The Dallas Cowboys and Jerry Jones have arrived at a critical crossroads in 2012, having endured the most excruciating series of defeats in franchise history en route to their final 8-8 record in 2011.

What made all of this possible was a team that couldn’t stop a decent offense to save its life. Now that the New York Giants are headed to the Super Bowl, it has become vibrantly clear what type of team Jones must build in order to regain the NFC East title.

In that sense, the Giants have actually done the Cowboys a favor. For most of the season, Dallas appeared to be good enough to win the East, despite being thrashed by the Eagles.

When Dallas lost at home to the Giants it was heart breaking, but many considered it the result of bad luck and a suspect secondary. No one saw the Giants as potential world champions. And no one believed the Cowboys would only win one more game in 2011.

With the stunning success of the Giants, many inconvenient facts have come to light. Here is a small sample:

1)    The Giants are a much more complete and physical team on offense and defense, than the Cowboys.

2)    The Giants and Cowboys are NOT equally weak in their secondaries, although it may have looked that way earlier in 2011. The Giants have young talent that is improving. The Cowboys secondary is in shambles.

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3)    The Cowboys are soft on defense and no respectable team fears them. The opposite is true for the Giants.

4)    The Giants (and the Eagles, for that matter) have the Cowboys figured out. They know how to intimidate them on both sides of the ball and they have little trouble scoring on them.

5)    The Giants and Eagles have Jason Garrett figured out.

6)    Both the Giants and the Eagles have tough, hard-nosed identities. They are brutally physical on defense and very explosive on offense.

7)    Dallas does not have this identity. If anything, Dallas has a reputation for being over-hyped and a bit soft when the chips are down. Adding Rob Ryan, with his bluster and bravado only added to the over-hyped-but-can’t-deliver reputation, because Dallas didn’t get him any new talent to back him up.

That’s a tough reality to face, but it would be much better for the Cowboys to face it than to run from it.

An even tougher reality to face, but one that must absolutely be embraced immediately, is the inevitable conclusion that follows from the seven facts listed above:

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Dallas will not win the NFC East without creating a top-three defense.

You saw what the Giants did to the 49ers. The 49ers have one of the leagues toughest, hardest hitting and most disciplined defenses.

They were playing at home, on their soggy turf, in the wind and the rain, and Eli still completed 32 passes to eight different receivers for over 300 yards and two touchdowns, despite being sacked six times.

Regardless of what happens in the Super Bowl, Eli Manning took a major step toward greatness this year. I still don’t like the way he carries himself at times. When he is disappointed his body language looks like that of a pouting child. I didn’t want to believe in this guy.

When he said in an interview that he considered himself an elite quarterback, one of the very best in the game, I was probably laughing harder than anyone. But he has completely backed that statement up.

So, its not hyperbole to say that Dallas will need a top-three defense to win the NFC East. Two of the best offenses in football reside there. And they’re not going anywhere. So here, specifically, are the characteristics the Dallas defense must acquire. 

Dallas must become extremely fast and extremely nasty on defense. They need a line that can get to Eli Manning and knock him down until he doesn’t want to get back up. They need a line that can penetrate and wrap up Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw in backfield.

And they need cornerbacks who can cover long enough to let their nasty linemen get to Manning. It would also help if they could find some ball-hawks for that defensive backfield. They need a safety who hits first and worries about fines later, if at all.

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Of course, its not just the Giants the Cowboys need to worry about. The Eagles are a nightmare matchup for the current Cowboys roster. Dallas will need that speed and nastiness to get to Michael Vick, LeSean McCoy, DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin as well.

Dallas Must Be Disruptive

It is now clear that Cowboys will go nowhere until they have a defense that is consistently disruptive to most of what the Giants and the Eagles are trying to do. The operative word here is disruptive—as in creating chaos and mayhem with all hell breaking loose. Nothing short of this kind of defense will do. 

Dallas can no longer afford to even consider talented but less than supremely motivated guys for their defense. They must find the guys who are always on, always swarming to the ball and always ready to explode. 

The Cowboys can ill-afford to be mesmerized by the combine this year. Bill Parcels was right to ridicule it as the “Underwear Olympics.” By all means, finding guys with speed is critical, but being talked into a guy who takes downs off, just because he is a 10th of a second faster in the 40 is pure folly. Take the guy who never quits, the guy who lives to light someone up. 

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Jimmy Johnson made it real simple for his scouts, he told them to go find him playmakers. He wasn’t as interested in stats as he was film analysis and interviews with former coaches. Film doesn’t lie. Interviews tend to reveal things about character. 

The Cowboys personnel department must make their greatest effort since the Jimmy Johnson era to find disruptive guys who arrive with bad intentions. These guys will be available in every round of the draft, Dallas just needs to find them. 

The blueprint for this kind of defense is out there. It’s the Steelers, the Texans, the Ravens and the 49ers. What you find throughout these defenses are exactly the kind of guys the Cowboys need. Guys who play fast, angry and with sound fundamentals. 

The Dallas Offense Must Improve As Well 

The blueprint for improving the Dallas offense can be found in the Giants opponent in the upcoming Super Bowl, the New England Patriots. What makes the Patriots great is their seemingly endless number of offensive weapons and endless creativity in deploying them.

Against the Ravens, on a day that was actually below average for their offense, the Patriots had five different people run the ball and six different people catch passes. But it isn’t just about having lots of different people touch the ball, its about deploying multiple looks with multiple people and keeping the defense guessing rather than attacking. 

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A great example of this is how the Patriots use Aaron Hernandez, their second tight end. The Patriots drafted Hernandez in the fourth round. He runs a 4.64, 40-yard dash, he’s 6’1” and 245 lbs. In other words, his numbers were nothing to get overly excited about, which is why he lasted until the 113th pick. But the Patriots are better than anyone at finding talent, so its not a surprise that he has become an impact player. 

At some point, the Patriots realized that Hernandez had good instincts as a runner out of the backfield. So now they devise plays to catch opposing defenses in pass packages when it’s a run and run packages when it’s a pass.

For example, they make it look like a pass play by lining up with an empty backfield and Hernandez split out, along with a couple of other receivers. Then they motion him into the backfield and run the ball.

Or, they do the reverse of this. They begin with him in the backfield and with Gronkowski in tight and then they motion Hernandez and Gronkowski out wide. What was a strong run look, now turns out to be a pass.

If Hernandez gets a lot of attention for motioning out wide, that’s fine, Gronkowski will chip his guy and go out into a pattern and Brady will hit him. Understand now, that this only a tiny slice of what Belichick does to opposing defensive coordinators.

He seems to find talent that everyone else has overlooked and then he deploys it in ways no one was expecting. 

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In their quest for bringing their offense up to the level of the Patriots, the Cowboys have some good news. Their primary skill position players are in place. They need more talent and nastiness on their offensive line, but that can be achieved.

What they really need on offense is more deception, more creativity. The addition of Bill Callahan as offensive coordinator/line coach is potentially very helpful in this regard. Callahan is very creative, hard working and has achieved great offensive results everywhere he has been. 

The New Dallas Cowboys 

If there is one bright spot to the postseason for Cowboys fans, it’s that the importance of tough, physical defense has been validated once again.

Prior to the playoffs, many pundits were talking about a new paradigm in the NFL, where a championship team could be built with a mediocre defense that got just enough stops so that their high-powered offense could out-score their opponents. 

The Packers were the defending champions and poster child for that paradigm. But it crashed and burned with them in Lambeau field and it crashed and burned with the Saints in Candlestick Park. The Giants won because their own defense, after taking most of the year off, came to life in the final three games and stormed into the playoffs, playing as physical as any defense in the NFL.

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The Patriots have advanced to the big game because of their offense, but also because their defense has come to life as well. They have become very physical and nasty as the stakes have increased.

When you look at the difference in postseason production, the Giants defense has yielded an average of 321 yards per game in the playoffs. The Patriots have given up 325 yards per game.

They are nearly identical.

The Giants and Patriots are first and and second in points defense in the postseason, yielding an average of 13 and 15 points respectively. So, despite how explosive these teams are on offense, they didn’t get to the big dance by winning shoot-outs. They won tough, gritty games with defense and made big plays on offense when it counted.

This all bodes well for helping the Dallas brain trust make the right decisions in 2012.

It couldn’t be any more clear what they need to do. Become fast, mean and nasty on defense. Be creative, unpredictable and explosive on offense. Easier said than done, but the initial signs from the Cowboys are positive.