SAN ANTONIO -- Twelve years into a brilliant career, one in which Darren Woodson's resume includes more tackles than anyone else in club annals, five Pro Bowl appearances and three Super Bowl rings, the standout strong safety is one of the most recognizable and respected players on the Dallas Cowboys roster.

He is one of few remaining links to the halcyon days of "America's Team." Has actually worked now for five of the six head coaches in franchise history. And owns a perspective that is virtually unique on a roster where only about half the players on the Alamodome playing surface for Saturday morning's first training camp practice had earned the right to wear the trademark Cowboys star on the side of their helmets.

But there was Woodson on Friday night, being called out by a head coach he outnumbers in Super Bowl rings, 3-2, and cautioned in front of assembled teammates in a full-squad meeting that he had better not take his paycheck for granted. And there was "Woody" on Saturday morning, with a thin strip of athletic tape bearing his surname in black marker, stretched across the front of his helmet, as if he were some callow rookie.

	Bill Parcells is looking to teach the young Cowboys how to win.

Yeah, the 'Boys are back in town. But, more significantly, Bill Parcells is back again in the NFL. And for a Cowboys team that has taken symmetry to a disastrous extreme, with three consecutive finishes of 5-11, that means everyone, yeah, even Darren Woodson, is subject to scrutiny by a coach with few preconceived notions and even fewer loyalties to the charges now under his stewardship.

Which, according to Woodson and some other veterans, isn't such a bad thing.

"Whatever you've done here in the past, well, you didn't do it for him," said Woodson, following the first on-field practice of Camp Tuna. "He might respect you if you have played against him, or he knows a little bit about you from being in the league for such a long time, you know? But now that he is the boss, the slate is wiped clean, and every guy here goes to square one, in a sense. But you know what? We need a shakeup around here, because things had gotten a little too loose, football-wise."

So in the latest incarnation of The Tuna, with the strange marriage of convenience that has brought together Parcells and hands-on owner Jerry Jones, will the talent-challenged Cowboys actually be star-kissed or star-crossed in 2003?

It's way too early to answer that question, although, with what appears to be a lack of playmakers, the initial assessment is that progress will come in incremental steps. But this much is certain: Dallas will be among the league's best-coached teams and Parcells will conjure up a way to nudge the once imperious franchise back toward respectability.

And, of course, there is this: No matter what happens, Parcells, although certainly not by his choice, will supersede every other personality on the team. While he acknowledged following Saturday's opening practice that his eyes were all over the place, checking on every detail imaginable (right down to the video director), what Parcells realizes is that the eyes of the NFL are likewise focused on him.

He is, by the nature of the beast, a lightning rod. That may be a positive, in that a young Cowboys team might be well-served to have someone handling the pressure of enhanced expectations now. The reality is that the Cowboys' victory total of the past three years was earned. But in Texas, where everything is bigger, realism is often overshadowed by contrived optimism. And so, while the Parcells track record demonstrates that the great leap forward doesn't occur until his second season on the job, there is a false sense that the franchise's newest savior can bring immediate salvation.

To which Dave Meggett, a former Parcells player who is serving in camp as a coaching assistant under the league's minority fellowship initiative, reacted: "Uh, let's just say there is work to be done here."

The upside is that Parcells will never shirk the heavy lifting and that, in returning to the league after a three-season hiatus, he came back with his eyes wide open. He noted to Jones during their pre-hire interviews, the Dallas owner said, that he comprehends the importance of the Cowboys in the league's big picture and fully understands the history of the high-profile franchise.

"As he said, 'This isn't playing the lounge, it's moving up to the big room,' " recalled Jones of one of their early conversations.

It was an apropos analogy, since Parcells figures to be the opening act, the headliner, and the encore, all rolled into one. The seemingly incongruous coupling with Jones, just a few years after a real-life divorce that probably scuttled his anticipated return to the NFL with the Tampa Bay Bucs in 2002, is still in the honeymoon stages. But there seems to be a mutual respect for the demarcation of duties guidelines to which each man agreed and, while Parcells has forfeited some of the autonomy with which he often operated in past stops, there has been no public head-butting to this point.

	“	He makes you, whether it's out of fear or respect or whatever, want to please him. You don't ever want to let your guard down in front of him.”
		—WR Joey Galloway, on coach Bill Parcells

In fact, even as Parcells allowed on Saturday that he still thinks like a general manager, he insisted that coaching is his truest passion. And in subtle ways, because there has yet to be a legitimate rant and Parcells orchestrated the weekend sessions with relative reserve, that certainly seems the case.

Whatever flaws of indecision might exist, no matter that some scribes who have covered him in the past came away thinking that Parcells' biggest priority was Parcells himself, the guy has few peers once he steps on the field. He commands respect because he has been there, done that, been there and done it well. Wide receiver Joey Galloway noted on Saturday that he was extra precise in everything he did during practice because, even for a nine-year veteran, he didn't want to be the first player singled out for criticism.

"You kind of (seek) out his validation," Galloway said. "That might sound crazy coming from a veteran. But he makes you, whether it's out of fear or respect or whatever, want to please him. You don't ever want to let your guard down in front of him."

Parcells himself rarely drops his guard and, while The Tuna is hardly canned in assessing players -- in fact, he tends more toward candor, sometimes brutally so -- the coach tends to fall back on the same bromides. Or he creates new ones to fit the circumstance. Gauging the quarterback competition between youngsters Chad Hutchinson and Quincy Carter has generated the oft-offered term "creating an environment" in which they can succeed.

There are occasions, however, in which Parcells permits some insight into his psyche, some hints of melancholia that reflect a single-minded purpose. On Saturday, there were actually a few of them, as when Parcells conceded that, even during his hiatus, he stayed on top of the game.

"I don't think there will ever be a time, even after I've left the game for good," Parcells said, "when I won't care. I don't think it will ever get to the point where I just think, 'OK, it's football season, and I don't have any interest in that.' … Once you leave football, it's like you were never there. Now that I'm back, it's like I was never gone."

There is, to be sure, a passion for the game that is more like a crucible for Parcells. It was, along with the chance to land his first-ever head coaching hire with previous experience in running an NFL program, part of what attracted Jones to Parcells in the first place. Funny but, in discussing The Tuna, the Cowboys owner actually turned Great White.

"When I heard he was interested in coaching again," Jones related, "I was on him like a shark on chum."

There figures to be some blood in the water this year, some choppy surf for The Tuna, a lot of times when things will not go swimmingly. But even the veterans like Woodson, reduced to seeming minnows in the new Dallas food chain, realize the opportunity for success that Parcells brings with him.

"He may not know the names of everyone around here yet," Woodson said, "but everyone here knows who he is. He's got our attention and guys realize he can make us better. He walks into a room, everyone sits up a little bit straighter, you know? He's like that old (E.F. Hutton) commercial. He speaks and you listen. The one thing that's been instant is the respect he's gotten already."

Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.