Since their mini-camp ended last month, the Cowboys have been on their own, waiting for the start of another training camp.

That has allowed time for personal projects.

Wide Receiver Terrell Owens spent a few days holding a football camp for kids who qualified for scholarships by writing essays.

"I figured this would be the best time to really just get with the kids, especially with football season approaching," Owens said. "Everybody is anticipating what we're going to do this year, after this camp, I'm going to take me a little vacation somewhere, and rest up and relax and get ready for training camp."

Defensive end Chris Canty went back to his home town of Charlotte, North Carolina for a similar camp.

"It doesn't get much better than sports, sports sets a great foundation," he said. "Some of the most successful businessmen have played sports at a high level, you look at Roger Staubach, you look at Troy Aikman in the Dallas area, look at Jerry Jones and his son Stephen Jones playing at Arkansas, so sports lays that foundation to be successful and guys take advantage of that."

Quarterback Tony Romo chose to play golf in the American Century Celebrity Golf Championship in Lake Tahoe.

"I'll probably make a run on the us open and masters next year, obviously," Romo said jokingly. "No I think I love being involved in competition. I use it as a tool to put myself in situations that hopefully you can think clearly under pressure and the more times you do that, for me it'll help me in football, I think."

But later this month, the focus will be on Oxnard, Calif. where the expectations will be high.

"Well number one is Super Bowl," Owens said. "Aside from that, in order to get to the Super Bowl, we gotta make the playoffs and we will do that, and number one after that, one-A, is win a playoff game. That's where it starts."

The team has now completed four weeks of voluntary organized team activity and a mandatory minicamp. Players say it was a chance to get back on the same page.

"We all are hungry, everyone of us," said wide receiver Sam Hurd, who was at Owens' camp. "There is not a weakness on our team right now. Right now everybody is working together just to try and be better for the team and get us over the hump."

So while the Cowboys feel they made progress during the off season, their focus should be on becoming a stronger team in December and finally winning again in the post season. After all, they haven't won a playoff game since December 1996.

"We're going to see a team that can finish," Hurd said. "We're going to come out the same, come out beat a lot of teams, but we're going to finish this year.

"Now we're going to go and win us a championship."