Let’s get physical.
Wednesday’s practice will have plenty of extra pop for the Cowboys in Oxnard as players will be wearing pads for the first time in 2021. And after Tuesday’s session, the last of four practices in just helmets and shorts, everybody is ready for football to feel more like football.
“The pads are coming,” head coach Mike McCarthy told reporters before Tuesday’s on-the-field session. “We all have time clocks in this training camp environment, and it’s time to get going. We’ve had three install practices where we’ve been able to do a lot of teaching, get a lot of drill work done, really focusing on the football as much as we possibly can. The game management- we’ve done more of that for the first three practices than the norm- but we’re really starting to get into some more football situations. Especially with the pads coming on tomorrow [Wednesday], I think the heightened importance of the O-line and D-line play definitely show up when you do put the pads on.”
For at least one of those linemen, defensive tackle Neville Gallimore, everything leading up to now has been just warm-up. The serious work begins when the pads go on.
“That’s what we’re looking for. That’s when the real training camp starts, for sure, ” the second-year man out of Oklahoma said Tuesday. “Tomorrow we get the pads on, we really get a chance to get that true feel. Obviously up the tempo, up the physicality. Personally, that’s what I’m looking forward to. You guys are going to see the real show tomorrow.”
Right guard Zack Martin, entering his eighth season, knows strapping on the pads is a big step in the yearly ritual of getting ready for opening day. This time it’s perhaps especially important for Martin, who missed a combined six games due to injury in 2020 and was even pressed into making a start at tackle along the way. But the six-time Pro Bowler says he’ll treat Wednesday as just another day at work.
“I think it’ll be good,” Martin said. “I think Coach has obviously done a nice job kind of getting our legs underneath us here with these four days. We’re moving pretty good out there. Obviously, it’ll be a little more physical tomorrow, but practice is pretty much practice.”
For younger players, padded practice is a second chance to make a first impression with the coaching staff. McCarthy admitted that the addition of pads flips a switch in some guys and helps coaches get a truer sense of the player.
“It always has, it always will,” McCarthy commented when asked if pads change the evaluation process. “Certain guys look better in pads than they do without pads. That’s the fact.”
One of those youngsters, though, has already turned heads in camp. Third-round pick Nahshon Wright has shown considerable promise at cornerback thus far. But the Oregon State product expects to still turn things up a notch further when the pads go on.
“I think it’ll get a little more physical,” Wright told 105.3 The Fan on Wednesday morning. “I think this is the reason why we play, because we like the physicality of the game. It’ll be good to be back in pads for the first time in a few months.”
But for all the hype about the Cowboys getting back into full football gear, McCarty and the staff are quick to point out that it’s still just practice. There will be no full-on tackling as the team follows new guidelines that specify a very deliberate ramp-up to tackle football.
“Some of these rules that have been put in place for the CBA, I think, are very healthy,” McCarthy said. “As a coach, there’s some things you’d like to adjust, but they do give you a teaching progression. And I think, like anything that you’re trying to do- whether you’re teaching footwork development or more of a spacing and open-field movement drill- you have to do that in an OTA, and then bring it to a heightened environment that we’re in without pads, and then go into pads. That’s a very good progression.”
McCarthy and the Cowboys were recently fined by the league for “excessive contact” during OTAs back in late May. Training camp thus far has been a largely hands-off affair. The absence of body armor has only helped the two-hand-touch vibe.
“They like to joke around and say ‘The Underwear Olympics,'” third-year safety Donovan Wilson laughed, “but tomorrow, we put the pads on. We’ll get to fly around and finally get to make some contact out there.”
Not too much, though. If the first day of training camp is like the first day of school, the first padded practice often results in a schoolyard brawl as players sometimes have different notions of how much contact is appropriate. Video clips always seem to surface of in-practice fights, but McCarthy hopes to keep what he calls “extracurricular activity” out of Oxnard.
“We’ll definitely talk about our first padded practice,” the coach offered. “I think it’s important to go through practice etiquette and the ethics of what go on in a padded practice. At the end of the day, the extracurricular activity- that was kind of cool in the ’90s, but I’m not cool anymore. It’s a waste of time… We want to get our work done, we want it done the right way. But I think some of those things that went on in the past, I don’t really have much patience for.”
McCarthy expects Cowboys practice to stay business-as-usual… even if the dress code officially changes starting Wednesday.
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