Jane Slater joins The Herd with Colin Cowherd

Jane Slater talks with Colin about the latest news and notes out of Dallas Cowboys training camp.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's bring in James Later, reporter NFL Network covering the
Cowboys for a long time. Now. She does inside training
camp every day starting at ten am easterning. Jane is
joining us live now. All right, so, Jane, We've got
some breaking news on the Cowboys, and I'm gonna let
you serve it up to the audience. What is the latest,
Mike McCarthy is saying on Doc Yeah, Mike McCarthy just

(00:22):
on the podium there in Oxnard, California, saying that Dak
Prescott they're going to take a step back, but it's
not a setback. In other words, they just want to
be a lot more conservative with this throwing shoulder. What
does that mean? That means we're not going to see
him in the Hall of Fame game on Thursday, and
we're not gonna see him throwing at practice today. And
I can tell you I was there on the first
pod of practice when it felt like a fairly innocuous injury. Colin.

(00:46):
We saw him go off to the side talk to
trainers right before they got to team drills, and after
that he was jogging off the football field And it
was strange at the time that we're sitting around waiting
for him to do what was a schedule to interview
with a bunch of the local media, and that thing
got pushed back a couple of hours, and we had
a Fomer player out there and I said, do they
normally take a player somewhere else if they need an

(01:06):
m r I of some sort? And I was told yes,
And then around six o'clock we got this update that
he did in fact have an m r I that
showed the strain. It was a latissimus muscle in his
throwing shoulder. And so since then we've seen him at practice.
He's going through the drills, he's showing a lot of
strength in his lower legs. Of course, that ankle looks
like it's been doing just fine because he's been working
on the resistance chords lateral moves. But every time we've

(01:29):
seen him sort of marking plays or going through the
motions of quarterbacks, he's not using that throwing shoulder. And
anytime he gets the ball back to someone, it's with
the non throwing hand and it's sort of an underhand throw.
So it doesn't sound like we haven't been given in
the indication that we should be concerned about this, But
we haven't seen him throwing since that first padded practice
back on they call it. You know, it's interesting. I

(01:51):
saw a promo this morning or last night for Hard
Knocks on HBO, so I I watched it, and of
course it sucks me in I I love football, and
it's cowboy when you're there, because I I've always said
ideally distractions are bad for this league. Now the Cowboys
because they're so popular, and you know, Dallas is a
major market, so you've got the NFL networks there and

(02:12):
there's always an NFL reporter, and Jane Slater's there, and
Peter Schrager's there and the you know, so it's it's
not the Jacks like, but this is a layer of
a bunch of cameras. When you were there, did you
sense the cameras? I mean, give me an idea what
it's like when the Hard Knocks cruise around football. I'm
just I wasn't there. I'd like to I'd like to

(02:32):
hear that it's so different than when the cameras were
last there. I think the last time the cameras were
there for Hard Knocks is back in either oh eight
or oh three. Don't quote me on that. But even
ahead of it, I asked, you know, someonein the building,
I said, are you guys at all concerned about because
it's not like you get a choice when Hard Knocks
comes knocking on your door, and not a lot of
people get to pull the urban mire and say we're
not going to have them in our building. They said,
when the all or Nothing cameras were there, they didn't

(02:54):
really notice him because the cameras had gotten so much
smaller from the last time that Hard Knocks was there.
And honestly, that was sort of my feeling when I
was there too. Now, keep in mind, I'm sort of
used to the pump and circumstance in Dallas. It really
is different when I go and cover, say the Saints
in New Orleans or the Titans in Tennessee. Even Randall
Cobb went said to me, when he was in the
locker room just for a regular season game, it always

(03:15):
felt like it was playoff media coverage. And so this
was an outsider coming in to the locker room. And
so I think, if you're used to it, and a
lot of these guys are a little bit like Tinkerbell,
they sort of dived out applause. That's what we're used
to here in Dallas. I don't think it bothers them.
If anything, I think it's given this group the sort
of energy that they needed. And there's a lot of
guys with big personalities on the defensive side of the ball.

(03:36):
I feel like it's sort of energized them at a
little bit, a little bit of a way. You know.
There's I see pictures memes or whatever they call them,
and uh, I saw one about a week ago, and
it's it showed Zeke in some picture where you look
heavy and that like really heavy, like O was Joe Looney?
That was Joe Looney colin Okay, okay? And then I

(03:57):
saw him in the camp and I'm like, oh, look cut,
So was that every I mean, does there There are
a lot of people now that are saying, Okay, he's
slowly declining, he has no Ha's been in the great shape?
Is that talked about in the circles? Is that like
an issue that Zeke's as good as Zeke wants to
be in shape? So I will explain the name. Joe

(04:18):
Looney was a center here for Dallas that just signed
with the Cowboys, and he came out one day at
training camp with the cut off shirt and it looked
like a very large sea. So a lot of people
had fun with that. Zeke did look like he just
wasn't in the best of shape. I do think that,
you know, a lot of people don't realize that connection
that he and Dad had. And then you lost, of course,
both of your tackles and Lyle Collins and Tyron Smith.

(04:39):
And I think Zeke was x to do a lot
last year, and even he said, I'm not a fumbler,
and I think it's something that he took to heart.
I don't think he enjoyed being a punchline in the
media or with the fans last year. A guy that
you know, it performed so admirably the first couple of years.
But I'd like to remind people keep in mind who
your offensive line was when he started. You had Travis
Frederick at center. It felt like which Avis Frederick went

(05:00):
out with Dean bore syndrome, and he started to see
this old line start to to fall apart of it,
this great wall of Dallas that you've gotten so used to,
you know. I think it was significant that he spent
this off season really putting in the work with a
guy that's worked out with guys like Leonard Fournett and
Melvin Gordon in the off season, and even he said
he's the lights that he's been since his freshman or
at Ohio State. Uh but when you look at the numbers,

(05:24):
it was one of his worst years since that freshman
year at Ohio State. In fact, he was behind Carlos
Hyde when he put up this sort of number. So
I think that we've even talked to McCarthy about this.
Do you want this to be a running football team?
He says he wants to be to be a winning
football team. And there's a lot of guys to feed.
When you look at you know, a guy like Ceedee
Lamb must Year, You've got a Mary Cooper, Michael Gallup,
and then you're seeing the Titans come along again, Blake

(05:45):
Darwin and Dalton Schultz. How do you possibly feed all
these guys? What we saw when this team was successful
was you had to pick your poison. I think that's
what they're hoping to go back to. But that starts
with ball protection. And even I thought it was interesting
that Zeke said that he said, the hopes of your
team right on that football and not dropping well the
hopes of the Cowboy fans wrote on it to this year,
so I think it's it's it's significant for him more

(06:07):
importantly because he got paid two years earlier and a
lot of the fans haven't let him forget that. But
when you talk to Mike McCarthy, it does seem like
he's got a great amount of respect for Zeke. A
lot of people don't see the Zeke that a lot
of his teammates do, which is the guy that's at
the front of the class. He's a quiet leader. But
I do get the sense that he's taken a lot
in this stuff to heart, and it's really showed with
the way that he showed up training camp. By the way,

(06:29):
Mike McCarthy at practice, do you sense the leadership? Last year?
You couldn't go to camp. There wasn't a camp. Your
takeaway in McCarthy in a couple of minutes your your
takeaway on his presence as the coach of the Cowboys,
he says, this feels a little bit like the first year,
and we were able to be at practice and sort
of a limited capacity. We were pretty far removed from them,
but it just felt flat last year, And you know,

(06:51):
I was able to dump out a little bit of
my reporter notebook when I told you about how the
players spelled about this defensive staff last year. There was
just a failure to connect. In other words, I don't
think a lot of these coaches, like Jim tomsallin mc nolan,
were adequately prepared for COVID, which happened two years in
a might McCarthy's, you know, being named the head coach
here and I was told that when you know, the
zoom would sort of spark out and the players weren't

(07:15):
able to get online. They were they were checking out,
and you're trying to introduce this new scheme and the
guys just weren't feeling it. And there wasn't the music
at a practice. Now we've got Mike McCarthy over a
loud speaker. We were kind of cracking up during many
camps and O T S. Where's that that sound coming from?
Is that Mike? He's literally miked up at practice, so
you see him barking out things. They're doing a lot
of down and distance, they're focusing on situational awareness, and

(07:37):
I think he sort of went back to the drawing
board himself. And I think Dan Quinn really helps him
in other words, well, he's focusing on the offense, and
of course he's got been back and do they're helping
him out as well. This year you've got Dan Quinn
that's gotten these guys to buy in so much to
his system. I mean it was even reported and he
players talked about this. He had players listening to run
DMC lyrics and it was a lesson in note taking.

(07:59):
He and them to take away the most important things
from that song. And so he's connecting with these players
and a lot of these guys weren't born when the
run DMC song. You know he's trying to get on
their level. And when you see him out there literally
going bull in the ring with these guys and working
with them, like you know, out there on their technique
and he's got his Jay's on in the backward had
I think it resonates with the guys. Even seeing Brandy

(08:21):
greg Gregory really perk up someone that connected with them
during his pro day back at Nebraska, having these guys
volunteer how much they loved and when this early they
weren't saying that about might know like Jim tom Seua
last year, good stuff Jane Slater, NFL Network. She just
reported the story that Dak has had not not necessarily
a setback, but they're gonna, you know, probably fewer reps

(08:43):
over the next few days. Jane, Great slof great stuff
is always, thank you so much and congrats on your abs.
They're almost visible. We're just a couple of days away
from them being visible.