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DALLAS (105.3 THE FAN) - The Dallas Cowboys believe they're about to field 'one of the better' teams they've had in years and that it's 'coming together for us,' COO Stephen Jones says.

"I do believe it's all coming together for us," Jones said at Tuesday's opening of the Dallas Cowboys Club at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. "It's all about the production on the field. We obviously feel like we got a lot accomplished. Whether we did or not remains to be seen, and it'll all be in whether we have a successful season. We theoretically got done what we felt like we needed to do to make our team better and take the next step. Now we'll see if it happens."

Jones believes there are three keys points to being at least as good as Dallas was a year ago, when it fell a win short of the NFC Championship Game:

1.  The avoidance of distractions - mostly in the form of the new contract given Dez Bryant.

"Obviously, your head coach, Jason Garrett, the last four to five years has done a good job minimizing the effect that it has on the team,'' Jones said. "But distractions are distractions. They're talked about. They're put in front of players. They're put in front of coaches. They're put in front of us."

2. Talent and leadership. 

"We've got great leadership on this team,'' Jones said. "I've always thought chemistry is a hard thing to find, the winning chemistry. Obviously, there's 31 other teams who pay their guys pretty similar amounts in terms of the salary cap, and it's just getting your chemistry right.

"I think last year we found something special. We've got to keep that. We've got the right leadership group to bring that to the table. We've just got to work hard from Day 1. We got to take care of each other, work hard, stay healthy, and I think good things are going to happen for this group of men."

3. Avoiding the mistake of thinking last year automatically carries over to this year.

"You can't just pick up where you left off,'' Jones said. "You have to start from scratch. Everybody will have to be accountable. It will have a different set of faces out there. There will be new faces. Everybody will have to work harder."

"I fully expect the players to take that message and it won't effect them whether they think people think they'll be good or they think we're going to be .500 or at the bottom," said Jones. "I think our guys are up for the challenge … (and) the focus can be where it needs to be which is on the field getting better obviously working towards the goal of winning a championship.''

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