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Shortly after the draft, in what has become an annual tradition here on Blogging The Boys, we ask the BTB staff and members to commit to their pet cats for the season.
The “Pet Cat” is a Parcells-ism, a term Bill Parcells popularized in Dallas when he was the head coach for the Cowboys. The term initially referred to a prospect that a coach, scout or owner had taken a particular liking to, often based on little more than a whim, and that they would then try to draft, regardless of what the scouting consensus was.
Among Cowboys fans, the term usually refers to a bubble player commonly found at the bottom of the roster. Some people pick pet cats that are late-round draft picks; that is usually frowned upon as even mid- to late-round draft picks face good odds of making the roster. The purest pet cats are down-roster pet cats, usually undrafted free agents or even street free agents, and for those pet cats to simply make the practice squad is often considered a great success.
But there comes a time when all the pet cat-ism in the world can’t help a player, and that’s during final roster cuts. The Cowboys finalized (sort of) their 53-man roster and (per Sunday afternoon) signed the following eight players to their practice squad: RB Darius Jackson, WR Lance Lenoir, DE Charles Tapper, CB Donovan Olumba, WR Dres Anderson, OT Jake Campos, RB Jordan Chunn, and LB Kyle Queiro
Your pet cat either made it or didn’t make it and it is now time for The Great Pet Cat Reckoning.
We’ll start off with a look at which pet cats the BTB staff picked this year, and how that worked out for the pet cats involved:
- Danny Phantom: Tyree Robinson - 53-man roster
- Tom Ryle: Kyle Quiero - practice squad
- Michael Sisemore: Charvarius Ward - somebody else’s 53-man roster
- RJ Ochoa: Cedric Wilson - IR
- Dave Halprin: Bo Scarbrough - cut
- Tennessee Jed: DeQuinton Osborne - cut
- Cole Patterson: Kameron Kelly - cut
That’s a frightening loss of pet cats from the staff here at BTB. When we published our pet cats in mid May, many BTB readers submitted their pet cats in the comments thread. A quick scan of the comments shows the following players as pet cat favorites among the BTB commenters at that time (excluding a few stray votes for veteran players or high draft picks):
| Votes | Players |
| 11 | Dequinton Osborne, Joel Lanning |
| 9 | Bo Scarbrough |
| 8 | Chris Covington |
| 7 | Tyree Robinson |
| 5 | Kam Kelly |
| 2 | Cooper Rush, Jameill Showers, Mike White, Cedric Wilson |
| 1 | Dorance Armstrong, Jordan Chunn, Scott Daly, Malik Earl, Rico Gathers, Kyle Quiero, Duke Thomas, Charvarius Ward, David Wells |
All of which goes to show that picking pet cats is not an exact science. Some pet cats left the Cowboys early, some didn’t make the roster over the weekend, some wouldn’t strictly qualify as pets cats anyway, and some ended up making the team.
Tell us about your pet cat. Who did you pick at the time?