Dallas Cowboys fan
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has been given permission to talk to Lions quarterback Joey Harrington, following a lengthy discussion between Jones and Detroit general manager Matt Millen at the NFL owners' meetings.
"We certainly had him rated really, really good coming out as most people did," Jones said. "So you weigh all of that. He's a guy that our system, with what we're doing right now, would work for him. We haven't gone that much into it. ... We're just scratching our head on it a little bit."
Drew Bledsoe is the Cowboys starter. Tony Romo and Drew Henson are the backups. Neither is experienced and are not shoo-ins as the team's quarterback of the future.
Henson is currently grooming in NFL Europe. He is 22-of-35 for 229 yards with one touchdown, no interceptions and a league-best 91.3 rating in two games with the Rhein Fire.
"It's very important. It's a significant thing," Jones said of Henson's time in Europe. "We've got to keep our options open when you look at the future."
--The signing of kicker Mike Vanderjagt means the Cowboys will likely have to use a roster spot on another kicker for kickoffs. Vanderjagt wants to try kicking off but he hasn't done it regularly since 2003 and wasn't good at it when he did do it.
"I don't know that he's going to all of a sudden become a kickoff guy again," Jones said. "I think I do know the odds of that."
Jones said that, if a kickoff specialist is necessary, he would like to find a young kicker that can be groomed.
--The Cowboys signed Terry Glenn to a five-year, $20 million contract extension with a $2 million signing bonus. He is also slated to get a $5 million roster bonus next season, which makes it a glorified one-year deal.
The new deal came less than a week after the Cowboys signed receiver Terrell Owens. Owens received a five-year, $25 million deal, including a $5 million signing bonus and a $5 million base salary in 2006.
Glenn, who caught 62 passes for 1,136 yards and seven touchdowns last season, was signed through 2007 with salaries of $2 million and $2.25 million the next two years. The Cowboys tore up the final two years of the old deal in the extension, which goes through 2010.
Glenn, acquired in a trade with Green Bay in 2003, has 138 catches for 2,290 yards and 14 touchdowns in three seasons with the Cowboys. Last season he tied for the league lead in yards per catch (18.3) and became the first Cowboys player since 1999 to top 1,000 yards in receiving.
--The dates haven't been finalized, but the Cowboys at least know their preseason opponents. Dallas will play at Seattle in the first week of the exhibition season, followed by an Aug. 21 game in Shreveport against New Orleans. The Cowboys will host San Francisco and Minnesota in the final two exhibitions.
--Terrell Owens' first game as a Cowboy will be in Jacksonville in a nationally televised game on Sept. 10. The Cowboys will also host the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in their traditional time slot on Thanksgiving Day.
The Cowboys, who were 9-7 last season, are 2-1 all-time against the Jags, who went 12-4 and earned a wild-card berth last season. Dallas last played a regular-season game in Jacksonville in 2002.
Mike Vanderjagt, the NFL's most accurate kicker who was no longer needed in Indianapolis, signed a three-year contract with the Dallas Cowboys.
Vanderjagt wasn't re-signed by the Colts, who instead signed Adam Vinatieri earlier this week. Vinatieri twice hit winning kicks in the Super Bowl for New England, but the Patriots allowed him to test free agency.
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| Mike Vanderjagt has had four seasons in which he kicked better than his average of 87.5. |
Vanderjagt has the highest field goal accuracy rate in NFL history (217 of 245 kicks, 87.5 percent) and holds the record for making 42 straight. But on his last attempt for the Colts during the AFC divisional playoffs in January, he badly missed a 46-yarder that would have forced overtime against Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh.
"Everyone kind of had it a foregone conclusion that Mike wouldn't be back, but you don't just get rid of guys without being able to replace them," Colts coach Tony Dungy said. "We were fortunate that we were able to replace him with a great, great kicker."
Indianapolis reportedly gave Vinatieri a $3.5 million signing bonus and an average of $2.5 million over the next three years.
Dallas used three kickers last season, when the Cowboys were 9-7 and missed the playoffs. Dallas lost twice by three points and had a one-point loss, and the kickers were a combined 20 of 28 on field goals with four misses under 40 yards.
Billy Cundiff was the Cowboys' primary kicker the past four seasons, making 60 of 82 field goals (73 percent) in 53 games. He was released after hurting his leg in training camp but returned in November for six games after Jose Cortez and Shaun Suisham kicked.
But Cundiff was inconsistent, making a team-record 56-yarder against Detroit in his first game back, then missing a 34-yard tiebreaking kick in the fourth quarter four days later against Denver, the Thanksgiving Day game the Cowboys lost in overtime. Cundiff was 5 for 8 and cut before the final game, and Suisham returned for the season finale.
In 2003, Cundiff tied an NFL record with seven field goals in a Monday night victory at the New York Giants.
Since Rafael Septien set most of the team's kicking records from 1978-86, there has been a long line of kickers through Dallas, including Richie Cunningham, Chris Boniol, Eddie Murray and high school teacher Tim Seder, among others. Cundiff was the only one who stayed more than three seasons.
Vanderjagt, who turns 36 on March 24, spent his first eight NFL seasons with the Colts after playing in the Canadian Football League (1993, 1996-97) and a season in the Arena Football League. He scored a franchise-record 995 points in Indianapolis, where all his home games were played in a domed stadium.
"Mike was tremendous for us in the time that I was here," said Dungy, who just finished his fourth season in Indianapolis. "He made some kicks that won divisions for us, that won big games, overtime games, and I never thought that he was going to miss when we sent him out."
In 2003, Vanderjagt made all 37 of his field-goal attempts and all 46 extra points. He was 23 of 25 on field goals last season, his long kick being 48 yards.
Vanderjagt's career long field goal is 54 yards, and he's made 14 of 21 kicks from at least 50 yards. He has converted 344 of 346 extra points and scored at least 100 points every season. The last Cowboys kicker with 100 points was Seder with 108 in 2000.
Still, Vanderjagt had another big miss in December 2000 against Miami, when he was wide right on a 49-yard attempt in overtime that would have sent the Colts into the second round of the playoffs. He had field goals of 32, 26 and 50 yards in that game, which the Dolphins won 23-17.
Also, Dallas signed L.P. LaDouceur, a second-year defensive end who played in 13 games on special teams for the Cowboys last season.
Cowboys' Jerry Jones Leads Search For New Commish. Owners Dan Rooney of Pittsburgh and Jerry Richardson of Carolina were appointed Wednesday to head the eight-member committee that will search for the successor to commissioner Paul Tagliabue. The group was put together by Tagliabue to ensure that it includes diverse views among the owners. Rooney and Richardson are two of the owners Tagliabue trusts most. Others on the committee include Dallas' Jerry Jones and Oakland's Al Davis, both of whom have often clashed with the commissioner. Robert Kraft of New England, Lamar Hunt of Kansas City, Mike McCaskey of Chicago and Woody Johnson of the New York Jets round out the group. Tagliabue, who two weeks ago announced his intention to retire, reiterated last week that he thinks a successor can be in place by July. But he has said he would stay on as long as he has to. In any event, he will remain through 2008 as a consultant. The committee's makeup is designed to avoid the kind of deadlock that occurred in 1989, when the original search committee was composed entirely of "old-guard" owners, including Rooney and Hunt. They recommended Jim Finks, then the New Orleans general manager, but were blocked by a group that included Jones, who had just purchased the Cowboys. That led to a long deadlock that finally ended in Tagliabue's election when several owners, including Rooney, switched to Tagliabue. They subsequently became among his staunchest supporters while Jones and others often clashed with him. This committee represents a broader spectrum than the last one, including insiders (Rooney, Richardson, Kraft and Hunt) and outsiders (Davis and Jones). It also includes different perspectives on the revenue-sharing debate that delayed approval of the extension to the labor contract, finally approved at the last possible minute last month. Jones and Kraft, for example, were leaders of the high-revenue faction opposing revenue sharing; Richardson and Rooney were in the middle and the Jets and Chiefs in the bottom third although both could move up with a new stadium (New York) and improvements to the current one (Kansas City) now in the works. "Our goal is to ensure a smooth transition to the next commissioner, who will build upon the tremendous legacy commissioner Tagliabue will leave behind at the end of his tenure," Johnson said in a statement. "This will be a collaborative effort, involving all the owners, and our work will be extensive and thorough." Tagliabue said last week that the first task of the committee would be to hire a search firm that would interview all 32 owners to identify what they want in a new commissioner.
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