Phil Costa News

A few years down the road, some of the young players currently on the roster will be the faces of the Dallas Cowboys.

Fans this off season had been calling loudly for the Cowboys to part ways with troubled offensive tackle Doug Free - me included.

Dallas Cowboys receiver Dez Bryant said he has "found himself" this off-season, his quietest as a professional since the team drafted him in 2010.

The Cowboys went into the draft with clear weaknesses along the offensive line and in the secondary, and they addressed each of those needs in the first three rounds of the draft.

The Cowboys drafted a guy to take Phil Costa's job at center. But that is not going to make him unfriendly toward him, Costa said.

Dallas Cowboys draft picks of 2013 Travis Frederick , Joseph Randle , Terrance Williams , B.W. Webb , DeVonte Holloman , Gavin Escobar , and J.J. Wilcox during rookie minicamp at Valley Ranch in Irving on May 11, 2013.

Travis Frederick wants to show critics the Dallas Cowboys weren't crazy when they drafted him in the first round.

When the Dallas Cowboys traded down in last month's NFL draft from the 18th selection in the first round to the 31st selection, they shocked a lot of people when they drafted a center with their first round pick - Travis Frederick out of Wisconsin.

Now that May has arrived and the draft and free agency are out of the way, here's a checklist of things the Dallas Cowboys have to address between now and the start of the 2013 NFL regular season.

A lot of the NFL Draft community went crazy when the Dallas Cowboys selected Wisconsin's Travis Frederick in the first round.

The Cowboys have, for several years, been plagued by having very little to fall back if the mostly talented group of starters went down.

I get the sense that Dallas Cowboys fans would feel better about the team if it signed one of these free-agent offensive tackles.

I read once that our former OL coach, Hudson Houck, once said that the "best 5 lineman would start" for the Cowboys .

COWBOYS DRAFT GRADE ROUNDUP: The true verdict on the Cowboys' 2013 draft class won't be in for a few years, but that won't stop draft experts from across the county from weighing in on how Dallas fared.

The Dallas Cowboys selected seven players in three days of the 2013 NFL Draft, but don't really have anything to show for it.

The Draft as always has been filled with many surprises thus far, and with the depth still available there is plenty left in the air.

The Badgers' former lineman and running back both were drafted in the first two rounds of the NFL Draft.

Eric Fisher is your new No. 1 pick, and he will be joining the Kansas City Chiefs' rebuilding effort with huge expectations to fill the void on the left side of the offensive line.

"I had hoped that we could come out of this thing with a legitimate starter - a legitimate starter, and he will start," Jones said Thursday night in a conversation with reporters at Valley Ranch.

Three NFC East teams picked in the first round of the NFL draft Thursday night, and the combined weight of the three players they picked is 922 pounds.