{"id":255877,"date":"2025-08-02T12:16:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T12:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/255877\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T12:16:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T12:16:10","slug":"fights-broke-out-at-cowboys-camp-the-punishment-was-brutal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/255877\/","title":{"rendered":"Fights broke out at Cowboys camp. The punishment was brutal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"play\"<\/p>\n

Jerry Jones throws jab at Micah Parsons during ongoing contract talks<\/p>\n

Jones Jones says even if they sign Micah Parsons to an extension, that doesn’t mean he’ll be playing.<\/p>\n

Sports Seriously<\/p>\n

OXNARD, Calif. \u2013 Three fights were enough.<\/p>\n

Irritated by the series of scuffles that interrupted Wednesday\u2019s practice, Brian Schottenheimer came up with an alternative for the Dallas Cowboys<\/a>: He ordered wind sprints before calling off the practice.<\/p>\n

Talk about putting your foot down. And the rookie head coach left no gray area in expressing his disgust. Before and after the players ran several times from sideline to sideline, Schottenheimer gathered the team for huddles in the middle of the field for some expletive-laced messaging.<\/p>\n

George Pickens could be explosive for Cowboys \u2013 one way or another<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s got a standard,\u201d Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott told USA TODAY Sports after practice. \u201cHe\u2019s preaching about being competitive and not combative. He\u2019s also preaching living on the edge of toughness and competition, and not to go over it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to hurt each other. We don\u2019t want to be fighting. Those are the things that get you kicked out of the game, and things that hurt you on Sundays. So, yeah, he did make a great point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, fisticuffs often come with the territory during NFL training camps. There are intense battles for jobs. Heat and fatigue. The monotony of practicing against the same competition before seeing other faces in the preseason games.<\/p>\n

Yet it got a bit too chippy during the Cowboys\u2019 shorts-and-shells session on Wednesday. After one of the fights, Schottenheimer kicked rookie tackle Ajani Cornelius out of the practice for an early shower. The wind sprints came later, which might have taken some of the players back to their college, or even high school days.<\/p>\n

Someone asked Cowboys star receiver Cee Dee Lamb if he could sum up a \u201cPG version\u201d of Schottenheimer\u2019s message to the team.<\/p>\n

Said Lamb: \u201cDo we want to be champions?\u201d<\/p>\n

It is hardly lost on Lamb, a sixth-year pro, that the mistake-prone Cowboys had the fourth-most penalties (128) and committed the fifth-most turnovers (28) in the NFL last season while stumbling to a 7-10 finish.<\/p>\n

\u201cThroughout the years of us being here, talent was never the question,\u201d Lamb said. \u201cIt was always discipline. How do we get ahead and not behind? How do we not shoot ourselves in the foot? How do we not hurt ourselves when the momentum is going our way? We need to keep our foot on the pedal\u2026and always think about the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clearly, Schottenheimer is reiterating that point. For all the talk in the Cowboys camp about the energy that Schottenheimer, 51, and his staff have injected into the routine, there\u2019s also the matter of demanding accountability.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow many times has he been on coaching staffs and watched flare-ups in the competition? How many times has he seen coaches address that?\u201d Cowboys owner Jerry Jones pondered during an interview with USA TODAY Sports. \u201cThat was the bargain I got.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got 30 years being around the game and watching some of the best coaches in the business deal with situations. And I got the newness and the freshness: \u2018Now it\u2019s on my watch. I\u2019m the head coach.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Time will reveal whether Schottenheimer\u2019s methods work to change the bottom-line results for the underachieving Cowboys.<\/p>\n

Contact Jarrett Bell at jbell@usatoday.com<\/a> or follow on social media: On X: @JarrettBell<\/p>\n

On Bluesky: jarrettbell.bsky.social<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jerry Jones throws jab at Micah Parsons during ongoing contract talks Jones Jones says even if they sign…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2066],"tags":[247,265,1443,2937,1121,230,1365,1370,229,257,2461,7,20842,2938,248,267,246,88,6,35196,245,264,1366,9,266],"class_list":{"0":"post-255877","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas-cowboys","8":"tag-american","9":"tag-american-football","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-ceedee","12":"tag-ceedee-lamb","13":"tag-cowboys","14":"tag-dak","15":"tag-dak-prescott","16":"tag-dallas","17":"tag-dallas-cowboys","18":"tag-dallascowboys","19":"tag-football","20":"tag-hub","21":"tag-lamb","22":"tag-national","23":"tag-national-sports","24":"tag-neutral","25":"tag-news","26":"tag-nfl","27":"tag-nfl-hub","28":"tag-overall","29":"tag-overall-neutral","30":"tag-prescott","31":"tag-sports","32":"tag-sports-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114959128104806320","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}