Bill Belichick and the Patriots are well-known throughout the league for being willing to go to any length necessary to gain even a slight advantage over an opponent.
As they prepare to visit AT&T Stadium in Week 4, the Cowboys are well aware of that. And coaches are confident that two Dallas veterans who are now wearing the red, white, and blue are being pumped for inside information by the New England staff on what Dak Prescott & Co. will be trying to do come Sunday.
Running back Ezekiel Elliott, a key cog of the Dallas offense for seven years, and Will Grier, who spent two seasons in the Cowboys quarterbacks room and running the practice squad scout team, are both Patriots now.
And Cowboys offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer knows they both have intel that could come in handy for the Patriots defense.
“We’re always aware of it,” Schottenheimer told reporters Monday. “Those are things that we monitor every week, but certainly we know that Will knows where a lot of the bones are buried. Zeke obviously does, as well.”
Facing former players happens almost every week, given the nature of free agency in today’s game. The Giants added wide receiver Cole Beasley to their practice squad prior to the season opener against Dallas. In Week 2, the Cowboys were reunited with kicker Greg Zuerlein and wide receiver Randall Cobb. And last Sunday, tight end Geoff Swaim counted as a familiar face on the Arizona sideline.
Any of them could have provided their new team with some piece of coded verbiage to listen for, some tendency to safeguard against, some little edge to capitalize on.
“Everybody does it,” Schottenheimer explained. “You get a player that’s been somewhere, you bring him in, and you talk to him about different things. And then you’re very selective about how much you put into it.”
But obviously, you also make some alterations, too.
After a breakup, you change the locks. You come up with a new Netflix password. You do things differently so you don’t get burned by that ex who knows you inside and out.
That’s exactly what Schottenheimer hinted that the Cowboys will be doing this week.
“Those are things you talk about and you think about, ‘Hey, let’s adjust this one,'” he said from The Star. “We certainly have more than one hand signal for most of our core concepts. And sometimes you can use it to your advantage. Because they think they know what’s coming, they hear something and think, ‘Hey, it’s this,’ and we’re smart enough to adjust those things.”
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It’s well-documented gamesmanship, and Schottenheimer knows that Belichick won’t rely too heavily on anything Elliott and Grier have to say about the way the Cowboys were doing things last year under Kellen Moore or even this summer in camp. The grumpy guy in the hoodie didn’t get to 300 career wins by using an outdated decoder ring; he no doubt has a solid game plan to deal with Dallas.
“His big thing is he wants to make you play left-handed,” according to Schottenheimer. “He’s going to try to take away your best player. So he’ll have a plan for trying to find our pieces- whether he wants to take CeeDee away, or how he wants to attack the run game.”
But that doesn’t mean he won’t listen if Elliott has a secret to share.
And if Grier just happens to recall some of the details from that Cowboys playbook he was holding just a few weeks ago…
“I’m sure he’s definitely being interrogated,” Schottenheimer smirked, “and probably spending a lot of late nights with their defensive coaching staff.”
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