DALLAS — With each injury in New York, with every roster move in Green Bay, the Cowboys inch closer to their first Super Bowl appearance in 13 years.

Why not? This is a 13-Pro Bowl-player team, correct?

Well, in a technical sense, it's true. The Cowboys sent 13 players to Honolulu and all 13 are back.

But with no disrespect to Bill Parcells, you are not what your Pro Bowl record says you are.

First, I would say that no team should be viewed as a 13-Pro Bowl-player team. Maybe the 16-0 New England Patriots earned the right to make that claim, but even they had only eight selections.

In light of that, we should be careful about throwing around that whole "13 Cowboys" thing. Yes, Dallas and New England play in different conferences, but it leaves the perception that this Cowboys team is so deep it can only stop itself.

Really, the 2007 Cowboys should be viewed as a seven-or eight-Pro Bowl-player club. And the point here isn't to remove Pro Bowls from players' resumes but only to illustrate the convergence of events that enabled Dallas to send more than a dozen players to Hawaii.

Let's start with the four undeniable picks — quarterback Tony Romo, tight end Jason Witten, wide receiver Terrell Owens and linebacker DeMarcus Ware. No reason to waste time on a discussion of their Pro Bowl merits.

The Cowboys sent three offensive linemen as starters. I can't sit here and say that out of Flozell Adams, Leonard Davis and Andre Gurode, one of them didn't deserve it. But voters tend to look at the offenses that pile up big numbers in rushing, receiving and scoring and pick their linemen.

Saints center Jeff Faine went to Tampa Bay in the off-season for $37 million, so there's a chance he was a pretty good center last year. But he played for a struggling team, much like Chicago center Olin Kreutz. Neither had a chance.

Centers can't pile up individual stats to overcome their surroundings.

The point is that Green Bay gained 370 yards a game, the Cowboys 365, the Saints 361, the Eagles 358, the Seahawks 348.

There were a handful of NFC teams that moved the ball really well. The fact that the Cowboys sent three linemen to the Pro Bowl and the Giants didn't send any should not signal a huge advantage in Dallas' corner.

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.