One of the biggest staples of football season is that the Dallas Cowboys will be on television at pretty much every possible turn. When the regular season schedule is being developed, every network tries to get their hands on the world’s biggest ratings draw as much as possible. This year, Dallas will have six games in primetime windows in addition to being the late-afternoon Thanksgiving game for what feels like the thousandth year in a row.
However the love is spread around a bit more when it comes to preseason games and with the slate being reduced to just three weeks a few years ago, the opportunities for the world to watch Dallas’ bench players live has dwindled. This year, the NFL has decided not to broadcast any of the team’s three exhibition games live nationally at all.
This year, the NFL will not have a nationally televised live game during the first official week of the preseason, jumping from the Hall of Fame game that pits CJ Stroud and the Houston Texans against Caleb Williams and the Chicago Bears, straight to Preseason Week 2.
The NFL Network normally attempts to show every week’s slate of action at some point over the course of the week, whether on tape delay or a full replay. That will likely be the biggest chance for fans who are not in the viewing area to watch the progress of the players who they’ll read about throughout training camp.
The Cowboys three opponents have been known, and now the dates and kickoff times have been locked in as well.
Week 1: Sunday, August 11 @ Los Angeles Rams, 3:30 pm Central
Week 2: Sunday, August 18 @ Las Vegas Raiders, 9 pm Central
Week 3: Sunday, August 24 vs Los Angeles Chargers, 3 pm Central
With the completion of minicamp this week, the next time Dallas will come together as a group will be for training camp.
That will once again be in Oxnard, CA which is always the reason why the Cowboys have a decidedly west-coast flavor to their first two preseason contests.
While the official start date hasn’t been announced, following the regular ebb and flow of their practices before the first exhibition likely has Mike McCarthy’s opening press conference on Wednesday, July 24 with fan-centric activities happening on Friday and Saturday.
The team will travel to L.A. to face the Rams at SoFi Coliseum (the stadium Jerry Jones helped build) before returning to Oxnard for the final week of camp.
After the team travels to Las Vegas for Week 2, they will fly back to Dallas for a final week of camp. That will be truncated by the home game against the Chargers, after which roster cutdowns are the next big deal. Teams must reduce their rosters to 53 players by Tuesday, August 27.