Blogging The Boys
The phrase “practice makes perfect” is as old as football itself, but Dallas Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer genuinely believes it can make a significant difference. Since becoming the tenth head coach in the franchise’s history, Schottenheimer has emphasized his desire to make the Cowboys the best practicing team in the NFL.
How does someone go about doing that? Taking the lessons he learned from his father, Marty Schottenheimer, and the lessons of basketball’s most outstanding player, Michael Jordan. Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated made his way to Oxnard, California, last week and observed the unique style of practice Schottenheimer was running.
“I remember Michael Jordan talking about practice all the time—If you practice the right way … and then Kobe [Bryant] adopted it,” Schottenheimer said. “You practice the right way and games are easy. So we can’t simulate a real game out here like basketball can, because we can’t tackle and things like that, but you can push it, and you can get to the edge.”
“We are an excellent, excellent practice team.”
As Breer points out, the Cowboys are trying to get as close as possible to game speed without breaking any of the safeguards put in place by the league and the NFL Players Association. They are doing that by practicing a lot of 11-on-11 drills versus 7-on-7. The reason why? It can simulate in-game looks from the defense to allow the offense to react to what would happen during the game, and vice versa. Breer says that Dallas is trying to do “more 11-on-11 work than you’d see in most (if not all) other places.” Schottenheimer feels it will give the team a necessary edge in the regular season.
“I talk to these guys and say what’s going to separate us from the rest of the league is the way we practice,” Schottenheimer said. “It was one of the first things we ever talked about, in one of the first team meetings. And from OTAs, through minicamp to now, the energy and the effort that our guys are practicing with and running? I think we’re one of the few teams that still practices in the offseason program, like, does team (11-on-11). I talk to five or six of my peers, and they’re like, We don’t f—ing practice, we don’t do team anymore, we do seven-on-seven.
“We decided we needed that edge, and so we taught our guys. We defined how practice should run, and this is what shells practice looks like, and this is what a helmets practice looks like, and this is what a padded practice looks like. And these guys have been amazing.”
The Cowboys have shown themselves to be a competitive, physical team in practice, but this has not been without its issues. Dallas has had numerous injuries during their time in Oxnard, raising the question of whether Schottenheimer’s intense practice methods should be tempered a bit. During the team’s first week of practice, Bobby Belt of...
