LIVE: Brian Schottenheimer Press Conference | 7/23/25 | Dallas Cowboys 2025

LIVE: Brian Schottenheimer Press Conference | 7/23/25 | Dallas Cowboys 2025

Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. Go cowboys. Go Cowboys. Heat. Heat. N. Hey, hey, hey. Go cowboys. Go Cowboys. Hey everybody. Go cowboys. Go Cowboys. Hey, hey, hey. Come on, cattle boys. Go Cowboys. Heat. Heat. Go cowboys. Go Cowboys. Heat. Heat. Go cowboys. Go Cowboys. Hey, hey, hey. Is it Wednesday? There you go. Hey, Calvin. Good. Calvin Watkins, Dallas Morning News. Uh, Michael Parsons, what is the plan for him? Because yesterday he indicated he’s got a little back issue and obviously he’s got a contractual thing. How are you going to try to manage all that with him? Yeah, usually we go through the morning uh as soon as I’m done here. I I we go and communicate with all of our players. Uh we look at the practice plan. We see how they’re feeling and uh so as soon as I get done here, I’ll go in there and and get the report on all the guys really. Um see how the morning went, some of the talks and things that we do and I’ll have more information here in a little bit. Philosophy when a guy like him seems to be frustrated with his contract, do you try to get involved in that just to calm him down or just be a sounding board? No. Hey, look, I I’m here to coach the team. Uh I talk all the time about the business side of this thing and the business side gets gets hard at times, but again, I focus on the fact that the guys are here, we’re working. I thought it was a really good start yesterday. It wasn’t a great start. We were a little sloppy with the ball. I didn’t think we finished practice great, but uh my focus right now is just trying to get all these guys together, working together, learning how to practice. Again, the ramp up period’s been uh good for us, but we got to learn how to get ready because in a couple days we’re in pads and the real stuff’s getting ready to tee off. Clarence Hill, DLLS Cowboys. Uh can you um talk about the changes you made from from under Mike McCarthy and how y’all ran practice and the things you’ve done? Yeah, I mean, I won’t compare it to what Mike did. I thought, you know, I really liked and a lot of things we did, you know, under Mike. Uh my philosophy is again get these guys on the field. Um you know we ask them to run around a lot and move around a lot. I think what I try to do is get them on the field, get them off. Uh but they got to give us what we want in terms of effort and and all that. Uh so I would say some of the practices might be a little bit shorter. Uh but we’re trying to get the the numbers, the GPS numbers, the catapult numbers up a little bit higher. Uh but uh uh we’re allowed certain amounts of time and if they’re not putting out, which they always have, then we can make practices up to two and a half hours as we get going. But uh I think these guys like the philosophy, let’s get on, let’s get off. Uh coach, we’ll lay it out there for you. In regards to the offense, seem like there were a lot more pre- snap motions and things. Can you talk about the little things that you’re doing differently with the with the offense than last year? Yeah, you know, I don’t I don’t like to play static. I think, you know, being static as an offense makes it easier on the defense. These defenses, you listen to our defense out there, you know, I mean, Clarence, the way they communicate is elite, you know, and so if we just line up in a certain formation, we kind of let them see things. It’s easy for them to not only make their calls, their closed right or left calls, moving their front, setting their fronts, but actually there’s tendencies. You know, everybody goes into a game defensively with tendencies that in this personnel grouping, in this formation, based on where the back is, hey, it’s I’m making up 70% run and 30% pass. Well, really good linebackers and really good defenses that communicate well, there’s tells. So, when you shift or change the picture or you motion, um, it it it helps disguise that a little bit. And then, of course, when you’re using your motions, they’re very different. Your motions make them adjust on the run. shifts, they generally can what we say reload the front. So, if you shift, the defense can reload, but when you motion, they can’t because you’re snapping the ball on the run. So, um we have those. We like those. Uh right now, we’re playing around with some of the ones that we believe that we’ll use, but uh we change them up pretty regularly. Todd Archer of the ESPN, is Mikey getting treatment for his back? Uh again, when you talk about it right now, I got to go in there and find out what he’s got going on today and how he’s feeling. Um but uh again I’ll have more information about that here in the next little bit. And then you talked how big it’s important to know how to practice. There was a moment yesterday where Sam Williams kind of got into a guy back to back plays and you said some words to it. What happened there? And do you think that was just Sam kind of just being happy to practice again after all of last year? 100%. I mean Sam look journey Sam’s been on over the past 11 months, really 12 months is incredible. uh we understand why he was so excited to be out there, but again, I showed it to the team today, you know, and I told him, I said, “Hey, you’re going to have an incredible year, but we can’t practice like that.” When one guy’s going at a certain tempo that’s prescribed and somebody else gets excited and they go, what happened was you guys probably saw the play. Neville gets knocked back right into the backs, legs, and then there’s bodies on the ground and things like that. Does it happen? Sure. But part of us teaching these guys the discipline of doing it the right way is if they make a mistake, which that’s all it was. It was a mistake. He was excited. You remove them from practice, you explain why. I walked over immediately to him. He was like, “Coach, my bad.” I was just excited. I said, “I get it. Bring that when we’re in pads.” Like, we want to see that in pads. It’s just right now when you’re in helmets and you don’t have the protective shoulders, you know, you’re getting bull rushed. And guys on the ground, it there was way too many guys on the ground. Not even that play because guys get tangled up. And really what it the the number one thing that I don’t like about guys on the ground is we can’t finish. We can’t finish and run and chase the ball and do all the things that we need to from a conditioning standpoint. The athletic being the head coach and the offensive play caller. Obviously you’re probably not thrilled when the ball is on the ground or there’s a there’s an interception, but is there any point in maybe after breaks you as the head coach or like damn I like seeing that? Absolutely. I actually that that I get excited. I think you I’ll put it out there right now. You guys know me. I don’t mind making bold predictions, but I think we’re going to be one of the top takeaway teams in the league on defense. Mattloo and his staff have done a credible job. If you watch their individual and what they do, it’s all what ball drills, but what I saw yesterday was great intentionality. Like again, we can’t can’t, you know, wrap up right now. we’re kind of tagging off, but the intentional punch that these guys do and the focus and you see their eyes on the ball and uh who had one? Um uh TP Troy Pride had a great one on on Bull Princeton Fant yesterday. Um that gets me excited and they’re going to make us better offensively by doing it. So, uh other than the pick six by Marshon Nean, you know, which he’s Dak says he caught him. He said he tackled him. Uh but I don’t know, the film maybe showed that. Uh but uh I’m excited about what this defense is going to do in ter terms of taking the ball away. And why does that excite you? It creates momentum and then we obviously have to go out there and and capitalize on that momentum. But um my expectation is because it’s the number one thing we talk about in our football mantra is we have to win the turnover battle. Yesterday the defense won it, we didn’t. Today we got to respond. Nick Harris, fourstar telegram. Obviously some tense comments between Trayvon Digs in the front office over the past 48 hours. you as a head coach, what kind of communication do you have with him to, you know, give what you expect out of him whenever he does come back from his rehab? Has there been any communication between you? Yeah, again, I just, you know, again, I try to support these guys in terms of where they are with their their life, but more importantly just where they are in their head space. So, I have conversations with all those guys. Everybody on this team I sit down and talk to, and that’s because of the type of person I am. I’m I enjoy the relationship part of it. and uh my conversations with Trayvon in terms of his mindset. You know, he’s he’s he’s fine. And um you know, the business part of it is the business part of it. And so, um again, just I had great conversations with with a number of the guys yesterday. And um the business side of it works out and I know that, but right now the focus is getting this football team ready to go play um not just in the preseason, but looking even to the opening game against Philly. How did you feel about the overall functionality of the first practice yesterday? Any kinks you’re looking to work out before? Uh yeah, I thought the energy was great. I thought that uh again I mentioned too many guys on the ground. I thought it got sloppy late. Uh our conditioning was a little bit less than what I was hoping for. So I think we’ll ramp it up a little bit today. Uh talk to the guys about it. Again, I don’t, you know, I’m very upfront with the guys. I I make it very black and white for them. You know, there’s a standard around here how we run the ball and that wasn’t the standard yesterday. We made some adjustments in practice to make it better. It got better, but um when you stand up here and you talk about being a championship team, you have a standard of practice. I also tell them this, every practice we throw, we try to do it better than anybody in the world’s ever done it. We did not do that yesterday. Maybe we do it today. We’ll see. And that’s the standard every day that we’re trying to reach. Tommy Yish, Dallas Cowboys.com. Saw a little bit of Dak under center too yesterday. All the quarterbacks really under center more. You know, in a league where it seems like shotgun is kind of the formation you typically see offensively. Why is it important to to keep that in and keep that mixed in when a lot of the college guys coming into or are used to that shotgun? Yeah, there’s a number of things. Obviously, the balance of what you can do both gun and under. We we have both. Uh there’s a ton of tells when you’re in the shotgun based off the back’s location. if the back’s offset weak, if the back’s offset strong, there’s tells, uh, Dak feels like he’s back at Mississippi State a little bit, um, playing under center. Uh, but, uh, that’s really the main reason we want to be multiple. You know that we’re going to be multiple. We’re going to be difficult to defend because we’re going to be under center. We’re going to be in the gun. You haven’t seen pistol yet, but pistol’s coming for all of our opponents that are listening to me talk right now. There’ll be some pistol. There’ll be some Wildcat, you know. So, um, again, we’re going to be multiple and we’re going to attack people and, um, our system’s built to do that. Uh, coach, yesterday saw Maris Leaf foul. Looks like he was diagnosing plays much more quickly and much more efficiently than he was in year one. Can you just talk about his progress and just the expectation that you guys have from him, especially not having overshown on the field to, you know, for a good chunk of the season? Yeah, Patrick, I think it’s great. Uh, he had a really good day. He’s obviously incredibly intelligent. I think when you look at the system that we’re putting in place in on defense, the read and react element is really important and Merist obviously has a great feel for that. He’s one of those guys that has the ability to process tells and things like that. So, I think what you saw was accurate. I think it’s him getting more and more comfortable in Flu’s system. And uh like I said yesterday, somebody asked me about Maris. I mean, I think, you know, he’s he’s a guy that’s going to have an incredible second year and really help us, you know, play top-notch defense. Joe White, Dallas Morning News. You talked about Sam Williams excitement. Obviously, when you tear an ACL, it can be tough, you know, that rehabilitation progress. Um, in terms of his motivation and excitement building, what did you see over the last year that kind of has led to how excited he was to get back? The positive nature that Sam has attacked this rehab and this process has blown me away. He’s obviously built like a Greek god, you know, he looks incredible. Um, but I like the way he’s talking. I like the confidence that he has. He said to somebody the other day about, “You haven’t seen anything yet.” So, like, you like that? That that’s that’s the way we’re going to play defense. You know, what he did yesterday in practice is what you’re going to see on Sundays from Sam. But if I was going to point one thing out about Sam, it’s just been the positive attacking nature that he’s had towards his rehab. I talk about a guy that doesn’t miss didn’t miss a day in the spring. He was there every day. And it’s been fun for me going back to his rookie year to watch Sam grow up and realize, man, this is professional football and I can take care of my family for generations. And I mean, he’s he’s on track to have an incredible year. Devonte Turban had some carries again. Had that in mini camp OTA a little bit last year as well. What do you see from him as a running back? And you know, obviously he’s a little bit of a smaller guy, but what makes him viable as a potential running back in your guys’ system? Number one, no fear. That’s the kick return mentality. There was a uh outside zone play we ran yesterday where he literally uh hit the hole and it was like no fair dodge and he was going. So no fear speed. He doesn’t need a lot of space. Um it’s just really getting him to understand the tracks. We have different tracks and courses that the back backs take. Uh so we do some cross training. You guys have heard us talk about that, but um he’s just dynamic, man. I mean, the guy’s guy’s a weapon. And the new kickoff rule is going to help us get him touches, but this is a guy that that, you know, can impact the game. We were actually doing the install today, and we we showed the clip uh of the play against Houston where he caught the little slant and uh you know, no one in the stadium, including Brevin, who was trying to keep up, could could touch him. So, he’s just a guy that uh we want to move all over the field. Sean at Sam Ganon, Fox 4 in Dallas. I just want to know what what you thought about Mike and Trayvon speaking jointly to reporters yesterday. Did you like the fact that they were advocating for each other? And the second part to that question is do you think any of that was a distraction or do you think most of the guys on the squad understand the business side? Yeah, I I think we’re trying to create a family atmosphere. you know, um it’s one of those things where when when I when I look at our guys and I I I get a chance to talk to them a lot together, they’re going to always support one another. And I’m not even talking about Mike and Trayvon. I’m talking about Dak and Joe Milton. Let’s talk about CD and George Pickkins. I mean, like here’s a guy that we get from Pittsburgh that they say is, you know, trouble and all those things. And like from the time he’s been here, he’s been incredible. And why is that? Is it is it me? No. Is it CD? I don’t know. I mean, it’s but it’s the culture that we’re building here. And so, there’s a brotherhood being built here. And so, I I don’t read too much into that. And um I think that uh I’m really excited about the family atmosphere we’ve built here. Bill Jones, CBS Sports Texas. What was it that intrigued you about Kenneth Murray when you acquired him and how has he fit in on this defense? Yeah. uh size, power, ability to tackle, wrap up, get guys to the ground. He’s a very good blitzer. And what I’m finding now that I’m getting to know K9 a little bit better, that’s his nickname, K9, is um the leadership that he possesses. He’s a little quieter. When you get to know him, he comes out of his shell a little bit, but he is uh he’s a grown ass man out there, and he takes charge. He uh makes a lot of the checks. Very smart, you know, wearing the green dot for us in a lot of things we’re doing. And again, I go back to when we played the Chargers a couple years ago, they had him and Kendricks and obviously the two edge pieces with uh Bosa and um uh Khalil Mack. And the most disruptive inside piece on that football team for them was was K9. Jonah, Ryan, uh, you kind of touched on it a moment ago with CD and and George and the relationship that’s kind of blossoming there. Um, can you kind of point to any specific examples over the last few months where you’ve kind of seen that kind of nurturing take effect, whether it’s CD helping him out or or George being what you what others may have said that he was, but him showing that he’s actually this instead. I think I see a ton of things every day. The first thing that caught my eye was when I heard the comment that Sidi made at some softball game or baseball game where he talked about, “Yeah, we we don’t talk about ones and twos.” You know, you look over there, there’s a one. You look over there, there’s a one. And um it’s just a cool relationship. There’s mutual respect. Uh they care about one another, but um you know, CD, like I said yesterday, is in a great spot. He knows he’s a great player. He knows he’s an elite player, but he also knows that he can impact and affect our locker room, our team. Um, and so I think you see a guy that’s that’s that’s grown up and and having fun. George told us yesterday sort of about his personality and how it’s different from his football persona and that some adults are not able to understand that those two are different. Have you seen kind of that any of that take effect in these early days that or at least see that there’s a difference between those two? Um I see the I I I see George in meetings. I see George in practice. I see George in the locker room. Uh I see George shoot basketballs, which he didn’t shoot very good today. Um he’s happy. He’s in a good spot in terms of, you know, I think people that don’t know George need to get to know George because when you get to know George, you’re going to be blown away by the heart that the guy has, the way he loves the game of football, how important it is to him, how important his family is to him, his mom, and um, you know, it’s just a but like it wasn’t just CD and George. Like Joe Milton and George hang out all the time. They stream or whatever that’s called. They play the video games and I don’t know, but they got these amazing setups. I’ve seen it. I’m like, “Oh, you know, they’ve asked me to jump on and sponsor them or pay money to watch.” I’m like, “Hey, I’m good. I’m going to let you guys do that on yourself.” But, um, again, if it’s one guy looking out for one guy, it doesn’t work. It’s 90 guys looking after one another and 90 guys having each other’s back. And that’s what we’re trying to build. Is it finalized yet? No. But we’re making a lot of progress in the terms of guys looking out for one another and protecting one another. Hey, Brian Paton with BC in Dallas. Um, I wanted to ask, you were talking about Sam Williams rehab. I wanted to ask you about Dearbian Overshon and the way that he’s approached his. What have you seen? He posted the good news that it sounds like he could be back this season and the way he has attacked this challenging circumstance that he is facing right now. Yeah. Stud. Um, attack is the right word. He has attacked it from the beginning when you watch him out there working on the bands and whatnot. Um he he pushes everybody he’s training with, whether it’s Dak, whoever’s with him. Um but what’s really cool is you’re you’re going to see over as we get going now as we’re getting into practice him spending more time with Flu because you can’t practice, but you can still watch and you can still learn. And again, you know, Flu is really excited about being able to spend some time with Demo and maybe even have him radio the plays in. Like it’s not just quarterbacks that radio plays in, but you know, he can make the the certain calls, you know, hey, stud 51, whatever. Um, and so I think that’s the next step. So he’s kicking ass in rehab, doing great, whatever, but now it’s about you can still lead from the sideline and you can still be the green dot or whatever it is by, you know, spending time and Flu is all excited about doing that, which I think would be great for not just their relationship, but for Demo being locked into what we’re trying to do defensively. Mike Ducy, Fox 4. What can Micah bring to this process even if he’s not fully practicing? Andy, did you see a typical type of Micah enthusiasm on the field yesterday? Yeah, it’s it’s same thing. You know, again, when you when you talk about being here and supporting your teammates, I just answered the question about being a family. And um you know, I think that’s what all the guys are trying to do. And it’s it’s it’s not just Micah, it’s not just Dak, it’s all the players. I think, you know, I’d be, you know, remiss if I didn’t mention mention like Tyler Booker, you know, some of the the things that he did yesterday in terms of being a great teammate and some of the leadership stuff that showed up like we’ve got the right kind of guys and and that was an important part, you know, Deuce, when you talk about what we were trying to build in the draft is let’s go get some great football players, but guys that also have the right makeup and that they love and care about football, their family, and and I think we’ve done that. Mike Hill TV. Uh my Sanders complimented you by saying you’re the kind of guy that no matter what the issue is, he feels comfortable coming to you to discuss it. And although he didn’t say that was that was not the experience where he’s been, he kind of hinted that you are the guy that he could come to. Is that something you laid out and something you tried to make them guys believe? Yeah. And number one, it’s a great compliment from Miles. Guy I really respect. You know, look, hey, I’m an open door policy guy, man. I tell these guys all the time, I I’ve heard a lot in my career. I’ve said a lot in my career. There’s nothing you can say to me that I’m not going to understand all the time, but I’m going to listen. I’m going to give you some feedback, whether it’s about life, I’m a father, I’m a husband. Um, you know, yeah, it makes me feel great. But I think again that goes back to the fact that, you know, I don’t talk to these guys just about X’s and O’s when we’re outside the meeting or we’re out there on the stretch line. Like it’s usually not about football. It’s about life. It’s about his love for passion or fa fashion, you know. It’s about the things that these guys like to do off the field. And uh that’s not for everybody. You know, that’s not for every coach. And that’s fine with that. You guys, I say it all the time. I’m going to be who I am because when it works, I’ll be able to say, “Hey, I did it my way. Uh Brad Sham, Cowboys Radio 1053, The Fan. Uh you mentioned Thomas yesterday, Nate Thomas. What about him has caught your eye from the spring? How competitive do you think he will be as they go forward? Yeah, another young man, massive, worked his ass off getting back. Uh another guy had a great spring, worked incredibly hard, was here all the time. We’re moving him around, Brad. He’s playing multiple spots. He looks really good right now at tackle if I’m being honest with you. He’s a big guy. He’s hard to get around. Um so I love that flexibility that he brings. But again, um pads come on, you know, Sunday and so we’ll find out about a lot of these guys and uh but he’s done great. And I think the mental side of it has been at a different level which normally is for guys coming from their rookie year to the second year. they they understand the system and even with some of the changes that we’ve made, he’s been um really really good and great relationship between him and Clayton and Connor Riley. I think that’s important as well. All righty. Thanks, guys. Go Cowboys.

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