Cowboys Roster Projections 2011: "Four Or Five Spots Still Open," Says Jerry Jones

The Cowboys will have to cut down their roster to 53 players by 6:00 p.m. ET tomorrow. Jerry Jones was in his usual talkative mood and couldn't resist providing some strong hints about some of the position battles.

Contrary to what he had loudly proclaimed just two weeks ago, the Cowboys are now willing to keep four running backs after all, and Phillip Tanner looks to have secured a spot. At kicker, David Buehler looks like he'll at least keep his kickoff duties and the Cowboys don't seem to have ruled out keeping an extra kicker.

That doesn't really leave all that many open spots on the roster. Jerry Jones thinks there are four or five spots still open.

"We were evaluating, but we were looking at four or five position areas, four or five players on our team," Jones said after Thursday's game against the Dolphins. "We got to look at them good. We had some positive things really happen. ...And I think we can come to where we’re going to go with these four or five spots on our 53."

After the break, we look at six different roster projections to understand which positions could still be open.

The table below summarizes six of the most recent 53-man roster projections for the Cowboys. Note that the players are not necessarily shown in the order as they were originally published. I reordered the in some instances to make the projections more transparent across the six sources. The ESPN projections are courtesy of the Cowboys Report at ESPN Dallas, the Dallas Morning News has a roster up, as does Nick Eatman from the mothership, and we send our own KD Drummond into the ring.

On the topic of sources, the DMN made me click through 53 pictures just to get their projection. Then I was one player short and had to click all the way back to the offensive line players to find the 53rd player.

So dear DMN, that spike in your traffic today, that was me. But a spike is a good thing, or so I hear. You should look up a recent article on BGN: History shows that Michael Vick's spike in accuracy likely not a fluke. Read that title again, slowly, for effect: A spike ... not a fluke. Wow. 

Back to the topic at hand, the table summarizes the five roster projections and highlights (in yellow) the spots that may or may not still be open. Jerry Jones doesn't appear to be very far off.

Join us tomorrow on BTB for Roster Cut Day to find out how what the 53-man roster looks like. We'll have an open thread going in which we'll track the latest breaking cuts as they happen. If you've never participated in Roster Cut Day activities - you should.

Roster Cut Day is like the draft all over again. Except in one afternoon, and in reverse.

You'll love it.