Free agent cornerback Stanford Routt has visits lined up with the Bills and Titans, but the Cowboys, Vikings and Chiefs have reached out to express interest in the veteran cornerback.

As of now, no official visits have been scheduled with those three clubs.

A native of Austin, Texas who played his college ball at the University of Houston, the 28-year-old Routt spent much of his first five seasons in a reserve role before starting 30 of 32 games over the last two seasons, totaling 104 tackles, six interceptions, one of which was returned for a touchdown, with 28 passes defensed.

The Raiders signed Routt to a three-year, $31 million contract prior to last year’s lockout that included $20 million in guarantees.

Now that the 2011 season is officially over following the Super Bowl, now we can all look ahead to free agency.

The Cowboys have a number of players that will be unrestricted come March 13th when they can sign with other teams. You can see the complete list below, and give your thoughts about what players the team should keep, and what ones they could let go.

Exclusive Rights Free Agents (4)

RB Chauncey Washington
WR Jesse Holley
OT Jermey Parnell
DE Clifton Geathers

Restricted Free Agents (3)

QB Chris Greisen
FB Tony Fiammetta
WR Kevin Ogletree

Unrestricted Free Agents (11)

RB Sammy Morris
WR Laurent Robinson
TE Martellus Bennett
OG Derrick Dockery
OG Montrae Holland
LB Bradie James
LB Anthony Spencer
CB Alan Ball
CB Frank Walker
S Abram Elam
P Mat McBriar

U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater sentenced Vollers in federal court in Dallas on Friday, almost two years after pleading guilty to conspiracy to sell more than 100 kilograms of marijuana.

He could have received a 40-year prison term. The 31-year-old played for Dallas from 2002-04 and appeared in two games for Indianapolis in 2005. Prosecutors say Vollers helped three other men in delivering marijuana to the Dallas area from January 2006 through May 2008.

The helmet-to-helmet shot knocked Tony Dorsett out cold in the second quarter of a 1984 Cowboys-Eagles game, the hardest hit he ever took during his Hall of Fame NFL career.

“It was like a freight train hitting a Volkswagen,” Dorsett says now.

“Did they know it was a concussion?” he asks rhetorically during an interview with The Associated Press. “They thought I was half-dead.”

And yet, he says, after being examined in the locker room — a light shined in his eyes; queries such as who sat next to him on the Cowboys’ bus ride to the stadium — Dorsett returned to the field and gained 99 yards in the second half. Mainly, he says, by running plays the wrong way, because he couldn’t remember what he was supposed to do.

“That ain’t the first time I was knocked out or been dazed over the course of my career, and now I’m suffering for it,” the 57-year-old former tailback says. “And the NFL is trying to deny it.”

Dorsett traces several health problems to concussions during a career that lasted from 1977-88, and he has joined more than 300 former players — including three other members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and at least 32 first- or second-team All-Pro selections — in suing the NFL, its teams and, in some cases, helmet maker Riddell. More should have been done in the past to warn about the dangers of concussions, their lawyers argue, and more can be done now and in the future to help retired players deal with mental and physical problems they attribute to their days in the NFL.

In interviews conducted by the AP over the past two months with a dozen plaintiffs, what emerged was, at best, a depiction of a culture of indifference on the part of the league and its teams toward concussions and other injuries. At worst, there was a strong sense of a willful disregard for players’ well-being.

“It’s not about whether players understood you could get a concussion playing football. It’s about the negligence of care, post-concussion, that occurred,” says Kyle Turley, an offensive lineman for the Saints, Rams and Chiefs who was the No. 7 overall pick in the 1998 draft and an All-Pro in 2000.

Players complain that they carried owners to their profits, in an industry that now has more than $9 billion in annual revenues, without the safety nets of guaranteed contracts or lifetime medical insurance.

“Yeah, I understand you paid me to do this, but still yet, I put my life on the line for you, I put my health on the line,” Dorsett says. “And yet when the time comes, you turn your back on me? That’s not right. That’s not the American way.”

Head injuries are a major topic of conversation every day of the NFL season. With the Super Bowl as a global stage, the NFL will air a one-minute TV commercial during Sunday’s game highlighting rules changes through the years that have made the sport safer.

The owners of the teams playing for the Lombardi Trophy in Indianapolis — Bob Kraft of the New England Patriots and John Mara of the New York Giants — acknowledge the issue’s significance.

“There’s more of a focus on it now, without question, and I think that’s a good thing, and I think it’ll continue to be a focus. Because none of us want to put players in perilous situations like that,” Mara says. “I don’t want to see guys that are on this team, 20 years from now, with debilitating injuries, no matter what they are.”

Says Kraft: “We know this is a physical game, and when people play the game, they know it comes with certain risks. We have tried to stay ahead of it.”

The most accomplished and best-known plaintiff in the flurry of lawsuits — a star for the Cowboys after winning the 1976 Heisman Trophy at Pittsburgh — Dorsett agreed to two interviews with the AP, one over the telephone and one at his suburban Dallas home.

“I don’t want to get to the point where it turns into dementia, Alzheimer’s. I don’t want that,” says Dorsett, who ran for 12,739 yards, the eighth-highest total in league history. He is, in that moment, sad and deflated — in others, pumped up and angry, fists flying to punctuate his words. “There’s no doubt in my mind that … what I went through as a football player is taking an effect on me today. There’s no ifs ands or buts about that. I’m just hoping and praying I can find a way to cut it off at the pass.”

He spreads two pages’ worth of brain scans on his coffee table and says doctors told him that red regions in the color-coded scan mean he is not getting enough oxygen in the left lobe of his brain, the part associated with organization and memory. He already forgets people’s names or why he walked into a room or where he’s heading while driving on the highway, and fears his memory issues are getting worse.

Dorsett’s had surgery on both his knees, and problems with his left arm and right wrist. He says then-Cowboys coach Tom Landry once told him he could play despite a broken bone in his back. Not even the flak jacket Dorsett says he wore beneath his jersey could bring relief, the injury so painful that “tears would just start flowing out of my eyes, profusely and uncontrollably” during practices.

“They would see me and just point to the training room. ‘Go to the training room, get some ice and heat and come on back out here,’” Dorsett says.

And during games?

“They were hitting me, and I’d be squealing like a pig,” Dorsett says, imitating the guttural sound. “It was so bad that the other team was telling our coaches, ‘Get him out of the game.’ You know that something’s wrong then. And like a fool, I stayed as long as I could. They’re going to our sideline, telling our coaches, ‘Get him out of the game!’ … You know it’s bad when the opposition feels sorry for you.”

The Cowboys hired Jerome Henderson last week as the secondary coach, replacing Dave Campo. Brett Maxie, the safeties coach, was offered a new contract, but he elected to become the secondary coach of the Tennessee Titans.

“We’ll continue that process,” Garrett said about interviews. “We want to make sure, whoever you bring into the organization, you go through the right process to evaluate them and see how they fit.”

Bryant had a confrontation outside a Miami nightclub, on January 15th, and ended up being detained by Miami Police. Bryant was not arrested for the incident.

“I haven’t talked to him about it,” Jones said. “I don’t know details of it from his perspective. But I’m aware of it.”

Bryant is an excellent talent, but his off the field issues are getting worse and worse, and it’s something that the team is keeping its eye on moving forward.

Jones observing practices at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala.

Jerry Jones is a frustrated general manager, and just like Dallas Cowboy fans everywhere, he should be. The Cowboys fell just short of the playoffs this year, but you can point to a handful of games where the Cowboys could have, nay, should have won. If they had closed those games out it could possibly be the Cowboys in Indianapolis this week.

Granted, the Cowboys would have had to play at a completely different level in the playoffs and even without the collapses I’m not sure they would have been capable to knock of the Packers in Lambeau. But, nonetheless, Cowboys fans are forced to watch their division rival, New York, go for a second Super Bowl since 2007.

Jerry Jones spoke with the media Monday while preparing for the Senior Bowl, and there may have been a little envy in his voice when talking about the Giants, “(The Giants are) just like the Green Bay Packers were last year, in a different way,” Jones said Monday, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “They’re a real inspiration of, frankly, what I had hoped that we were going to be, and that is a team that had played, had good days and bad days, but then near the end really took off on a run and then really made improvement. They did it, and we didn’t. We went the other way.”

Jones wasn’t the only one who has watched and wondered what could have been, but eve he knew that the Cowboys may not have had what it takes even if they did manage to sneak into the playoffs, “We didn’t play good enough to compete or play at this level, and I don’t know that we would have been competing, had we gotten in the playoffs, at the level the Giants are,” Jones said.

Jones did give a lot of praise to his quarterback. Tony Romo, while he struggled to close out games at the beginning of the year, had one of his best years as a pro. Romo had a career-high 102.5 quarterback rating and threw 31 touchdowns to just 10 interceptions. But it wasn’t Romo that struggled down the stretch, a fact that Jones has not overlooked, “We had good quarterback play,” he said. “But I’d say as a team, they (Giants) just got better and better near the end and we did the opposite.”

Despite all the doom-and-gloom around Valley Ranch, Jones did get optimistic when thinking of next year, “We’ve got a lot of work to do with our personnel,” Jones said. “The good news is that we’re not starting out at quarterback. We’ve got a competitor there and we’ve got a lot of good skill people around him.”

“It’s certainly a possibility,” Garrett said. “That was a possibility when we first drafted Tyron, and one of the many things that was attractive about him was his physical ability to play both right and left tackle in this league.”

The Cowboys used the ninth overall pick in the 2011 NFL Draft on Smith, who played right tackle at USC but has the feet, strength and athleticism to play left tackle at the NFL level. The 6-foot-5, 311-pound Smith, who didn’t turn 21 until December, started all 16 games at right tackle in 2011 and signed through 2014 with a team option for 2015.

Dallas also re-signed the 6-foot-6, 323-pound Free to a four-year, $32 million contract on July 29. For the second consecutive season, Free started all 16 games at left tackle, but played on the right side earlier in his career and gives the Cowboys the flexibility to make a change.

“Doug is capable of playing both. Tyron is capable of playing both,” Garrett said. “We’re trying to make the best fit for our football team, and for each of those guys, so they can play at their best.

“If we were to do that, we would try to do that earlier, rather than later, to give them enough opportunity to do it and get better at it.”

A first-round pick in 2008, Jenkins has eight interceptions and 40 passes defensed in 58 career games. Jenkins is entering the final year of his rookie contract and the surgery could keep Jenkins out of the team’s OTAs and mini-camps, the team’s first on-field work with newly-hired secondary coach Jerome Henderson.

In 12 games, the 2009 Pro Bowler had 24 tackles and an interception with eight passes defensed. Jenkins missed four games in the middle of the 2011 season with a hamstring injury.

With Jared Allen nearly breaking the sack record and DeMarcus Ware and Jason Pierre-Paul not far behind, Terrell Suggs takes the prize as the top defensive player of 2011.