After the Dallas Cowboys suffered their worst loss in the 35-year ownership of Jerry Jones to the Detroit Lions, 47-9, before the bye week, quarterback Dak Prescott and head coach Mike McCarthy identified key shortcomings in how the team prepares during the week and how it translates on game day.
“We’ve got to practice harder, simple as that,” Prescott said. “You can’t turn it on, on Sundays.”
“There’s a difference between practicing hard and practicing well,” McCarthy said. “They practice hard. We’re not practicing well enough.”
In a staff meeting on Monday morning, McCarthy took a new approach to how the team will practice and prepare moving forward, beginning with position meetings on Monday afternoon.
“We’re doing a little more group-oriented [work] because we feel we need to improve the connection and understanding because of our inexperience and youth in some areas,” McCarthy said. “So, we feel like more group [work] as a whole moving forward, we want to do more work there.”
In practice settings, the team will move away from one-on-one work and focus more on group vs. group work. For instance, the offensive line will work more against multiple defensive linemen rather than one-on-one pass rush drills. In having two rookie offensive linemen, it will allow the entire line to see more stunts from the opposing side of the line of scrimmage before game day.
“Everything’s two-on-two, three-on-threes,” McCarthy said. “[We] start two rookie offensive linemen, they’ve been stunting and gaming us since we got off the bus. We’ve been practicing it, but it’s not enough, so that’s something we’ve got to really focus on. Let’s give up the 9-on-7 in the combination period and let’s move it into the team period…I would say we are tweaking our practice structure.”
Away from the practice field, McCarthy wants to continue the group work philosophy so that young players are gaining the same instruction as the rest of the group. That differs from more individual meetings that players have grown accustomed to having with their position groups.
“We need to spend more time in group settings,” he said. “We need to build off of that and make sure that we do that. Where I’m going with this is, we’ve got to get away from as many individual meetings. We need more group [meetings], because our connection between positions needs to be higher.”
The Cowboys will look to rebound this week in time for a heavyweight clash with the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday night in Santa Clara where they will try and get away from an unpredictable first six games of the season.
“The good news is that’s what’s behind us, and it’s an opportunity to learn and grow and emphasize and do that,” McCarthy said. “It really goes back to what we just talked about. We need more group [success].”
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