Don't swallow the hype about Cowboys' 13-player Hawaiian bunch

Move on to the secondary, where Terence Newman and Ken Hamlin made it and Roy Williams was added late after, among other things, the death of Redskins safety Sean Taylor. If you watched the Cowboys' secondary play, you probably didn't think three-fourths of the starters were Pro Bowlers.

The Redskins' tragedy and injuries to Green Bay's Al Harris and Charles Woodson and Philadelphia's Brian Dawkins opened up Pro Bowl secondary spots. The Cowboys charged in. Maybe two Pro Bowlers for Dallas would have been more reasonable.

Rookie kicker Nick Folk had an excellent season and was able to represent the Cowboys at the Pro Bowl. It is taking nothing away from Folk to say that the top 12-15 kickers in the NFL are the same.

They hit 85 to 90 percent of their field goal tries and put kickoffs in the same range for the most part. In the NFC, Folk was seventh in field goal percentage, next to last in average distance on his misses (40.4 yards).

He had a really nice season. So did a ton of other kickers.

Marion Barber became the rare running back to visit a Pro Bowl with fewer than 1,000 yards rushing. He was close (975), and his knack for the goal line and ferocious running style surely won him votes.

But it was a season in which St. Louis' Steven Jackson was hurt, San Francisco's Frank Gore played hurt and the teams that met in the NFC title game were auditioning new starting runners (Green Bay's Ryan Grant and the Giants' Brandon Jacobs).

Barber almost certainly has Pro Bowls in his future. Some good timing came his way to get him there a year ago.

The funny thing is that had the Cowboys beaten the Giants and maybe gone to the Super Bowl, they would have had fewer Pro Bowl players. Teams that advance almost always have players beg out with injuries, as New England's Tom Brady and Randy Moss did.

Instead of losing players, the Cowboys added two - Williams, as we mentioned, and Greg Ellis as an injury replacement for Chicago's Lance Briggs.

Again, this isn't to say that Ellis or Folk or Gurode or anyone else wasn't deserving. That's viewing this story individually when the point is to examine it collectively.

When you evaluate the Cowboys this preseason and wonder why they don't look more dominant when their starters play, keep in mind that the 13-Pro Bowler season was a product of more than a few things beyond the Cowboys' control.

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(c) 2008, The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.