OXNARD, Calif. – Three fights were enough.
Irritated by the series of scuffles that interrupted Wednesday’s practice, Brian Schottenheimer came up with an alternative for the Dallas Cowboys: He ordered wind sprints before calling off the practice.
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.
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“He’s got a standard,” Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott told USA TODAY Sports after practice. “He’s preaching about being competitive and not combative. He’s also preaching living on the edge of toughness and competition, and not to go over it.
“We don’t want to hurt each other. We don’t 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.”
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.
Yet it got a bit too chippy during the Cowboys’ 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.
Someone asked Cowboys star receiver Cee Dee Lamb if he could sum up a “PG version” of Schottenheimer’s message to the team.
Said Lamb: “Do we want to be champions?”
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.
“Throughout the years of us being here, talent was never the question,” Lamb said. “It 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…and always think about the team.”
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’s also the matter of demanding accountability.
“How many times has he been on coaching staffs and watched flare-ups in the competition? How many times has he seen coaches address that?” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones pondered during an interview with USA TODAY Sports. “That was the bargain I got.
“You’ve 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: ‘Now it’s on my watch. I’m the head coach.’”
Time will reveal whether Schottenheimer’s methods work to change the bottom-line results for the underachieving Cowboys.
Contact Jarrett Bell at jbell@usatoday.com or follow on social media: On X: @JarrettBell
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