OXNARD, Calif. – Dallas Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer entered his first training camp as an NFL head coach amid contract drama between star defender Micah Parsons and the Cowboys front office.
Schottenheimer said he is aware of what is going on, but he has a football team to coach.
“I don’t get caught up in it,” Schottenheimer said. “You know, I’ve been around this game a long time, but the business is the business side.”
“You know there’s contracts. There are negotiations,” Schottenheimer continued. “And if you lose a lot of sleep worrying about that stuff as a coach, it can be really frustrating, but you don’t.”
Now in his fourth season with the Cowboys, but first as head coach, he’s focused on his players from top to bottom.
“I think that’s one of my strengths — my people skills,“ Schottenheimer said. ”I communicate to people. I’m open. I’m honest.“
“And at the end of the day, I’m just excited that everybody’s here and the energy has been awesome,” he continued, “and I’m excited to go play some football.”
Now that this is his first training camp calling the shots, what does he want to get out of camp?
“Hopefully it’s the most competitive practice that I’ve been around,” Schottenheimer said. “Otherwise, I’d be disappointed in my messaging and getting that across to the guys.”
“I think what makes that competitive is the pieces that we’ve added. You look at our roster from top to bottom and we filled in a lot of blanks,” he continued. “I mean, we’ve added some really good football players through free agency and through getting our guys back.” And then, of course, the fact that that’s the mantra and the mindset — we’re gonna compete in everything that we do. I would be very, very disappointed if it wasn’t an extremely competitive deal.”
Schottenheimer believes in competition off the field, which is why the team has a pingpong table inside their locker room at The Star in Frisco. It’s also why there’s a pingpong table at their training camp facility. The coach told the media a funny story about a pingpong match from Monday.
“Dak did beat Micah in pingpong, so that’s big news to report,” Schottenheimer said with a smile. “Sure, Micah loved that I said that, but please make the note, Micah did not have his paddle. So, because he didn’t have his paddle, does it count? Probably. But we have fun. We have fun and we coach them up. And again, it’s a great group of guys.”
That great group of guys will practice again on Wednesday.
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