Blogging The Boys
Your Sunday morning Cowboys news.
Cowboys vice president of player personnel Will McClay gives insights on how looks to enhance the roster.
The Cowboys front office has been clear that player acquisition is always a 24/7 process and, like McClay said, they’ll always look at every option to improve their roster.
On Thursday, the Las Vegas Raiders released defensive tackle Christian Wilkins, who was a first-round pick in 2019 and signed a five-year, $110 million deal with the team in March of 2024, but is dealing with a left foot fracture and was let go because of a disagreement between he and the team on the recovery process.
Nonetheless, it’s a position of need for the Cowboys and an intriguing name to hit the market. Will it be a situation that McClay and the team take a look at?
“I mean, yeah, sure.” McClay said.
While that work is being done off the field, it’s been no secret that Brian Schottenheimer is looking for a fast, physical training camp on the field in his first run as a head coach in the NFL. So far through three practices, he’s gotten just that, and maybe more than he’d like in some instances with a few skirmishes. That said, it’s still exactly what the Cowboys want, and exactly how McClay and the team have gone about constructing the roster.
“That’s Schotty’s mantra and what we wanted to bring,” McClay said. “It’s fast and furious. You want to compete every day. That’s kind of our mantra; the NFL is a fast game. We got these guys, college guys number one, you got to get used to the pace. Number two, it’s about conditioning. If you want to play fast, if you want to be a fast football team, you want to play that way, you have to practice that way.”
In today’s NFL and the game of football as a whole, speed is one of the most important factors for success, and it’s a trait that McClay learned the importance of early in his career from his father, Melvin.
“Football is a game of leverage and angles,” McClay said. “My father taught me about that, that’s how I learned football. You think about it, so leverage and angles, that’s speed, right? I didn’t go into math class, I went straight to P.E., but there’s some principles that I learned, right?”
“The faster that you can play, the faster you can get from point A to point B, the quicker you can make things happen.”
While physical speed is one thing, processing speed is equally as important to be able to gain advantages on the field.
“It’s the old saying: Speed kills,” McClay said. “If you know what you’re doing, if you understand where your weaknesses are, if you...
