It’s only a matter of hours before the Cowboys face the Broncos in their second preseason game. And ain’t it good to have some football to watch? With a new head coach, a new defense, a new offense, and new players, there are a ton of questions about this team. We won’t get all the answers in this preseason game. In fact, we probably won’t get any answers in this preseason game. Answers to the biggest questions won’t come until the season starts. But we can get a glimmer of what those answers might be.

Here are some of the questions:

How good will this attacking defense be?

Will DeMarcus Ware get more sacks than Shawn Merriman?

Will the corners lining up on the outside of the receivers lead to Newman and Henry getting more interceptions?

Will the addition of Ken Hamlin shore up our weakness to the deep ball?

Will Roy return to the playmaker he was in his first years?

Will Anthony Spencer live up to his first-round potential?

Will Marcus Spears and Chris Canty be improved under the new defense?

What about Bobby Carpenter? Will he see significant playing time? Will he have a breakout year, or is he going to be a dud?

Oh, and there’s some questions on offense too.

Will Tony Romo play like the guy in his first few starts, or in his last few starts? (You knew that one would be here!)

Will Terrell Owens’ personality explode? Or will his stats explode?

Will Julius Jones play more like the sky-high-potential rookie or the robot-runner we saw last year?

Will we see more of Marion Barber III in the offense?

Will we see more of Tyson Thompson?

Will Jason Witten go to his fourth consecutive Pro Bowl?

Will Leonard Davis become a dominant guard?

Will Marc Columbo continue to improve at tackle?

How much will we see of Isaiah Stanback? Will he fully recover from his injury? Can he make the transition to wide receiver?

Who is going to be our kicker?

And let’s not forget the most important question for offense:

How good is Jason Garrett?

Because, let’s face it, a lot of our season is going to be resting on that single question. Wade Phillips is good. Which is to say, the defense is good. If the defense fails, it won’t be because of Phillips coaching. In fact, the only way I see it failing is injury. (And injury could be the bane of any team’s existence — and is also something that could happen to any team.)

But Garrett takes over the offense after only a couple of years in coaching. Yes, he comes from a football-mad family. Yes, he played for many, many years. Yes, he’s probably got mad skills at Madden and is already on the leaderboard of Madden 2008. (Okay, we hope that isn’t true! Jason, get off the x-box and get back to cooking up new ways to burn defenses with Owens, Glenn, Crayton, Witten, Fasano, Jones and Barber! We know the new Madden has playmakers in it, but you have real-life playmakers to play with!)

How good is he?

That’s the question, and it won’t be answered in preseason. Heck, we’ll barely have any answers to what kind of offense we are going to run. Yes, it will most likely be similar to Norv Turner’s offense. But Jason Garrett is not Norv Turner. He’s going to put his own wrinkles into the scheme. And, if he’s as good as we all hope he is, he might be putting a lot of wrinkles into the scheme.

Most of these questions won’t be answered tonight, though. Most of them won’t be answered until we are well into the season. Heck, some of them might not be answered until December and January. After all, we thought our defense was pretty good last year until we got into December and New Orleans put the hurt on us.

We aren’t going to get the final answers to many of these questions until well into the season, but we are going to start getting the answers tonight.

What’s your biggest question?