The Cowboys have signed OT Ryan Gibbons, a lineman with experience who should help provide some reps during training camp this year.
The 6-6, 330-pound tackle signed with Jacksonville as a rookie free agent from Northeastern in 2006. He spent his entire rookie season on the Jags' practice squad before playing last summer overseas in NFL Europa.
Gibbons was a member of the World Bowl champion Hamburg Sea Devils before returning to Jacksonville last year. He spent the first three weeks of 2007 again on the practice squad before he was released. The Jaguars re-signed him after the season before cutting him again.
By signing Gibbons the Cowboys have maxed out the roster at 80. This includes the Cowboys' draft picks and rookie free agents as well as Ken Hamlin who has yet to sign the franchise tender by the Cowboys.
Chris Canty did a Q & A with the Charlotte Observer while helping his brother run a football camp at his old high school. The camp hosted nearly 150 kids, who were privileged to have Canty, Terence Newman, Patrick Crayton and Jay Ratliff there help out as instructors.
Canty answered a lot of good questions about life in the NFL as well as some about his famous teammates. Here are a few.
Q: Do you feel lucky to be a Dallas Cowboy?
"I think I am where I am supposed to be. When you talk about the knee injury (at Virginia) and then the eye injury (in Arizona), when you look back at it, they seem like very dramatic events, and they were. But they have somewhat shaped my career as a pro. It's made me a great player in the league. I know that the Cowboys are where I was supposed to be."
Q: What's it like playing with Tony Romo?
"I talk to Romo all the time about when he got here, he was this shy, quiet figure. Now, it's like he's ‘Tony Romo,' he's always in the tabloids, and that kind of thing. But Tony has done a great job of being able to handle the institution of being the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys. That's (Cowboys' quarterback) what it is, it's an institution. It's America's team. It's like playing on Broadway.
Belated hat tip to APerfectStar for posting the link in his fanshot.
All you ever hear about strength and conditioning coach Joe Juraszek is how great a job he does in keeping the team in shape and maximizing the athletic potential of every player on the field. Some of the players are starting to see dramatic changes, including Sam Hurd and DeMarcus Ware.
In preparation for a training camp he hopes will lead to a breakthrough season, Hurd added nine pounds of muscle to his 6-foot-2 frame during the offseason. He says the hike in weight has allowed him to play the game faster. "The focus is speed, speed, speed and getting my weight up," Hurd said. "I want to play at a weight I’m comfortable at, in the 200s, where I could use my force a little bit more. I was always 190, trying to bang with everyone else. Now if I’m higher, I can give them a contest out there." It's been mentioned before that having a bigger and stronger DeMarcus Ware on the field will be an unstoppable nightmare for offensive lineman. Ware hopes his increased strength will force opponents to play right into his strength: his speed. "In their mind," Ware said of opposing offensive tackles, "when they know you can power them, that’s when they open a lot more." And once that happens, Ware should be able to use his speed to blow past them. When the NFL owners decided to opt out of the CBA, a lot of us regular fans were left scratching our heads at all the business mumbo-jumbo being printed about the ramifications. Well, DC.com decided to ask the NFL offices for some clarification in the hopes of making some sense of it all. Unfortunately, I have to say that after reading all of that I am more confused than I was to start off with.