Preseason Woe's

Cowboys Head Coach Bill Parcells knows his team made some improvement Saturday night, but he also knows, they're still not ready for primetime just yet.

“I'm happy we could win,” says Parcells. “I did see some good things, but we've got a lot of work to do. I'm not under an illusions about anything, here.”

Drew Bledsoe was 11-of-18 for 113 yards, including 8-straight completions. The stretch included an 80-yard drive, the free agent quarterbacks first good drive of preseason, his second 80-yard drive in preseason.

“I was going to play them the same amount of time,” says Parcells. Whether they got anything going or not, so we finally got started a little bit.”

But 0-for-7 on third down conversions, under Bledsoe's leadership remains a dark spot.

“We're still not near where we want to be on third own, its something that we talked about and worked on extensively this past week, and obviously we have some work to do there,” said Bledsoe. “One of the important things is we've got to be in third and shortage yardage situations. If we're going to get to where we want to be, our third down percentage, offensively, has to come up a lot.”

Julius Jones averaged a cool 5-yards per carry in 10-attempts, and scored on a 21-yard touchdown, but he is also getting so cool that he can't stop long enough to talk about it.

On his way out the door, Jones said, “We needed that man, we need that, we needed to go out and show ah what we can do, just prove to ourselves that we can get it done, early, alright,” as he escaped out the door.

Patrick Crayton averaged 21-yards per catch, while Quincy Morgan is trying to earn the back up spot to Keyshawn Johnson. Morgan dropped a pass near the goal line in the third, but redeemed himself with a touchdown in the fourth.

“I told the guys, now I can enjoy my off day a little bit,” said Morgan. I might have gone home and done something to myself if I wouldn't have gotten that play. I'm glad i was able to come back. I think the coaches even called that so i could redeem myself.”

Tony Romo continued to improve his stock as Bledsoe's backup, leading the team to twice as many touchdowns as the first team, but he’s not ready to accept the backup position.

“That’s not for me to decide, just trying to get better,” said Romo. Whatever the coaches feel is best for this team.”

Defensively, one thing has become very obvious. Dallas has improved at Safety, with Roy Williams's resurgence, and the additions at cornerback, seems to have made Terrence Newman a better player as well.

Anthony Henry, who was signed a free agent cornerback said, “I feel like I understand and realize why we put in a new defense. I think we came together fairly quickly, although we do have some things we do need to work on. I feel like we're going to have a pretty solid defense.”

Aaron Glenn, who joined the team as free agent cornerback along with Henry, will play the nickel primarily. “They have a bunch of explosive guys over there, says Glenn, “and for us to go out there and hold those guys, I think they had 52-yards or whatever when we came out, so that was, upbeat.”

But as the defense improved, special teams didn't exactly win Parcells heart.

“Ha, because we gave up a kick off return and missed a field goal, I would rate it superb, Parcells said sarcastically. “We didn't have a real good group out there, but there is still no excuse for it, don't get me wrong, but we did work on that mayday field goal. I think the snap was good, the hold was good, and ah, we just didn't kick it.”

This is a team that has an under developed offense, key injuries on defense, and lapses on special teams. It is only preseason, but preseason is about to run out. Dallas will play their last preseason game Thursday night.