The Cowboys Think This Is Their Time, and It Better Be

There’s a sense of urgency in Oxnard, Calif., where the story of the NFL summer is unfolding at Dallas’s training camp.

McCarthy has pushed his players more this year and, he says, there was an 8% uptick over 2023 in the offseason work done as a result. / Jason Parkhurst-USA TODAY Sports

I’ve been covering Dallas Cowboys training camp every summer—with a one-year blip in there due to COVID-19—since I went on that beat with the Dallas Morning News in 2007. And maybe it was just me, but I noticed something Friday that I don’t think I’d seen before on the dusty fields of Oxnard, Calif., about an 1 ½ hour drive north of Los Angeles.

No one lingered. 

The horn blew. A few guys stayed out to do media scrums. I went off to talk to a couple of guys I had lined up. The staff was back inside quickly. The guys who talked to reporters didn’t hang around long. And that was different. Generally, at this camp, and a lot of others, you’ll get guys staying on the grass after practice for a while to catch up with visitors or family in town. There was none of that.

Again, I might be making too much of it. But it didn’t seem like a coincidence, to me at least, that there was this rush to the exits. It also happened to line up with something Mike McCarthy had relayed a few hours earlier, in his hotel suite, a couple of tennis courts away from those fields.

“This CBA thing is real … I always focus and work with a very high level of urgency because I know how much time I used to have [as a younger coach],” he says, leaning back. “The 11-hour workday is real. We start at 7:30, we go to 6:29. That’s because we’re totally in tune with the opportunity we have with what it takes to prepare. We come out [to California] for a reason. Your family’s out there on vacation for a reason. The weather is phenomenal, the training environment is to maximize this opportunity to get the team ready.

“It really makes you focus. It gives you a chance.”

Here’s something else that’s real—these Cowboys know that the chance they have in 2024, if things go the wrong way, may be the last one for this group, as presently constituted. That is in large part because two of the team’s three best players are in contract years, and one of them isn’t at camp as he seeks a big payday. The third of those guys is eligible now for a second contract for the first time. Adding to it is that McCarthy is going into the final year of his deal, a circumstance NFL teams routinely try to avoid with head coaches.

So where the focus is intense, by design and by circumstance, the sense of urgency is, too.

The Cowboys think this is their time. It feels like, in a lot of ways, it better be.

Accordingly, they’re not wasting a minute.

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We’re on the training camp trail, with a ton to share from our travels. And we have a lot to get to this week. So over in the takeaways, you’ll find …

• How Kyler Murray’s blown up old perceptions in Arizona.

• What to make of Tua Tagovailoa and Jordan Love’s new contracts.

• How Jim Harbaugh’s markings are already all over the Chargers’ new facility.

And a ton more. But we’re starting with what I regard as the story of the NFL summer and that’s the noisy, even by their standards, start to Cowboys camp.

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McCarthy’s been through the wars. He led the Packers for 13 years, and this is his fifth season with Dallas. That’s 18 seasons with two flagship franchises that have national fan bases and intense scrutiny and impossible expectations.

So when the idea comes up that there’s pressure on his team, he brings rare perspective—and quickly recalls 2019 and how the absence of it made him feel.

"Pressure’s a privilege,” he says. “I think the year off teaches you that, reminds you of it. My last experience, I was in one place for a long time. It was a big deal [in Green Bay], and there was pressure. You’re in it every day. It’s part of your everyday deal. When you do step away from it, it’s healthier. But there’s nothing like it. There’s nothing like being in that seat.”

He’s comfortable in this seat, regardless of how hot anyone else thinks it is, and just as comfortable with how he’s chasing what’s eluded the Cowboys for so long, with all of this going on. And that’s something that predated him and all the contract-impacted players.

McCarthy’s teams have won 12 games three years in a row. The roster is talented—and the fact that the Jones family has so many mouths to feed financially is, indeed, a good indicator of the team-building job Dallas has done. Longer-term, the franchise is sixth among NFL teams in wins over the last 19 seasons, and has finished under .500 just three times during that stretch.

And, yet, where the five teams with more wins since 2005 have won Super Bowls in that time (and the teams ranked 7, 8, 9 and 10 have, too), the Cowboys haven’t even been to a conference title game since 1995, which is the NFL’s fourth-longest such drought.

“We’ve won as many games over the last three years as anybody,” COO Stephen Jones says in a quiet moment after practice. “Unfortunately, it’s the elephant in the room, we haven’t had playoff success. I’m frustrated. The players are. The coaches are. Jerry is. We all want to do something about it. Of course, our fans are as well. What you don’t ever want to see is people just don’t care anymore. At least they are frustrated, or mad about it. …

“To use a basketball term, we’re hanging around the rim. At some point, you’re going to get that to jell during the playoffs. Hopefully it’s this year.”

McCarthy’s trying to be intentional about making that happen. Going back to his time in Green Bay, he’s always been keenly aware that NFL games, especially in the playoffs, and championships are won on the margins. When you get to that level of football, the talent disparity shrinks, and little things become big things.

It’s why McCarthy’s always tinkered with his program, trying to find the 1% that’d make a difference over the year before. This year, he’s pushed his players more and, he says, there was an 8% uptick over 2023 in the offseason work done as a result. His performance staff reported the team’s strength levels are at their highest point over McCarthy’s five years as Cowboys coach. So there have been tangible gains.

But the margin the coach has been most aggressively chasing is intangible—mental conditioning. In his words, “I’ve put way more time and energy and resources into emotional development with more education.” He’s worked with Chad Bohling, the team’s director of mental conditioning, on it. In the spring, he gave Dr. Heather Twedell, Dallas’s mental health and wellness consultant, a big platform, integrating her into team meetings.

And he even tapped into Dak Prescott’s network, bringing in the people the quarterback works with from O2X Human Performance. O2X works with the military, and police and fire departments, and McCarthy thought enough of their program, and the effect he saw it make with Prescott, to give them 10 hours with the players over the course of the spring.

“Ten hours is a lot of time,” McCarthy says. “It’s just how I’ve always done it. When the red zone offense and defense aren’t very good, I steal 4% from normal O and D and put it in the red zone. When I look at the program of charting what we’re going to do in the offseason and training camp, I wanted to put more of an emphasis into the emotional education and development of our team.”

The players, for their part, seem to think it worked. Seven-time All-Pro guard Zack Martin pointed directly to how the O2X folks drilled players on how to “debrief,” and weaponize information to try and impact performance the next time, which relates back to how football players use tape. And there were bigger-picture elements that helped, too.

“To be around guys like that, and a lot of the stuff we’ve heard over our football lives, it’s from a different perspective,” Martin says. “When guys like that stand in front of you and start talking about those things, it makes you think about things in a different light. I think it rubbed off on a lot of guys, including myself.”

The hope being that when it’s time to get that 1%, the Cowboys will be more mentally ready to take it from whoever—or whatever—is in their way.

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The Joneses are dealing with trying to extend three key players, which is nothing new for the Cowboys. / Jason Parkhurst-USA TODAY Sports

You can easily tie what McCarthy wanted to give the players to what Stephen Jones has thought they’ve been missing over the past two decades or so.

"I think it’s the expectation, the confidence, that you’re going to go win,” he says. “That you’re going to go beat Green Bay, then you’re going to go beat San Francisco. The year before, we started off strong against San Francisco and then [Tony] Pollard got hurt and we threw an interception instead of going up two scores. We were down to even going into half. We started off that game really good. I think it’s just that confidence, once you win one. I know our teams had it in the ’90s. They knew they were going to pull it off.”

Now, that confidence will have to manifest under the always searing America’s Team spotlight, and with the contract situations, at least for now, lingering.

To be fair, this isn’t Joneses first rodeo with this stuff. Prescott played in consecutive contract years, first as his rookie deal expired in 2019, then on the franchise tag in ’20. The Cowboys have gone to the mat with young players of Lamb and Micah Parsons’s ilk before, and came out the other side with Martin, Zeke Elliott, Dez Bryant and DeMarcus Lawrence signed to long-term deals. As to Lamb, specifically, they endured a holdout as recently as last year, with Martin having missed camp seeking a raise, no worse for the wear.

On the flip side, most of those were singular situations, not happening all at once. So the question from there is whether having all of these together is too much.

McCarthy isn’t covering his eyes on that, of course, particularly with his own story part of that larger picture. But as he sees it, and with all of his experience in these matters baked in, the smart thing is try to put a wall up between business and football matters, while showing the proper respect to everyone’s individual goals.

That’s why, when he talked to Lamb the other day, and after seeing Martin come out of last year’s holdout fine, he told the receiver to handle his business and come back focused after it was taken care of. And as far as Lamb’s readiness and focus goes, in McCarthy’s words, “there’s no concerns,” and the coach wants his star receiver to know he has his back.

“If you put any more energy into it, you’re probably wasting time thinking about things that you can’t control because you can’t control it,” he added. “I’ve never really gone sideways with it. What I found is the individuals that are going through the contract situations, you’re almost apologetic about it. You’re in this position for a reason. It’s between the employer and the employee. It’s part of our everyday business.”

Of course, there’s a real argument that business should’ve been done earlier.

NFL teams entered the 2023 offseason without a $50 million quarterback. By Week 1, there were four, with Joe Burrow topping the market at $55 million per year. And if there was any thought that the offseason was an outlier (which wouldn’t have been a smart thought), four more quarterbacks joined the club this offseason, with Trevor Lawrence and Jordan Love matching Burrow at $55 million, albeit without the structure and guarantees Burrow got.

So what would’ve been a record-setting contract 18 months ago now just gets a quarterback in the top 25% at his position, and $55 million is more of a requirement than a moonshot for someone such as Prescott. Which, as Jones sees it, may simplify things a little.

"It seems like it’s hit a peak,” he says. “It used to be everybody was jumping each other. Now it feels like, to me, Lawrence got 55, which was the high-water mark that Burrow set. It didn’t matter if you were the best or [Patrick] Mahomes, you just leapfrogged the next guy. You’re not seeing that now. It’s kind of hit that ceiling.”

Trouble is, even if that market has settled, the ones for Lamb and Parsons have escalated. Justin Jefferson’s $35 million APY was about a 25% markup on what fellow receivers DeVonta Smith, Jaylen Waddle, Amon-Ra St. Brown and Nico Collins got earlier in the offseason (that urgency from Philadelphia, Miami, Detroit and Houston wasn’t an accident), and also topped the $34 million per year Nick Bosa got last summer. Which gave Lamb something new to shoot for and, perhaps, set a new floor for Parsons.

So there’s a real tax Dallas is paying for not acting faster, which is something .

“It’s hard to,” Stephen Jones says. “That’s the bottom line. It used to be people really wanted to go early. It’s hard to get someone to go because, let’s face it, if they wait, they’ll get their money. You can’t do them until after their third year anyway. Then they’re one year out. CeeDee played his year out last year. You say we could have done him. We couldn’t have. He was wanting to see what [Ja’Marr] Chase and Jefferson would do. He kept hearing these wild numbers. Turns out he’s probably right.

“We tried. We wanted to. It’s just getting him to do one. Some guys get in a situation where they want the money. We got [Trevon] Diggs done early. When we can get them, we’ll grab them.”

Which has left these Cowboys where they are, and makes the timing of McCarthy’s emphasis on the mental stuff pretty fortuitous.

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Jerry Jones on trying to extend Lamb and Prescott, as well as Parsons: “It is a great challenge with the cap.” / Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

McCarthy didn’t skip a beat when I asked if being in Dallas plays a role in all of this.

“Being in Dallas affects everything,” he says. “That’s how we roll. It’s the way we are.”

In other words, he’s saying this circus has come to town before. And he’s right.

It’s also correct to say that, in the grand scheme of things, this problem—having too many great players to pay—has a Dom Perignon label on it. Prescott, Lamb and Parsons have the leverage to wait because they’ve all made money to create a financial foundation (the quarterback on a second deal, the other two as first-round picks), and they’ve played well enough to feel secure engaging in a leverage game.

“It’s a great challenge to have, the fact that we’ve got one of the best quarterbacks in the league and two guys that are the best at their positions, right there at the top of being the best at their positions,” Jones says. “It is a great problem, a great challenge. But it is a challenge with the cap.”

Twice, the Cowboys let Jason Garrett go into a contract year. The first time, he won 12 games and earned a big extension. The second time, he was let go. And here Dallas is again, this time playing it out with a coach who did what Garrett did in that first contract year the last three years running.

When I asked if his confidence in McCarthy was the same as it has been, Stephen Jones answered forcefully, and directly.

“Oh yeah,” he says. “He’s won Super Bowls. He’s been to conference championships. Mike knows what it takes to win. He’s a damn good football coach.”

Then why not extend him?

“It’s where Jerry is on this. He’s the one to ask,” he continues. “He’s one of Mike’s biggest fans. It’s one of those things where Jerry, his gut is, Let’s push in (our chips) and let’s go. We all feel it. Let’s go win this thing.”

If that’s the ending to this story, of course, everyone goes home happy.

The alternative, everyone here knows, might not be pretty. Which might explain why that practice field is clearing off a lot faster than it used to.