really poorly, that's when I think we lost our confidence. That's what Coach Garrett brought back to us.

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Yesterday, I spoke by phone with Dallas Cowboys linebacker Sean Lee. He was in Dallas at the 2011 Super Bowl working with Pepsi MAX, the official soft drink of the Super Bowl. You've seen the TV commercial with the Pepsi truck driver doing mock combine drills; so they recreated that experience at the Super Bowl with the Pepsi MAX NFL Experience. Sean was part of the promotion, interacting with fans at the facility and trying his hand at the drills. For the record, he says it was more tiring doing those drills than the actual scouting combine drills, but he really enjoyed meeting with the fans and talking to them. He noted that since the fans of both teams came from cold-weather cities, they had no problem trudging through snow and enjoying themselves in the run-up to the Big Game.

After talking about that, we got into some Q&A about him, the Cowboys, and some of the new coaches. Sean Lee was a great interview as you'll see, he really answers the questions. A couple of things struck me throughout our conversation; one, he's taken Jason Garrett's "practice like you play, stack one great day onto another" philosophy to heart, although I think he already had it before Garrett's ascendancy, Jason just reinforced it for Sean. Two, this guy really gets it, and if his play on-the-field elevates to the level that it can potentially be, we got ourselves a keeper who will become a leader on this team.

Onto the Q&A. Part 1 covers his development from his college days, and his play during the 2010 season. Part 2 (later today), will cover the new coaching regime (including what he's learned from Rob Ryan after meeting with him) and his preparations for the next season.

Blogging The Boys: You were a team captain at Penn State. How did you approach that responsibility? In what ways can a captain help the team?

Sean Lee: I always say, obviously, that the captain needs to be one of the leaders of your team. To be a leader you need to lead in two ways, the first way you start leading is by example. And that's by coming to work everyday, working extremely hard, doing it the right way, and what Coach Garret said, the Cowboy Way, every single day. After you have some success, and as you grow older, you start to become a vocal leader, and filling the role of an older leader for some of the younger guys on the team. So a guy like Keith Brooking, there's a guy who leads by example every day, and he's a guy who has been around and had a ton of success, so he's also a great vocal leader. That's a guy I tend to model myself after.

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Earlier today, I posted Part 1 of my interview with Randy White. Here's Part 2, talking about the current Dallas Cowboys, including Jason Garrett and Rob Ryan.

Blogging The Boys: When you look at the Cowboys defensive line of today, what do you think?

Randy White: I think they have a lot of great players, you look at the talent they have with DeMarcus Ware and Jay Ratliff, they have the foundation there to have a great defensive line and linebackers. I think there's a few other spots there that need to be filled in, but I think they got a good nucleus to have an excellent defense. This year, obviously, was a disappointing year all the way around, but they have a good nucleus moving forward to have an excellent defense.

BTB: The Cowboys play a 3-4 defense now, where would you have played in a 3-4 defense?

RW: I probably would have played in a linebacker's spot in a 3-4 defense. Being 6-4, 265 to 270 pounds, I probably would have played one of those linebacker spots which would have been a lot of fun to play. As far as playing the nose tackle in a 3-4 defense, I don't think I could make it at my size, because these guys have gotten so big, it would have been quite a pounding in the middle.

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