OXNARD, Calif. — The Dallas Cowboys’ 2025 NFL season opener on Thursday, Sept. 4 at the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles is just 27 days away.
That’s why it made all the sense in the world for the Cowboys to have a fully padded practice on Thursday, especially with their preseason opener at the Los Angeles Rams coming up on Saturday. However, Thursday’s practice ended up getting perhaps a little too physical for the Cowboys’ own good.
Pro Bowl tight end Jake Ferguson collided with linebacker Kenneth Murray in an 11-on-11 team drill in the red zone, which left the tight end laying on the field momentarily. Ferguson walked away from the collision on his own, but he didn’t return to practice. Murray was operating to the left as the middle of Cover 2 coverage on the play, and he anticipated Ferguson working his way back toward the middle of the end zone. That’s when they smacked into each other.
New Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer said on Friday that Ferguson, who has a back contusion, is “doing good” and Ferguson proved that by participating in practice.
“I got to keep my teammate up on that,” Murray said after practice Thursday. “It is [hard to hold off] because down in the red zone, everything happens fast. Just trying to be on it quick. There’s not a lot of space, not a lot of room. Moving laterally, so yes it’s pretty tough. … If it’s a guy on the other team, I could care less, but I mean for my teammate, Ferg is a guy that’s contributed a lot for the team. He’s going to contribute a lot this year, so I think it’s hard when you see that happen to a teammate. So you try to apologize and keep pushing.”
Jaydon Blue exited practice with a lower leg injury
Rookie running back Jaydon Blue, the fifth-round pick out of Texas whose speed has everyone at Cowboys camp drooling, also went down Thursday. He suffered a lower leg injury on an awkward fall after Dallas edge rusher Sam Williams grabbed the rookie’s face mask on a running play. Blue was subsequently carted off the field before returning out of uniform later on while dealing with a bruised ankle.
“Jaydon is still getting some testing done,” Schottenheimer said Friday. “I don’t think it’s anything too serious.”
Williams clarified on Friday that after watching the practice film back that he grabbed Blue by the shoulder pad, not the facemask.
“I just can’t twist him [Blue]. It was heat of the moment. Good football play, but I have to take care of my teammates better,” Williams said.
Building a culture of physicality
Ever since Schottenheimer was promoted to the job of head coach, he’s preached physicality and being able to win at the line of scrimmage. His players have bought into that philosophy thus far as indicated by their willingness to go the entire practice on Thursday with the pads on.
“We’re going to practice physical. I challenged our guys yesterday, and I’ll share this with you guys because I’m incredibly proud of it,” Schottenheimer said. “I told them, ‘hey, we’re going in pads. We need to get our pads down and play with better pad level. We got to have a physical practice. In the first two periods, if we do it right, which they’ve always done it right, then I’ll take them off and put the soft shells on.”
Practice began, and the team practiced well in pads. Schottenheimer called the players up, and said they could take them off and put on the shells, a common practice about halfway through the regular season around Week 8 or 9. The players told Schottenheimer on Thursday that they wanted to keep the pads on to get more work going all out. That made the head coach proud.
“To me, that tells you that they’re buying into the fact that we need to be a physical team, and nothing gets you more fired up than that as a coach because they’re embracing the grind,” Schottenheimer said. … “We’re not backing off on the fact we’re going to be a physical team.”
However, Schottenheimer almost had the players take the pads off following the collision between Ferguson and Murray in the red zone. He made sure to have a talk with his guys about practicing with an edge without going over the edge. That’s the last bit of embracing a physical culture that the Cowboys have left to master.
“I was very prepared to take the pads, and this was actually right after Fergie had the thing, and you know things happen. Fergie and Kenneth talked. … It gets addressed. It never bleeds from there [work] to there [personal]. It really doesn’t,” Schottenheimer said. “You’re a family. … To me, when you start with your football mantra and talk about all about the ball, and then you talk about owning the line of scrimmage. There’s one way to own the line of scrimmage, and that’s to play physical. …Those [the Ferguson collision and injury] are things you want to avoid. So those are things that we talked about. It wasn’t the only one. We had too many guys on the ground yesterday. … We’re getting there.”
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