LIVE: Brian Schottenheimer Press Conference | 8/05/25 | Dallas Cowboys 2025

LIVE: Brian Schottenheimer Press Conference | 8/05/25 | Dallas Cowboys 2025

Heat. Heat. Hey, heat. Hey. Go kill boys. Go Cowboys. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Go cowboys. Go Cowboys. How we Oh. Oh, sorry, Colin. Let me turn my hat around. Yeah. Calvin Watkins, Dallas Morning News. Saw Joe Milton didn’t finish practice. What happened to him? Yeah, hit his thumb. Uh, got it clipped on a helmet. Uh, trainers think he’s fine. He had pretty good strength in it, but just with the game coming up in a couple days, we just want to be smart with it. So, uh, do more testing, but I think he’s fine. Say fine as of right now, or is it just like we got we need more before you can determine about No, again, they they feel really good about it. I’ll get more information later today. But he he felt like he could go back in. It was more of a precautionary thing where like he used up a lot of his velocity on that 75 yard bomb and we’re like, I think we’ll uh just sit him out for a little while. Thoughts overall on the scrimmage? I know it was hard for you to be on both both fields, but just your thoughts on Yeah, I thought it was great work. I mean, I told you guys yesterday, part of the reason why you do this is because of the scheme looks that you get. Like, we need different looks. We need the three four looks. We needed some of the things that Chris Schul and his staff do and they present. And quite honestly, they g they gave us some fits and we had some communication errors and, you know, run game wasn’t great on offense. You know, some of the run through linebackers, you know, uh we got to do a better job against that. But, uh we got a bunch of work and bunch of different looks. And so, like anything, we’ll go watch the film here in a little bit, and usually it’s not as bad or as good. Uh, I think, you know, a couple of the guys stepped up, made some big plays, but there’s always there’s always things to learn from, but don’t lose sight of why we do this. We do this for that exact reason, to get looks that we haven’t seen. And um different blitzes and and all that stuff. And then, of course, you know, I didn’t see any of the defense. You’re in the back. Damn it. Anyway, um, you want to sit on the stage? you normally do. Okay. But uh is there anything that you focused on? You know, you talked about the run offense and things like that and certainly we look we were paying attention to Nate Thomas once against a guy like Vers for the first time. Can you talk about those things? How did Nate look? Yeah, I thought again, you know, Vers a great player number one. He’s a terrific player and uh he certainly is going to make his plays. He made a few plays. I think a couple of the plays were on like games and things, but I thought Nate battled. I thought there was some good things that he did. And again, those those those reps, Clarence, are just priceless because the guys he goes against every day, Sam Williams and Donovan and Dante, they’re just different different looks and different body types. And um but overall, I thought it was a good day. You know, again, I’m not going to say we played great. We didn’t. I thought it was solid. Uh but, you know, we’ll go and make the corrections and uh great start for us getting ready to play these guys here in a couple days. Brian Conn was the most Will Greers got how do you think he did and you know what kind of camp I guess yeah again Will’s been incredible in terms of just the way he’s handled this whole situation understanding that you know Joe’s going to get you know so much work and just as we try to develop him I thought he did a really good job the two-minute was unfortunate at the end he you know he kind of got stuck and we were we didn’t block something well they beat us on a little game and he kind of tried to force it got intercepted uh but Will’s a constant pro man and uh you know he’s always going to be ready same thing we weren’t playing having him get, you know, many reps at all the day. That was communicated to him, as you guys know, we like to always do. And but that’s what happens. That’s football. So, you get forced into it. And I thought he did some some nice things and definitely uh understands our scheme so well. With the athletic, if you could just fix one thing about the run game today, what would it be? Uh the runthroughs, handling run through linebackers. So, what happens when you’re double teaming people, you know, John, what happens is the linebackers, they have to make a decision. And so the linebacks were playing fast and downhill and they were fitting their gaps. It’s all based on how you try to build a wall on defense and we just got to play with our eyes up a little bit better. We got fit on the double teams but we didn’t come off to the second level. So there’s too much color at the point of attack. And then Turpin, how much do you think that he has kind of still in his bag to show offensively compared to like what he’s shown up to this point in his NFL career? Well, we see I mean a lot. you know, we see it every day, so we’re not surprised by it. But guy’s just a dynamic weapon and, you know, the things he can do, you know, running and catching and the quickness and the agility that he has is just different, you know, and, you know, I think we feel like we’ve got a much better sense for how we’re using him. And, um, late in practice today, we kind of moved him and moved Sidi outside and Turpp went inside and those guys are a little bit interchangeable, but um, yeah, he’s uh, I think he’s going to have a fabulous year. I really I really do in every in every facet. Tommy Tommyboy.com. I know you’re keeping it fairly vanilla, but your first time with CD and Pickkins against a defense that’s not your own. What did you make of what they did as a tandem? Uh you see the problems that they create. You know, I think they both made some really good plays. You know, you see their ability to, you know, separate contested balls and things like that. Um, again, you know, we we’re not game planning. We’re literally being pretty vanilla. Um, you know, but those guys, you don’t have to do much to get them open. And, uh, you know, I think there was a lot of flags thrown today, you know. So, we’ll go look at those. There’s some, well, and we told them, we told the officials, hey, that some of the rules emphasis with alignments and things like that, we want you to, you know, throw the flags, keep track so we can talk to our guys and teach them because more than likely that’s the way they’re going to call the preseason games. But, uh, specifically those two guys, I think they just feed off each other and, um, you know, it shows you that, uh, when you have one on one side, one on the other, it’s, uh, it’s pretty daunting for a defense. Garrett Podell, CBS Sports. Brian, you talked about kind of the run offense wanting to be kind of your identity. It kind of seemed like the run opened up a little bit more after some passing success. Do you feel like maybe with, like you were just talking about Lamb and Pickkins, maybe building through the pass then getting to the run identitywise for you guys offensively. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think at the end of the day, I feel like this, Garrett. I mean, you know, you need to be able to run the ball when they know you’re going to run it. And you need to be able to throw it when they know you have to throw it. And I thought we had a great two-minute drive there at the end with the ones. That was really good. And, um, you know, I think those guys certainly help you. Why do they help you? Because, you know, if teams want to play us, you know, a eight-man front or a sevenman front, which means one high defense, you guys all know that. Um, then those guys are on the outside one-on-one and, you know, you feel really good about those two guys ability to win their matchups one-on-one. And, um, again, we could potentially get some light boxes because of the threat that we have on the outside. Joe, Dallas, you kind of touched on a little bit, but the chance to go against these guys, then watch film, and then get a chance to maybe apply some lessons learned. How much of an opportunity is that? It’s great. You know, again, it’s great. You know, we play these guys, they’re a three- four defense. We play Baltimore. They’re a three- four defense. Um, so you get a couple of it back to back. Uh, everybody plays different nickel packages, but like these guys have different blitzes that, you know, we haven’t seen. And you don’t know some of the numbers. You know, we haven’t game plan. We don’t, you know, I can’t tell you, you know, who number 47 is for them. I have no idea. So, like those present problems for you, which we’ll certainly have um a better idea who we’re going against on game day. But today, it was more about us and it was just, hey, let’s see what we do. Throw the ball out there and and see what happens. did some good things, need to do some things better. How much was scripted today? How much was kind of adjustment? Uh, I think we scripted three periods and we had three calls. So, it was basically half and half. NBC Dallas. Can you speak to Mazy’s health and did you get a chance to pay attention at all? And what did you see? Uh, I did not. Uh, I know that, you know, we’re not concerned about Mazy. He got some tests run, but again wasn’t concerned, but again, I can’t speak, you know, to what he did over there today. We’ll go watch the film here tonight, but we’re not overly concerned about it. The um when you were going through your process talking about how you wanted the full operation to run practice, uh building an ecosystem together, um did you lean on anything that he had previously experienced or as a head coach or did you lean on anything that he wish he would have known when he first started the job? Yeah, first of all, Foose is amazing. I mean, he’s got great insight for me. You know, he’s been a head coach. He’s been a head coach that was the play caller, right? So, there’s incredible, you know, knowledge that he has there. Of course, there’s things that he’s like, “Hey, I wish I would have done this. I wish I would have done that.” You know, I go back to the start when we were doing the staff. I mean, just the nightly meetings, him and I watching film and talking through philosophy and talking through, you know, how as a coach, your resume is really what the film looks like. So, you turn the film on. But, you know, some of the, you know, just the the philosophical things that we’ve talked about, there really wasn’t, you know, a ton of things for us to iron out. You know, he and I see the game very, uh, similarly. And, uh, the intensity and the style of his defense is great. You know, I don’t know if we created any turnovers today or not on defense. Um, but, um, because of the two separate fields, but, uh, I love having him. He’s a hell of a coach and, uh, again, a guy that I lean on quite a bit. you guys were talking that you felt his experience level having done this and and being high caliber of defensive player take anything off your plate that you can funnel into other areas and spending your energy in other areas? No, I mean not at this at this moment. Again, I you know I don’t have to go in the defensive room that often. I’m in there some. Uh I know it’s in good hands. It’s a veteran staff. Andre Curtis, David Overre, a lot of these guys have been with them. White cotton. Um I’ll watch it with them, you know, tonight obviously. But, uh, no, I mean, you know, I have great, you know, confidence in Matt. He communicates well to me and, uh, like I said, we see the game the same way. So, that’s that’s important. Mich, how did it feel for you being out there calling plays um, again, and then for the first time for your team? Yeah. Uh, it was fun. It’s always fun. You know, you you get a chance to do this and you’ve done it for a long time, but um, you get just kind of lost in the moment, you know, like, okay, hey, what down distance is it? Okay. what’s the situation? Okay, who’s in the game? Um but uh look, at the end of the day, it’s um you know, it’s something that you you think about when you get the job and you think about doing it, but when you’re out there doing it, you just instincts take over and you just call the game. And um you know, again, I think I had some plays I like, some I didn’t. Uh but again, at the end of the day, I wanted to see if we could, you know, get physical late and I thought we did that in some of the red zone stuff. But the film will come to life and tell me more uh when I get a chance to watch it. Fox Sports. Uh coach wanted to circle back to what was your evaluation of how he played in the red zone and how will continue to evolve as you kind of put together the identity of the offense. Yeah. Uh you know he u he caught two touchdowns. One I think you know they called OPI. The other one I couldn’t tell was a bang bang play. You know the defender came up with the ball. But, you know, again, the matchup, the size, the the ability for him to separate when he’s covered, you know, is is really impressive. And again, the more he and Dax spend time together doing things like that, he’s a guy that you have to lean a safety over there. I mean, you have to I mean, he’s he’s too dangerous. And so, um, you know, again, just his catch radius, his length is it’s almost second to none. I mean, he just, you know, he came down with one, we ran a little deep curl and the receiver, the DB was all over, but he’s just he’s a big man. And so, um, again, he just gets more and more confident every day in the things that we’re doing, the system and the scheme. And I think that’s important because again, we want to make sure we can move CD around, put him in different spots, and uh, with what GP’s shown, I think that’s not going to be a problem at all. Jeff Cole with Fox 4. Coach, what did you think of Dak’s day and just overall at this point in camp? What do you feel about where he’s at? Yeah, again, I love Dak. I love what he’s doing. I think, you know, there was one hot that he missed that I know he was sick about. They got us on a um on a pretty good pressure off the backside, but uh I thought he did a good job. You know, he was uh you know, checking the ball down, taking what they gave us. We threw a ton of situations at him in terms of normal DND, back on track, things like that. Um but I thought it was a good day. You know, I thought he uh you know, did a nice job. The tempo was good, which is always important to us. And again, I’m going to say it again. And I mean, we’re we’re playing pretty vanilla and we’re just focusing on execution and can we run block? Can we get open? Can we pass block? And uh that’s the way the preseason’s going to go. Something different about him that you’re seeing in this camp that you like compared to maybe last year. I just think the footwork stuff that he’s doing, some of the things he’s doing from a footwork standpoint. He’s really bought into some of the training and things that we’re teaching with some of the different drops and things like that. Steve Shimco’s done a great job working with him on that. But, um, you know, he just he’s so fun to coach because he’s always always wanting to look for an edge and he’s always willing to try anything. All right. Thank you guys. Tower.

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