Brian Schottenheimer: See How the Trenches Play Out | Dallas Cowboys 2025

Brian Schottenheimer: See How the Trenches Play Out | Dallas Cowboys 2025

Someone’s hair tie. Not yours. Not mine. No. I did shower this morning, which is cool. It’s white. Could be White Cotton. Jim Cos. Yeah, could be a couple of those guys. Go Calvin Calvin Watkins, Dallas Morning News. We saw that Diggs and Gen injury put full participants. What’s your confidence level that you’ll have from Thursday night? Yeah, you know, I think trending in the right way. We’ve got our um our meeting with the training staff after practice today. But uh both guys are, like I said, working their butts off to try to get back and be ready to go. And we’ll see how they do today. Today’s kind of, as you guys know, a different schedule than what we’ve had here last couple years where we’ll still be running around doing things. And then tomorrow goes more of a walk through. So Friday’s kind of your day to figure out, hey, what are we thinking? What does it say about those two guys that when they got hurt, we thought they would be further along before they come back and now they might be here for the opener. What about that? It raves about them and their competitive spirit and uh just the work that it takes. You know, these things don’t happen overnight. You know, Trayvon’s a guy that, you know, really truly when he came back and started working closely with Britt and the trainers. I mean, just took huge leaps and and strides and so proud of him for the way he’s attacked this injury and how bad he wants to get out there and play. We have to make the decision of, you know, is he ready to go? um he is uh certainly pushing to do that and then you know when the thing happened with Gayton we weren’t sure we thought it could be much much worse but we also thought this thing could drag on first couple weeks but these guys have not missed a beat man they they’re here all the time players days off they’re in here getting treatment and they’ve all had the vision of getting back why for their brothers not to play the Eagles but to get back here for their brothers and to be part of the team one more how hard has it been to try to manage snap counts and practices because you’re not Sure. If you’re going to have them, man, you got to obviously prepare for a game. Yeah, we do. I mean, we do that no matter what, whether guys are healthy or not. You always have to find ways to get guys reps and different things like that. But, um, it’s it’s a good problem to have, not a bad problem to have. Brian Todd Arts with ESPN. You’ve wanted to be a head coach for a long time. You’re closing in here on a couple days beforehand. Have you thought much about what you’re going to say either the night before to the team in the hotel or right before the team goes out onto the field? No, not really. You know, I think here’s the way I view this and and I it’s funny. I actually caught myself doing this the other day, our bonus Monday. I kind of called the team up and I kind of got a little fiery excited about, you know, playing the Eagles and, you know, prime time and all that stuff. And I went to bed that night. I was like, “What are you doing?” Like, you know better than that. Because honestly, the way we approach things, Todd, is every game we play is just another championship opportunity. It’s just another championship opportunity. We get a chance to go out there against the Eagles. You don’t get extra credit for beating the Eagles in Philly on prime time than you do for beating the Giants at noon in AT&T Stadium. So, what I don’t want these guys to do, and I think the coaches are a big part of this, is go in there and try so hard. Oh, we’re playing the Eagles. I’m going to do so hard. I’m going to They’re going to make mistakes if they do that. Play free. It’s football. Fly around. Love being around with your your your brothers, man. Just run to the football. Celebrate. Have fun. And so again, it it’s it’s going to be pretty uh consistent throughout the course of the deal. We’re guaranteed 17 of these. This is the first one of that. I think our guys will play well. Um but uh again, that’s that’s kind of going to be my message most weeks. And then um Dak used the term super excited I think 15 or 16 times in time we talked with us. What’s your level of excitement to see what Pickkins and Lamb can do for real out there in in a real game? I’m excited. I mean, I’m excited. That’s I’m excited to watch those guys every day in practice. You know, it’s fun to watch those guys. But what I love, Todd, is I love the way they feed off one another and they celebrate one another. You know, as we all know, there’s one ball, you know, and the ball can’t go to multiple spots on the uh play and we’ve got a lot of really good weapons. You know, Turpp’s having a a great um you know, leadup to the season. We’re going to run the football. We know that. And so, uh I’m just excited for how much fun those guys have playing the game as Cowboys. John Micho with the athletic uh now being around George Piggin for a while. What would you say gives you the most confidence that he’ll be able to hit the ground running in week one despite, you know, not playing in the preseason? Yeah, just the consistency that we see every day in practice, the the work that he’s gotten with Dak, you know, um it’s one of those situations where like these guys with you with now having a true game plan, you know, we didn’t have game plans going in the preseason, so now having real game plans, they’re throwing specific routes that they’re going to be throwing in the game. So you can get a lot of very specific I say refer to as me to youu factor throws where I’m throwing this ball to you and okay let’s work out the kinks here. Uh they’ve been working really really hard on that. Um but uh the one thing I know about George is he’s looking forward to the moment because he loves playing the game of football and um I think uh again he’ll uh he’ll step up and play well but also with a lot of passion come uh Thursday night. with you and Dak when you guys made that move. Did you think that the rapport between him and George was clicked the way it has? Yeah, but again, I don’t I don’t think it was just Dak. I think big part of it GP and how GP came in here and GP’s been humble and GP’s been all about, hey, whatever’s best for the team and then CD leaning into GP. So, this was never a a question about Dak’s ability to interact. I’m not I’m not that guy that wants one guy to connect with somebody else or anything like that. This is more about just GP’s willingness to come in here and open himself up and be vulnerable with our guys in the locker room and um you know I’m all about guys being authentic to who they are and so um but like I said from day one it’s been awesome. Nick Harris fourstar telegram you’ve been building this offense the whole offseason working with Dak and training camp. How excited are you to finally just put on the field on Thursday night? So excited just again to see how these guys take the stuff that we’ve been practicing and get it out there. Uh obviously going against a great defense, ton of respect for Vic Fangio and and what he has done in his uh crazy crazy career. And their defense is very very talented. They’re very simple. Um their ability to communicate uh non-verbally is quite astonishing to be honest with you. They just they’re tied and aligned on the same page with things and um it’ll be a tremendous challenge for us, but uh our guys will be up to it and I think we’ll play well. And then uh it’ll be your first time building an opening script in a couple years. Have you already done that or are you going to do that the day of the game? No, I start that kind of this afternoon and leading into tomorrow and we’ll get a chance to kind of walk through it a little bit, you know, before we go play. But um it’s a little bit like riding a bike, you know, you uh you kind of uh know what you want. Doesn’t mean it always works, Nick. It doesn’t always work. Sometimes you got to adjust. That’s what opening opening game football is about, man. Making adjustments. So, we’ll see. Joe Hoy, Dallas Morning News. You mentioned that non-verbal, you know, stuff that Vic Banjo does, I guess, from an offense perspective, even in scouting. How do you try to pick up on stuff? How when do you recognize a that’s non-verbal? And what can that do for you guys in terms of providing challenges during the game? Well, they they make everything look the same, you know? Um they they they do a really good job. It all looks the same. It all comes out of the quarters base deal. Somebody did send me I died laughing um Vic talking to Devonte Smith before practice, one of the practices, and talk about cover two. Well, Vic’s not a cover two guy, so there you go. Are they gonna play a lot of cover two? Vic, shoot me a text if you’re gonna play a lot of cover two. I’d love to know. Um, but, uh, again, they’re just they’re well coached, man. And, uh, they play hard. Uh, but there was a situation where I think it was Washington was running a formation and they had, uh, looked like an automatic, the formation blitz called and Washington change of strength and they didn’t check up and they ended up bringing a pressure the other side, which they need to do. and you just as a as a football coach and a football savant that I was once referred to, you’re like, that’s really cool So, they’re really good. And then Javvante Williams, Dak Prescott said his nickname for him is validictorian because of how well he prepares and he was a valadictorian previously in his life. Um, how have you seen kind of that ability from Javante in the meetings and stuff and what he is able to do and translate that to practice? Well, Javvante was a little salty today. You know, North Carolina, they had a had a rough rough start last night. Uh, and then he lost to Turp. We we gave him another shot. So they both were 25 in college. So Turp beat Javvante. So TCU was up 20 UNCC. Uh but it’s funny. I’ll tell you a quick story about Javvante. We were doing a move the ball period I think a week or so ago, maybe one of the Frisco practices and I kind of pulled a play that we hadn’t run in a while and I was kind of standing back behind the huddle and I was like, “Hey Javante, you have this.” And he looked back. He’s like like I got you. I got it. But yeah, he gives you confidence. I think he gives that confidence and I think that’s what you love about the guys, man. His preparation is topnotch. Patrick. Hey, coach. Patrick Walker, Dallas Cowboys.com. Circling back to the uh the offense. Um you were rightfully hellbent on keeping things vanilla as possible in the preseason. Seminar. Yeah, sevenar. Just talk about how excited you are in knowing that you still and the importance of having that element of surprise going into week one. Well, it’s again, it’s the only chance we ever get to do it. you know, next year there’s going to be hopefully 20 plus games for people to look at of us. Um, again, there’s just when you put a new staff together, Patrick, it doesn’t matter whether it’s offense, defense, special teams. Why would you want to uh already give a very, very talented defense and an incredible coach and Vic and his staff? And um, why would you want to give them those opportunities to kind of prepare for things? Do they know we’re going to run the football? Yep. Do they know we’re going to try to throw the ball to George and CD? Yep. Is Turp going to be involved? Yep. But they don’t have to see exactly how we’re going to build those things. Tommy Art style scoutwiz.com. You’ve talked so much about wanting to be physical. How much of a early barometer is this going to be in with their offensive and defensive line for just how physical you guys are on the line scrimmage. Tommy, great challenge, man. I mean, you know, this is these guys, that’s what they do. You know, I think if you would talk to Nick and Nick was standing here, I guarantee you one of the things that they would talk about is they want to, you know, own the line of scrimmage. and that’s what we want to do. So, you got two teams that are kind of built on that and now you got to get out there and put the ball down and see how the trenches play out. But again, I’m excited to watch our guys go compete and uh again, very formidable challenge. Jaylen Carter, man, incredible football player, you know, and uh their offensive line speaks for themselves. I mean, what they’ve done, what they’ve been able to do. Jeff Stoutton and I actually coached together in oh shoot 19 98 at Syracuse University. Jeff was a tight end coach and he’s one of the top two or three offensive line coaches in our league. Man, he’s just different and um be great to give him a hug before the game. And then Tyler Booker, how do you gauge his readiness ahead of an assignment like Carter and Davis? You guys know Book, man. He’s uh excited about the opportunity to go play football. He’s played against great players. Uh I don’t know if he and Jaylen ever matched up. They probably didn’t. They probably missed each other um with both guys, you know, leaving early. But, um, again, Jaylen’s going to win some battles. Book’s going to win some battles, and that’s football, man. And, uh, if you can’t get excited about that going into a match up in a game, hey, man, I get to block Jaylen Carter. How cool is that? And, uh, Book is, uh, is ready for the challenge. But, uh, it’ll be a, it’ll be a fun one to watch. Garrett Bodell, CBS Sports. Brian, you held Javante Williams out of the preseason. How do you feel like he’s physically equipped to handle lead running back responsibilities this? I have no questions about it, Garrett. He’s played plenty of football. Uh we practice very physically when we have pads on. We actually uh on Wednesday we had a um we were running uh inside run and safety came running down. Actually, Elijah Clark came running down and uh Elijah had gotten him a couple plays earlier. Uh Tay got a little high and Elijah got him and Tay got a little lower and Elijah felt it. And so uh I don’t worry about Javvante. He plays the game one way. He’s physical. uh and uh he plays it with passion and and really good pad level. Quickly on on Dak entering his 10th season, how have you seen him really um just grow from the time that you’ve been here since 2022 on the field, off the field here entering, you know, he hasn’t really changed, man. I just I I commend the guy for the way he prepares every day. You know, here we are, it’s Friday in our in our world, you know, so we’re putting in red zone two-minute things like that. And when I tell you when we’re up there talking and installing the plays and here’s what they’ve done and this and that and just to see the guy, man, just compete in the classroom, man. Writing everything down and asking great questions and, you know, taking responsibility for different things. Hey, I might do this here or there. I mean, that that’s that’s something you learn as you get older. I’m sure Dak wouldn’t, you know, hey, Shotty, I got something to add here. Boom. You know, when he was a rookie, he probably wouldn’t have done that. But now he’s just so comfortable in what we’re doing and in his place on this football team that uh you get excited when guys do that. Edward, WFAA, you’ve talked about creating a physical identity and your determination to emphasize running the football, but if you look at this team, it looks like it’s best equipped talent-wise with the quarterback and the receivers to be more of a passing team. How do you reconcile that and create the right approach? Yeah, it’s a good question, Ed. It’s fair. Um, again, you have to play physical in everything you do. You know, like throwing the football, you have to be physical. Whether it’s the protection aspect, the backs picking up blitzes, chipping some of the edges, receivers playing physical to create separation, Dak standing in there taking shots when there’s free runners and things like that. Um, but look, you know, we want to be balanced. We want to run the football. You know, there’s got to be marriage between your runs and your passes. That’s part of it. Um, and then again, you got to be ready to adjust. And um you can be very physical as a football team and not just do it running the football. You can do it other ways. And not my not my uh statement, but somebody told me during the interview process of as we were putting our staff together, they said, “The way that you can tell a physical football team is by looking at the smaller skilled guys. And if those guys play physical, then you’re a physical ass football team.” And I love that. I I I say it all the time. And so when I watch CD play and work in practice and dig out safeties and stuff like that, I’m like that’s pretty cool. Or Cavante Turpin or um you know, uh you know, Ker Elum, some of these guys, you know, if those guys are physical, you probably have something pretty cool going on. And last one, Todd, um back to Digs and Gayton. Um if they are available to play, how mindful are you of what they haven’t been able to do for a good portion of the summer? And is it easy to mix and match them? Like you see different corners play. Usually in offensive line it’s hey it’s your five guys and you roll with them. Do you work through all? Yeah. Again it’s it’s a little too early to speculate. I would say it’s a little easier to mix and match your corners. You’re right about that. You know you’re not putting your left guard right guard in and then taking them out every couple series. That’s not desired. But um again we’ll see how today works and we’ll see how the meeting goes this afternoon. We’ll certainly have a plan. But it’s much more flexible with with, you know, receivers or DBs than it is with linemen. Good. Thanks, guys. See you out there.

Head coach Brian Schottenheimer speaks with media as the Cowboys finish out their week of practice heading into a Week 1 matchup against the Philadelphia Eagles, provides injury updates, shares his excitement to see George Pickens incorporated in the offense, and more.

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