Dallas Cowboys: How close are the Cowboys to winning a Super Bowl?

Are the Dallas Cowboys any closer to winning a Super Bowl championship? Let’s take a look at how the team has changed this offseason.

The Dallas Cowboys are about to begin training camp and there are a lot of questions surrounding the team. The biggest question on Cowboys fans minds may not be directly related to 2018 but when will this franchise win another Super Bowl? It is a valid question as the are 32 opponents every year that look to make that goal an impossibility.

The Cowboys have changed a lot since the days of Tony Romo and Jason Witten, but are they closer to a title than ever before? Let’s take a look at the franchise as a whole and just how close they are to winning another Lombardi Trophy.

The Dallas Cowboys have the youngest team in recent history. Their franchise quarterback is entering his third season in the NFL and looking to make a big impact in 2018. If we are taking a look at the quarterback situation versus those in the past, there just is not enough information to go on in regards to ranking Dak Prescott with the legends of the franchise.

Dak’s third year will likely set the tone for what people will think of him, but there are certain traits that lead you to believe he is on the right track. His unstoppable work ethic, leadership skills, and playmaking skills give him a lot of tools to work with. Can he improve in terms of accuracy or play recognition, of course, but Prescott’s down year was not caused by anything he did or didn’t do.

The drop off in production was on the team as a whole. Dez Bryant could not catch the football, Beasley could not find a way to get open, the offensive line was dealing with some injuries this team was just not prepared for. There are a ton of reasons as to why Prescott could not have a cleaner year statistically.

When Dak had a clean pocket and plenty of time to make the appropriate reads, he made plays. Setting rookie records in just about every category at the quarterback position is an insanely difficult goal to achieve and Prescott did it with ease. There is no reason to think that he gets back on track in 2018.

Speaking getting back on track, the offense will have its heartbeat once again as Ezekiel Elliott should be on the field every week. This offense is built around running the football and Elliott is the best back in the NFL hands down. If Elliott had not missed six games due to suspension, he would have found himself winning the rushing title for a second season in a row.

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Elliott is in the best shape of his life and just from the little we have seen during OTA’s and minicamp, number 21 seems to be chomping at the bit to go up against some real competition. Is Dez Bryant’s departure a world-ending situation? Absolutely not, in fact, plenty of people speculated that Bryant would either be cut or forced to take a much more team friendly deal.

At the end of the day, the Dallas Cowboys front office thought it would be best for both parties to go their separate ways. Bryant had lost a step and injuries have hampered his last three seasons.

Paying a ton of money to a player who has declining production does not make a whole lot of sense. What really appeared to be the nail in the coffin happened during the season, as Bryant batted up four very catchable balls which resulted in interceptions. You can have your young, franchise, quarterback throwing to a player who is just not reliable anymore.

So a change at wide receiver was apart of this team’s natural progression. You can argue that the team addressed this need more than any other position on the roster as they acquired Allen Hurns, Deonte Thompson, Tavon Austin, Michael Gallup, and Cedrick Wilson.

The Cowboys have been slacking on stacking this wide receiving corps with dependable options and they have done just that during that 2018 offseason. You can argue that the team’s receiving corps is infinitely better than it has been in recent memory.

The loss of Jason Witten looms large as he did everything right and was productive every year of his long and storied career. But realistically James Hanna was the best run blocking tight end the team had, now with a young versatile crop of players there is no reason to expect that they cannot have similar success in the future.

When you add the fact that the Dallas Cowboys have invested heavily in the defensive side of the ball, you cannot deny that this team is trending upward. During the Tony Romo years, any injury to number nine meant certain death for the season. The Cowboys newest offensive leader, Ezekiel Elliott missed six games and the team still managed to go 9-7, now that is progress.

A revamped secondary, defensive line, and linebacking corps should put this team in a terrific position to succeed. One area of concern defensively is the safety position, however, Xavier Woods or Earl Thomas could be the guy to fill that role. There is not a major area of weakness defensively as the Cowboys pass rush and secondary looked markedly better than they did three years ago.

The team has improved on all fronts, offensively, defensively, (jury is still out on special teams). It has been an eventful offseason but this could finally be the year we see all of the Cowboys hard work pay off. Barring injuries and suspensions this seems like the most stacked lineup of players that Dallas has had in quite some time.

Training camp will only provide a glimpse of the promise we could get out of this unit, but there is no doubt this team is a lot closer to a deep postseason run than a complete rebuild.

Next: Dallas Cowboys: Randy Gregory's return

This franchise should win a championship within the next five years, as the Dallas Cowboys continue to build through the draft and could potentially land some elite free agents in the coming years.

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