SPORTSDAY

Here's a theory that was being kicked around during the postgame media bullshooting session in the Texas Stadium parking lot: Sometimes you give a guy extensive preseason playing time to prove that he can't play. And LB Bobby Carpenter played a whole bunch this preseason, including the entire game last night.

So there was some speculating that Carpenter's time with the Cowboys could end Saturday. I can't see that happening.

Forget for a moment that Carpenter was a first-round pick. The Cowboys don't have cap issues, so his contract status shouldn't matter right now. Just ask this question: Can Carpenter help the Cowboys this season?

The answer is yes.

Carpenter doesn't fit in the 3-4, but he is capable of being a solid nickel/dime linebacker. The Cowboys need depth at that spot with Kevin Burnett coming off arthroscopic knee surgery. Plus, Burnett could leave as a free agent after this season, so Carpenter could fill that role on a full-time basis in the future.

And Carpenter is one of the team's top special teams players. With punt/kick coverage one of the team's primary concerns, it'd be foolish to cut a player who has proven himself in that facet of the game.

Grapevine's Richard Bartel may not make the 53-man roster. The third-string quarterback may not make the practice squad. His NFL career may be over come Saturday for all we know.

But for one night, Bartel felt like the king of the world.

Say what you want about this being the preseason and how the games don't count. Against the Vikings, Bartel was the starting quarterback for America's Team. He completed 28 of 41 passes for 233 yards. He got sacked three times and escaped some others. All in all, I'd bet a ton of people would love to walk out of Texas Stadium with those numbers and a ton of memories.

"I had the greatest time," said Bartel, who kept a game ball for himself. "I hadn't had that much fun in football in my life. I mean, c'mon, you're playing a whole game for the Dallas Cowboys. You get to run out of the tunnel. The experience was awesome for me.

"I'm from here, and I never got to play here in high school. A lot of kids get to play here now, and I never had the opportunity to do that. My grandpa would have been elated if he were here."

Follow the jump for thrilling second quarter coverage.

Read up on all the exciting first quarter action after the jump.

OFFENSE

WR Sam Hurd
LT Doug Free
LG Pat McQuistan
C Cory Procter
RG Joe Berger
RT Cory Lekkerkerker
TE Martellus Bennett
WR Mike Jefferson
QB Richard Bartel
FB Deon "Pit Bull" Anderson
RB Felix Jones

DEFENSE

DE Marcus Smith
NT Junior Siavii
DE Stephen Bowen
OLB Justin Rogers
ILB Bobby Carpenter
ILB Tyson Smith
OLB Erik Walden
CB Orlando Scandrick
FS Patrick Watkins
SS Courtney Brown
CB Mike Jenkins

Get fired some for some preseason finale football!!!!!!

1. It'll be awfully tough for Montrae Holland to learn the playbook in time to start the season opener in Cleveland. Let's see if Pat McQuistan, Cory Procter or Joe Berger look like legitimate options at left guard.

2. Danny Amendola, the darling of training camp, has a chance to make the 53-man roster due to a couple injuries to the WR corps. That final spot could come down to whether Amendola or Mike Jefferson performs better tonight.

3. I think sixth-round OLB Erik Walden will make the trip to Cleveland, since Anthony Spencer is out for that game. But if Walden wants to stick around once Spencer gets healthy, he better show something tonight.

4. Evan Oglesby vs. Alan Ball for the sixth cornerback spot. (Unless the Cowboys decide to sign Keith Davis and keep only five cornerbacks.)

5. The cheerleaders are in midseason form.

A handful of the most prolific commenters on this here blog have suggested that we tweak the way we blog during games, going with one continuously updated post per quarter instead of a fresh post for every update. The idea is to make it easier for you folks to interact with each other.

What the heck? We'll give it a shot during tonight's preseason finale. That style works well during training camp, and we'll see how we like it for a game. And we'd appreciate your feedback.

Richard Bartel is expected to play the entire preseason finale for two reasons: 1) No sense in risking an injury to Tony Romo or Brad Johnson; 2) the Cowboys want a long look at Bartel before determining whether his time at Valley Ranch is done.

Even if Bartel has a spectacular performance, it'd be tough to see a scenario where the Cowboys keep him on the 53-man roster. He has a strong arm, but he simply hasn't shown enough progress to merit a roster spot, especially with the Cowboys needing to carry several injured players on the 53 to start the season.

The Grapevine product, who was out of the Cowboys' plans after final cuts last season until Carolina picked up Matt Moore off waivers, is probably playing to stick on the practice squad for the second consecutive season. He's the only in-house candidate to be scout-team QB, but he's competing against every other QB around the league who will be cut this week.

I hope you didn't buy a ticket to the preseason finale planning to watch Adrian Peterson play. He'll be a spectator Thursday at Texas Stadium, and so will the rest of the Vikings starters, Minnesota coach Brad Childress told reporters today.

Wade Phillips is still playing it close to the vest, saying the Cowboys coaches haven't finalized plans regarding who would play and who would sit. But you can count on seeing a whole bunch of Richard Bartel and no Tony Romo.

Terence Newman returned to practice today -- and participated in everything except one-on-ones -- but probably won't play in Thursday's preseason finale.

The point of having Newman sit out so long after pulling his groin a few days into training camp was to make sure he'd be completely healthy once the Cowboys hit Cleveland. It's not worth the risk of tweaking the groin to chip off some rust against the Vikings.

"We still want to be careful with him," Wade Phillips said.

Phillips said the Cowboys hadn't finalized plans regarding which starters would sit in the preseason finale, but count on several starters being spectators.

This is no longer premature. The cuts are coming soon, and it's not out of the realm of possibility that the Cowboys' 53-man roster will include one or two players who went to training camp with other teams.

Follow the jump for an educated guess about the 53 guys the Cowboys will keep.

DE/NT Marcus Spears might be playing the best football of his NFL career. He claims that it's just a coincidence that he's battling to keep a starting job.

He sure looked like a motivated man against the Texans. He was only credited with two tackles, but he disrupted several plays in the backfield.

"If it looks like that, it's because I've been real focused on getting off the ball fast," Spears said of possibly being motivated by the threat of reduced playing time. "I think I've put a lot of emphasis on playing technique and being in the right places all the time since I got here. My mentality is to stay within the defense but try to get in the way and create a mess in the backfield more than usual."

Spears, a solid player who hasn't lived up to his first-round billing, has accepted that Jay Ratliff will be added to the DE rotation with Tank Johnson's playing time increasing at nose tackle. That's OK by him.

"There's definitely an advantage to fresh legs," he said.

There's an advantage to a little fire under a former first-rounder's butt, too.

Miles Austin is expected to miss four to six weeks with a sprained MCL in his left knee. That means the best-case scenario is that he returns for the second regular season game.

"I don't really want to deal with timelines," said Austin, who is concerned about aggravating the injury if he tries to come back before he's completely healthy. "When it's ready, I'll be ready to go."

Austin appeared to be establishing himself as a key component of the Cowboys' passing game before getting injured. He followed up an impressive performance in the preseason opener vs. San Diego (five catches, 64 yards) by making two great catches (37-yarder followed by skying for a TD on a fade route) in Denver.

And then he got hurt on the kickoff after his touchdown grab. Talk about frustrating.

The national anthem is over, and I'd estimate that 70 percent of the Texas Stadium seats are empty. It's almost as if Cowboys fans aren't fired up about trying to get the Governor's Cup.

OK, we'll focus solely on the battle for the Governor's Cup for the rest of the night. This is serious business, with the starters expected to play three quarters.

Superstar columnist Jean-Jacques Taylor is ahead of us. He posted his five to watch (Adam "Pacman" Jones, Tashard Choice, Bobby Carpenter, Martellus Bennett and Tony Romo) this morning.

Here are five more:

For proof that the Governor's Cup is a big deal in Houston, check out John McClain's blog on chron.com. They're predicting scores two days before a preseason game.

(Oh, heck, feel free to do the same on this here blog. I'll go with Cowboys 27, Texans 20. No way will those stinkin' Houstonians walk off the Texas Stadium turf for the final time as winners.)

If you want a good laugh, follow the jump to read an e-mail I received from a feisty Texans fan. It's unedited except for a profanity deleted at the end.

I don't think this will make Valley Ranch types feel any better about the Cowboys starters' poor performance in Denver, but the Cleveland Browns don't quite look ready for the Sept. 7 opener, either.

The Giants beat the Browns last night, 37-34, but forget the final score. The defending Super Bowl champs jumped out to a 30-3 lead a minute into the second quarter.

"Unbelievable," Cleveland coach Romeo Crennel told reporters. "Evidently we didn't do enough work. I told the team it's my fault for trying to save them in practice by not hitting. We're not very good right now."

I received an e-mail from a fan who noticed that quote and wanted somebody to get on Wade Phillips for not taking accountability. That fella must not be aware that I'm an official Wade apologist. Isn't Phillips' declaration that mental mistakes are "unacceptable" enough for you folks?

OK, maybe the headline exaggerates a wee bit. But Wade Phillips is fairly perturbed about the high total of mental mistakes the Cowboys made in the loss to the Broncos despite a vanilla game plan.

"It's not acceptable for us, even though some of them didn't play this long, that long," Phillips said. "You can have all kinds of excuses. We have to clean that up. Coaching staff, we've got to do a better job there."

Some penalties fall in the category of mental mistakes, but Wade wanted to get a clarification on a couple (Felix Jones' tripping penalty and Bradie James' not-so-late hit) to see if the refs got those calls right. Other "extracurricular" penalties were inexcusable.

"We have to be more disciplined there," Phillips said. "They knew it after they got the penalty, but we can't have it beforehand. Those things we're harping on certainly."

Time to shift our focus to one of the NFL's best preseason rivalries, if such things exist.

The Governor's Cup is a big deal in Houston. In case you didn't know, that's what they call the trophy that goes to the winner of the annual Cowboys-Texans game.

The Texans won it in convincing fashion last season, leading DeSoto native Patrick Crayton to request that the rivalry game become a regular-season affair. The postgame trash talk was even more lopisded, with Texans fans really rubbing it in your faces.

You folks seemed to lose your composure when Houstonians invaded this here blog last August. Try to keep it together this time around, even if the Cowboys put up another preseason dud.

Kevin Burnett's recovery from arthroscopic knee surgery is going well, but it was painful for him to watch all the penalty flags flying during the Cowboys' preseason loss in Denver. Burnett mentions in his blog post that it's especially bothersome that the Cowboys are committing most of their penalties before or after the play.

Of course, Burnett has some expertise on the subject. After all, his personal foul for barking in Brandon "Big Mouth" Jacobs' face led to a classic Jimmy Johnson rant and Wade Phillips' famous no-post-play-penalties pledge.

Made a few changes since last week's projection. Miles Austin's knee injury caused a couple adjustments to be made, and a shift was made in the battle for the sixth CB spot.

This also marks the first practice squad projection of the year!!! Didn't figure that merited its own post, so I tacked eight names to the bottom of this one. Follow the jump to see for yourself.

Betcha Wade Phillips is up late putting the finishing touches on another extensive game plan for a preseason game against Denver.

You remember the Broncos getting their feathers ruffled because of some Cowboys blitzes last summer, right?

Well, I can't wait to see what ol' Wade cooks up this time to get meaningless revenge against the first team that canned him as head coach. I'd like to suggest that the Cowboys bust out the Patrick Crayton-to-Sam Hurd reverse pass. Oh, and while I'm all for defensive creativity, don't call any blitzes that leave Adam "Pacman" Jones alone on Brandon "No T.O." Marshall.

It's a shame that John Lynch recently departed Denver. Now who's going to hold the Cowboys to the unwritten preseason code of ethics?

Oh, well. I reckon that Lynch has plenty of NFL ethics issues to ponder after joining the Patriots.

My five from last week (NT Tank Johnson, CB Mike Jenkins, LB Bobby Carpenter, RT Pat McQuistan and WR Danny Amendola) still stands. Follow the jump for five more players that I'll watch particularly closely in the Cowboys-Broncos game.

After careful consideration, I've made a few minor tweaks to the last week's projected 53-man roster.

Warning: There's a potential heartbreaker for fans of Texas high school football and the Big 12 South. Follow the jump if you can handle that.