The Dallas Cowboys finished up their mandatory minicamp on Thursday morning at The Star in Frisco. The teams rookies stay around for a rookie development exercise next week. Other than that, the next time we hear from the Cowboys will be as they open training camp in Oxnard in the middle of July.

Some notes from minicamp

Dak Prescott is practicing and able to do everything he’s asked to do. Seems like he will be all systems go when camp opens.

Amari Cooper is not practicing after offseason ankle surgery. There is some question on whether he will be ready for training camp. Despite that, it doesn’t sound like it’s anything to be concerned about, yet.

Randy Gregory seems to be reenergized and really eager to start this season.

With all that being said, I want to look at ways that the Cowboys will be better in 2021.

Turnovers

The 2020 season was bizarre in many ways. The Cowboys really struggled to take care of the ball to begin the season and it put the team in some big holes early in games. The offense was good enough to get them back in the game. But I wouldn’t expect that trend to carry over in 2021.

Among those turnovers, Ezekiel Elliott fumbled fives times in the first six weeks.

Prescott threw 4 interceptions and fumbled 3 times before his season was cut short due to the ankle injury.

Ceedee Lamb drops

Ceedee Lamb completed his rookie season with 74 catches for 934 yards and 5 touchdowns.

There was one negative during his rookie campaign. That negative was his drops. Lamb dropped 8 passes last season, which was a bit of a surprise.

In college, drops were not something he struggled with so I expect that to correct itself in 2021. A lot of Lambs drops was caused by him trying to turn up the field before securing the catch.

The historically bad defense can’t be any worse

The defense for Dallas was not pretty in 2020. By many measures it was the worst in Cowboys history. However, I don’t think the Cowboys offense did them any favors early in the year with the turnovers I discussed earlier.

With new defensive blood and a coordinator that is actually putting the players in positions that they are comfortable with, I would expect them to at least be middle of pack in 2021. And with this offense, that may be good enough to make it back to postseason play.