T-New!

This idea isn't original. At all. As a matter of fact, 98% of the 20 people who read this will probably hate it. However, figuring out who "Mr. Indispensable" is (while completely arbitrary, pointless, stupid even) was sparked by Mick Spagnola over at www.dallascowboys.com and carried into the night between my brother and I...and once again, the other half of the Brothers Cowboy is wrong.

(Note: My brother and I have a problem. We like to argue about why the Cowboys are going to be good, and we never really agree on the why...we just belittle each other until we feel like the point was driven home.)

I immediately narrowed it down to the three players that the Cowboys have got to have on the field week in and week out: Terrence Newman, Demarcus Ware, and Tony Romo.

Rule out Ware. With Ellis back and healthy, and Anthony Spencer coming in the form of a first round pick expected to contribute sometime this season...I guess we COULD afford to not have him (KNOCK ON WOOD), but the defense would suffer from losing the defense's only pass rush from last season.

So the real argument becomes Tony Romo vs. Terrence Newman. My elder, sillier brother, chooses Tony Romo while I'm in Terrence Newman's camp. Don't get me wrong, I think Romo is going to be good, maybe great, but we have so many play-makers on offense that I don't feel losing him counts us out from any game. Yeah yeah, Brad Johnson throws like an old man (wait...he IS an old man), but he can still probably hand the ball off to J.J. and M.B.III 30 times a game and manage to get the ball 10-20 yards down field to T.O. and T.G. (I like abbreviations today, back off) He could "manage the game" (which is really just a churched up version of not screwing everything up) while our defense shuts them down. Unless...

We don't have Terrence Newman. Keep in mind the Dallas Cowboys defense was actually pretty good up until the last four games of the regular season...really, they were, I'm not being ridiculous. They ended up giving up over 40% of their total yards for the season down that final stretch, maybe due to fatigue, maybe this, maybe that, but we'll just say it's because their pass defense was weak sauce. So let's eliminate T-New from the equation for a second. Enter Aaron Glenn, a 35-year-old CB who plays only in the nickel formation and hasn't played full time since joining the Cowboys. "That's not THAT bad" you might be saying...and you'd be wrong too.

Offenses love moving their WRs around, especially the best ones, trying to create mismatches with the defense, trying to get lined up against the slot cornerback in passing situations, all sorts of things. What Terrence Newman does, is well, everything. Sure, he doesn't have fancy Pro-Bowl consideration each year (but Larry Allen's fat ass was able to get voted in year after year even when he could barely move his fork to his mouth) but he is right behind Champ Bailey (with others like Asante Samuel) as a great shutdown cornerback. They don't throw to his side of the field, period. It doesn't happen. He's given up one, count it, one, touchdown over the past two seasons...

Really?

So you're telling me that Nate Jones or Jacque Reeves could come right in and step into the slot to match up with, oh let's say, Santana Moss...or maybe Plaxico...or hell, Mike Furrey. No, the point is this: Without Terrence Newman we will not be able to blitz...at all. We can leave him out on an island all day, with anybody, and he'll probably out play them. He held Steve Smith to six catches for 55 yards and no touchdowns...and keep in mind one of those catches was for 22 yards so his other five catches were for six yards a pop.

He probably won't have 10 interceptions this year (he could, but probably not) but they won't be throwing it his way either. Really, they won't. Spend your time watching how many times they challenge T-New this season. You'll be surprised.

I guess it's easy for people like my brother to forget how important the things are that aren't in the field of view on Sundays (cameras don't zoom out far enough to see what the defensive backs are actually doing, unless they screw up) and I guess he's still so swept up in Romo-mentum (not going to lie, I am too) that it's just hard to see how valuable Newman really is. Hope we never find out how hard it is to replace him.