FORT WORTH, Texas — Twelve angry young men will gather Friday at Valley Ranch, or at least I'm assuming there will be anger, although maybe not for exactly the right reasons.

We can all agree the Cowboys need some more angry football players on Sundays in the fall and winter. It is not exactly considered a mean team.

And these incoming dozen this weekend, all members of the new Cowboys draft class, should be arriving in Irving with large chips perched atop shoulders.

Except this anger will be more personal than anything else.

Say hello, for rookie minicamp, to the Cowboys trash class of '09.

Trash class?

Who sez?

Well, that's not my extremely limited expertise talking. Out of those 12 players, I had seen four play the college game on a regular basis. And only four, all with Texas-based backgrounds.

How the heck would I know about Jason Williams out of Western Illinois and Robert Brewster from Ball State? How the heck would you know?

But like bluebonnets on a Texas hillside in the springtime, NFL draft gurus, nationally and locally, suddenly sprout every April. The jock kingdom Web sites became draft guru breeding grounds.

And when the "grades" came out this week for the Cowboys' dozen choices, this class was rated as trash.

Then there's also Jerry Jones, who loves those TV cameras during draft time, doing himself, his team and certainly his scouts, no favors by misspeaking repeatedly last weekend.

In many words, his basic description of this class came down to two items:

(1) Bottom-line cost cutting.

(2) Special teams' fodder.

OK, what if Jerry didn't misspeak? What if that's the truth?

You still don't publicly say "that". Not the owner-GM. Allow the media, the fans and the gurus to figure it out on their own. Jerry himself gave the gurus all the ammo they needed for "trash class."

Admittedly, if you call around the NFL and ask about the Cowboys' draft, you hear things like "what the hell" and "that didn't make sense."

And at one point Sunday afternoon, maybe about the time the Cowboys were taking a kicker in the fifth round, I actually had a brief thought that Jerry was sending us this message:

He was blowing off the draft because a deal was coming down with Arizona for Anquan Boldin.

OK, stupid me. But it would have made more sense than what the gurus were telling us about the players the Cowboys were taking.

By midweek, however, a little more positive picture emerged.

I say "positive" because of faith, based on the draft success a year ago, that personnel director Tom Ciskowski and his scouts were NOT taking players for cost cutting and special teams' gunners.

Around the league, opinions definitely vary on Jason Williams as a linebacker who could start in the future, but enough other teams did like him to think there's hope.

Another linebacker, Victor Butler from Oregon State, also had support from other teams, as did a couple of DBs, DeAngelo Smith of Cincinnati and Michael Hamlin of Clemson. If Mike Mickens, also of Cincinnati, turns up healthy, he could be a seventh-round steal in the secondary.

Should the Cowboys get two eventual starters out of this draft, it's a success. The problem is, of course, the impact won't happen soon. Without a first-round pick, and then Jones trading out of the second round, it left little chance for an immediate impact.

If there's a major disappointment, it appears the decision not to trade up for Oregon center Max Unger in the second round (he went 49th overall to Seattle, two ahead of where the Cowboys were picking) caused the most debate and second-guessing at Valley Ranch.

Also, watch how Oklahoma offensive tackle Phil Loadholt eventually works out with the Vikings. Matt Mosley of ESPN.com reported from New York on draft day that the Cowboys had Loadholt's name on the draft card at 51, then decided to trade down. Loadholt went two picks later.

One other interesting item from draft weekend was the Cowboys placing a high value on "character players."

It's part of the new, or renewed, plan to keep the locker room toxic free.

I asked one guy about these incoming 12, and his answer was, "character-wise, it's a home run, right there with the Wares and the Wittens."

So "trash class" is about the talent level, as graded by the gurus.

And that's why it should be an angry dozen showing up at Valley Ranch on Friday.