Cowboys Hard Knocks debut doesn't knock me out

Trying to get back into the swing of regular posting but being away for a while makes for a lot of catch-up work when you get home. Emails and errands abound. Anyway, did you catch Hard Knocks last night? I thought it was OK, it was definitely fun to watch an hour dedicated to the Cowboys with tons of all-access including the very revealing conversation Jerry Jones had with Terry Glenn’s agent. But they could have picked better stories. We all know Romo and Owens and I knew they would get some pub, but picking Amendola’s or Carpenter’s story would have been more interesting than Keon Lattimore and Todd Lowber. Sure we got the fun fact on who are the only two Cowboys with Super Bowl rings (Brad Johnson and Lowber) but watching the progress of a guy who might make the team like Amendola or the much-maligned Bobby Carpenter turn in such a good camp would have made great viewing.

Still, it was a good show because they managed to get one brief moment of yours truly and Shango on screen around the 39 minute mark. It’s a perfect encapsulation of me and Shango at camp. He’s shooting video and I’m standing there with my notebook watching intently, ready to scribble down some inane fact. They also managed to get my good buddy AZCowboy on screen for a good second or two filming the same drills where they got me. Of course, he was like five feet away when they filmed us; look for the Captain Caveman look-a-like in the #54 jersey. But enough about our star turn.

What’s up in Cowboys world? I promise a breakdown of the offense from training camp by tonight. In other news:

I never realized the rift between the defensive staff was so deep last year. Apparently Wade Phillips and Brian Stewart were battling the holdovers from the previous staff (Todd Bowles, Paul Pasqualoni) in a high stakes game of office politics.

 

"I think it was harder last year and some of them thought they might be the coordinator," [Wade] Phillips said. "It’s easier in a new group. They understand. It just fits well this year I think."

Said Stewart: "It’s easy to stand at the podium when you don’t have a whole bunch of people rolling their eyes. This is the way it should be. The position coach should do their best to make the defense like the defensive coordinator thinks it should look, and I should make the defense play with the tenacity and tempo of the head coach."

Read the whole article and you get a deeper feel for some of the problems. But that’s in the past and the new group knows what time it is.

But that was last year. Bowles and Pasqualoni, along with defensive line coach Kacy Rodgers, left for Miami in the off-season when former offensive line coach Tony Sparano was named head coach.

In their places are defensive line coach Todd Grantham, linebackers coach Reggie Herring and secondary coaches Dave Campo and Brett Maxie. Even though Grantham and Herring are former defensive coordinators and Campo is a former head coach, as James said earlier there’s no question that Stewart is in charge.

Phillips said he made it clear to his new coaches when they were hired that Stewart was the defensive coordinator.

Everybody knows who is in charge now, including the players.

"[Brian Stewart] is in charge," [Bradie] James said. "Everybody is on the same page. He is more comfortable. It’s his show now."

Ughh, sloppy journalism.

[Tashard] Choice originally started his college career at Oklahoma, but soon realized that he wouldn’t play very much because he was backing up Adrian Peterson. Choice left after his redshirt freshman year and transferred to Georgia Tech.

While he may have realized that he would not play much backing up AP, he left Oklahoma because his mother became ill and he returned home to Atlanta to take care of her. He got a hardship waiver from the NCAA so he wouldn’t have to sit out a year. They don’t give those out just because you’re not getting reps on the field with your current team.

Ahh man, you miss one lousy practice and you miss things like this:

One of the biggest afternoon cheers came for safety Roy Williams, who picked off an errant throw by the pride of Princeton -- fourth-stringer Jeff Terrell. Williams would have taken it to the house courtesy of his friendly nose tackle Tank Johnson.

Nice job Roy, even if it was Jeff Terrell throwing it and you got to love big Tank rumbling downfield and making a block.

I also saw this report from the DMN blog:

In addition to [Adam] Jones and [Roy] Williams, linebacker Bobby Carpenter, cornerback Evan Oglesby and safety Dowayne Davis had interceptions.

There’s that name Carpenter again. And that’s a lot of INT’s in one practice.

Bigg gets some love. 

And in other NFL news, some guy name Favre got traded to the Jets. And no, the Jets will not try to move him to Minnesota for an inflated price. 

The NFL is a small family, and I always doubted whether one team could ever dupe another in that way. But according to the NFL Network, the Packers made sure it won't happen. To complete the trade, according to the network, the Jets agreed to give the Packers three first-round draft choices if they trade Favre to the Vikings.

That ought to do the trick.