Brian Schottenheimer: Postgame Preseason Week 2 #BALvsDAL | Dallas Cowboys 2025

Brian Schottenheimer: Postgame Preseason Week 2 #BALvsDAL | Dallas Cowboys 2025

How’s everybody doing? Good. Good. Good. Calvin Watkins, Dallas Morning News. Uh, how concerned are you about Joe Milton right now? I wouldn’t say I’m concerned. I mean, you know, again, he uh, you know, we didn’t get into rhythm offensively. You know, it’s, you know, what we did in the first half against the Rams. You know, I think, uh, came out with a little bit of a different mindset in terms of trying to run the ball. the you know they got him they fooled him a little bit on the the safety on the third down there. We’re trying to get the ball of his hand fast and they showed down one side Calvin and brought the blitz from the other side and it just spooked him and uh he’s got to try to throw that ball away. His feet were kind of talking to him but um it wasn’t just Joe. I mean we got to be able to run the ball better. Got to take care of the football. Um you know he he he throws the ball with a lot of tempo. I thought Hunter had a ball he could have made a catch on the over. And again you hit a couple of those things and it gets you going. you know, sometimes, you know, you need somebody to help you make a play. And I don’t think we did a great job of that. I just told the guys, I said, “Hey, the bottom line is this. You know, we’re not going to say that that’s just a preseason game. We’re not just going to say, “Oh, we’ll be fine.” You know, we’re going to we’re going to look at it because the fact that, you know, we really lost both halves. That is something that that, you know, we have to get corrected. There’s too many good football players, too many good coaches um for us to perform the way that we did tonight. So, we’ll look at the film. We’ll find out the things that we did well. Uh there’ll certainly be a ton of corrections that we have to make and uh we’ll dive in first thing in the morning. Before we broke camp, you said I don’t have a backup after seeing Joe for two weeks and you got one left. Do you still feel that way or Yeah. Again, I feel like I don’t have to decide anything today. You know, we uh um going to keep letting these guys practice. I just told the guys get ready because, you know, the couple practices this week are going to be really physical and um we have to. But it’s like all these position battles, we don’t have to decide anything. Now, I think um you know, like with the receivers, we were trying to get a good look at a couple of those guys that were fighting for for those spots and I thought a couple guys stepped up and did a nice job. I thought, you know, Floreno had a couple nice catches. Mingo made a great catch down the boundary and then, you know, I felt like we kind of shot ourselves in the foot with penalties when we would get some momentum and so we got to be we got to be cleaner. Clarence Hill DLS Cowboys uh comes and you got off to a slow start again and that’s something you’re not doing as well. It’s not just not having plays but you’re not getting first downs which contributes that. And why are you not concerned with the backup quarterback Joe Milton’s play whatever when opposite side of the field you got a guy Cooper Rush who’s won games here and it shows you what you want in the back of quarterback. Do you know these guys can win games? Something had to happen to Dak Prescott. Yeah, I think we have I think we have to believe that. I think we do believe that. You know, I think again when you put a game plan together for these guys and you know, um whether you’re playing with Joe or you’re playing with Will, you know, you’re going to have a plan of how you want to play. Hey, look, Cooper Rush has played in this league for a long time. You know, what he did tonight, it didn’t surprise anybody in the first half. I mean, I’ve seen him do that for the last three years. And so, Joe Milton’s in year two, you know, and so again, I’m I’m I’m not panicked. Again, it’s not just them. It’s us as coaches. It’s the other players. It’s all that. Um, the biggest thing for me is again we just, you know, we have to balance up the time of possession. You know, we had the defense out there for over 40 minutes. That’s too long. Why is that? Well, we weren’t very good on third down and we got to be better on third down. And they had a couple wrinkles in the blitz game that we need to handle a little bit better, but for the most part, it’s just really us executing or tonight not executing. When you said that he should have thrown the you talking about the interception or you talking about the the sack uh safety? Um, ask it again. When you said he should have thrown it away. Yeah. So, we were backed up. We had the negative play. So, we called a quick quick answer. They showed down and his feet were kind of he was holding on the slant. We’re trying to throw a little flat slant combination and they had two free runners. So, that was on him. Should have thrown away. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s Yeah. And and again, like every opportunity you get when he comes over, you know, you’re just you’re teaching. You’re coaching, you know, and you’re saying, “Hey, they showed down. They brought the pressure over here.” And, you know, you’re not going to yell and you’re not going to scream. You’re going to just teach. And the thing I love about Joe is when you talk to him, he’s like, “You’re right. You’re right. You know, they got us with a cover zero, you know, late in the game and he was trying to do right and um made a call and um there’s a couple of things he probably, you know, could have done a little different.” Brian Todd Archer with the ESPN. You’ve said you want to be a physical team on both sides of the ball. Where do you think you guys I know your regulars haven’t played, but through two weeks, how would you assess what you’ve seen up front from your offensive and defensive line? Yeah, I mean I just address that with the guys. I mean, we’re going to have some physical practice this week, Todd. You know, we we need to we need to play more physical. I know we’re more physical than that. Um, again, how do you do that? Well, you do that by having padded practices and you do that by having your run drills and things like that. And, you know, we’re not we’re not going to change uh who we are. Um, we’re not going to, you know, sit there and say, “Okay, hey, well, you know, we’re, you know, we’re not, you know, a physical team.” I’m not ready to say that right now. I don’t I don’t think that that’s the answer. I think we’re going to be a physical team and I think we’ll we’ll show that, but we have to practice that way. We have to have those in in in our practices and um then bring it into the games. Second quarter, fourth and one. Um you have BB and Booker in there, guys who will be starters for you, yet you ran to the left to behind your, you know, Nate Thomas who makes Yeah, that ball’s supposed to cut back. It’s an inside zone run play that’s actually supposed to cut back behind the the the B block of uh of book and those guys. We got a little bit of penetration on the front side there. They were zeroed out. They were cover zero. U but uh yeah, the ball is supposed to cut back behind those guys. It’s an inside zone play that should wrap back where you thought. I know it’s a probably have to look at some of the tape, but Booker’s play overall again I didn’t notice him as hard with some of the interior linemen. You guys probably saw it better better than I did. Um, but I will say I felt like some of the young guys played really well. I thought Shamar James played really, really well. I noticed him. I think, you know, like you said, Book, you know, played good. Uh, I thought Deone, who’s really not a young player. He seemed like he was flying all over the place. So, there’s always positives that come from this. And, uh, that’s why I told the guys, I said, you know, look, it’s, uh, it’s not good when you lose both halves. You know, really, you should win a half, at least a half in these preseason games. And, um, disappointed that we didn’t, but, we’re going to get back to work and and look for solutions. John Mashoto with the Athletic. You had several uh veteran players playing this game that didn’t play in the first one. How do you just kind of generally go about figuring out who why play let’s say like Kaum and Jack Sandborn and and not like Kenneth Murray? Yeah. If they’re younger players, you want to get them anywhere from 10 to 15 snaps is what you’re thinking. Kier’s new Sanborn’s, you know, a younger player. Um where K9’s played, you know, a lot of football. So, it’s usually based off experience. And then for some of the guys, it’s just, you know, we want to get them out there and let them play a few uh snaps. Again, we let all of our guys go through pregame warm-ups. That was a big part of it for us. We wanted to get Dak and CD and and all those guys, you know, to go through the pregame warm-ups. We think that that’s important. So, the first time that they do it is not, you know, um in a regular season game. But, uh it’s it’s a formula based on how much football they’ve played. And then uh I don’t know the TV cameras kind of caught you were probably reading too much in this but it kind of looked like you were annoyed by the uh uh the way that they’re measuring with the sticks now virtually or whatever. Uh does that have any impact on you or do you think it will uh as you’re calling the game and and the time it takes? Well, the technology is definitely different. It’s new. Um it’s on a watch now which is unique. Uh, it sounds like it’s, you know, those those type of issues are happening kind of around the league right now, but it’s preseason, you know, just like the league office isn’t going to panic that their system’s not working. It’s the preseason, just like we’re not going to panic and we’re not pushing the panic button. We’re pushing the work button. And uh, that’s what we’re going to do. And, uh, we’ll get in tomorrow and watch the film, make the corrections. We’ll see some guys that probably separated themselves from a um, you know, evaluation process, which is great for them. and um we’ll start to you know um build the the week’s plan. Nick Harris for Star Telegram. How much did your offensive reps have to change uh given the time of possession difference in the first half? Um well, you know, again, the the thing that I thought I thought we would run the ball better, Nick. I really did. I thought we could run the ball a little bit better. Give them some credit. You know, they did a nice job. Um but really, you know, you try not to press. I thought the defense did a really good job keeping the game to whatever it was. was I think you know Booth’s interception was awesome. It was so great to see him do that as a one-sore game I think um late in the second quarter. So there really wasn’t wasn’t much panic. Um but you know we got a couple turnovers on defense and then we turn it over on offense. You know we get the one sudden change which we talked about this you know all week in terms of can you gather that momentum the defense gets the fumble I think right and uh the very first play we throw an interception. So that’s just those are the things you can’t do. I mean, I think we had the ball around midfield and um Joe knew it right when he came off. I think you guys probably saw it. You know, he took immediate accountability, went over and was talking to the receivers about it and that’s what I love about the guy. I guess offensively specifically, is it tougher to really evaluate whenever there’s only so many given reps? I mean, Booker was playing into the third quarter. That’s probably not what you’all anticipated, right? Yeah. No, but again, there’s number count we were trying to get and when you don’t get as many opportunities, you’re going to have to, you know, get the numbers that you want. I think we had them slated for like 20 to 25 plays. Um I’m not sure exactly what his numbers were, but um again it’s a it’s a chance for us to get him some live reps that he needs. Mingo. Uh no, again we got a number of guys banged up and we’ll get some testing on those guys um tomorrow. But um number of guys got banged up. We had to throw some a lot of moving parts at corner. We had to put Booth back in the game and things like that. So we got dinged up pretty good uh out there. Tommy Yarstcowboys.com. You’ve talked about getting a quarterback settled into a game when you start with a safety and then you mentioned the interception after getting one defensively. What goes into resettling a quarterback into the game when you have stuff like that happen? How do you kind of get him back into those situations? Well, again, you you number one, you always continue to have trust in him. I mean, I think you saw the third down and long play. We took the shot. He hit the mingo and then, you know, unfortunately, we hit a big play and then we try to, you know, get the ball on the perimeter. We shoot ourselves in the foot. But really for a young quarterback, it’s about stacking plays, Tommy. You know what I’m saying? It’s about, okay, get a streak of completions going. You know, okay, get a completion, get a completion, get a Okay, I get two completions, then get three, then okay, oh, I missed one. Okay, then start a new streak. Okay, and I think what you find when you do that is is they kind of work themselves into a good rhythm and they they feel um with a lot more confidence when they’re able to do that. So, um, we just, uh, we’re going to continue to trust Joe and again made some great throws and, um, you know, again, the interception is the first thing that jumps out at me. You know, I mean that I wish he’d have that one back. Henderson, Gilmer, coach, do you feel like now, you mentioned some of these guys separating themselves a little bit tonight. Do you feel like where you need to be looking to that final preseason game to make the cuts on after Friday night’s game? you know, I I want to watch the film. I think, you know, that’s only fair to these players to say, “Let’s watch the film and see kind of, you know, where we are.” Um, but yes, do I believe that that’s the case? I I do think a few guys took major steps today. What I don’t get a chance to see a lot of is the special teams and that’s very critical when you talk about constructing your roster and things like that. Um, so I want to definitely see the film, but again, I think there were some guys that that I thought, you know, did a really nice job tonight. And, um, once we see the film, we’ll have a better idea. All righty. Thank you. Thanks, guys.

Head coach Brian Schottenhiemer shares his thoughts following a loss to the Baltimore Ravens in the first home preseason game.

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