Tag: Robert Prince

Cowboys finalize 2024 coaching staff; WR coach Robert Prince adds new duties

From @ToddBrock24f7: Prince will add pass game coordinator to his existing job duties. Al Harris’ promotion is official; other staff tweaks were announced.

Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy has put the final touches on his staff for the 2024 season, and several assistants have received promotions for the coming year.

Defensive backs coach Al Harris has, as expected and previously reported, been officially named the team’s assistant head coach, a role he’ll add to his current duties. The former Pro Bowl cornerback started on the coaching track when he interned with Joe Philbin’s Dolphins in 2012; he reunited with McCarthy, his onetime Packers coach, in Dallas in 2020.

“Al has been such an impactful member of our coaching staff and team,” McCarthy said, per Michael Gehlken of the Dallas Morning News. “I’m looking forward to his leadership in this expanded role. He’s a highly effective mentor and motivator, and our entire team will benefit from him taking this elevated step. Al’s dedication, teamwork, understanding of the game, and experience in developing the unique dynamics necessary to support a championship locker room are all a part of his special fit for this.”

Harris isn’t the only Cowboys staffer adding new responsibilities to his plate.

Robert Prince, the team’s wide receivers coach for the past two seasons and a veteran NFL and college coach for the better part of the past three decades, will serve as Cowboys’ new pass game coordinator. That role was previously held by Joe Whitt Jr., who left this offseason to become the Commanders’ new defensive coordinator under Dan Quinn.

Prince, 58, has previous experience as pass game coordinator at both Boise State and Colorado.

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ESPN’s Todd Archer points out a handful of other tweaks made to the Dallas org chart. Game management specialist Ryan Feder adds the title of assistant quarterbacks coach, assistant defensive backs coach Cannon Matthews becomes the new full-time safeties coach (after filling in for Whitt during the 2023 season), and assistant tight ends coach Chase Haslett is now listed as the Cowboys’ pass game specialist.

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‘Got to make the plays’: Cowboys calling on WR Michael Gallup to bounce back after rough Week 6

From @ToddBrock24f7: WR coach Robert Prince recognizes Gallup had a rough night vs the Chargers but says the sixth-year veteran is capable of turning it around.

To say Michael Gallup had a rough outing in the Week 6 win over the Chargers is an understatement.

The Cowboys receiver led the team in pass targets with 10, but he caught just three of them, for 24 yards. At one point- with less than four minutes left in the game, as a matter of fact- every Dallas player Dak Prescott had thrown to had a perfect catch percentage… except for Gallup, who had all seven incompletions next to his name.

“As a receiver, our job is to get open,” Cowboys wide receivers coach Robert Prince told reporters this week at The Star. “And when the ball is thrown to us, we’ve got to make the plays.”

The sixth-year man has been with Prescott longer than any other pass-catcher on the team. And Prescott is looking Gallup’s way more than any other option save for CeeDee Lamb: more than Tony Pollard (the speedy starter out of the backfield), more than Brandin Cooks (the savvy vet brought in to be the deep threat), more than Jake Ferguson (the security blanket), and more than Jalen Tolbert, KaVontae Turpin, Luke Schoonmaker, Deuce Vaughn, Peyton Hendershot, Hunter Luepke, and Sean McKeon combined.

Of Gallup’s 32 targets, he’s caught just 18 of them.

To be fair, though, Gallup has never been a high-percentage catch guy. His career-best mark is just 56.6%, and in three of his five completed seasons, he’s posted a year-end number of under 50%.

No, the 6-foot-1-inch Gallup has instead been the guy Prescott calls on to catch the tough passes, the ones in traffic, the contested grabs.

“One thing with MG is,” Prince noted, “he is a big body. And that’s his game; he likes to play the physical game, and he’s made a living at those type of things. Hopefully, he’ll continue to do those things.”

He certainly had opportunities Monday night.

Prescott put up a potential touchdown ball for Gallup in the first quarter (the first play in the video clip below), but it was just high. Later in the second quarter (the third play in the clip), Gallup was held just enough to disrupt his concentration on a 40-yard bullet that hit him in the hands and likely would have carried him into the end zone.

“He’s got to make those plays,” Prince explained, “Even though he got tugged and the ref didn’t throw the flag, we’ve still got to make it.”

The multiple drops in Week 6 fueled online chatter that Gallup didn’t deserve the five-year $62.5 million extension he signed last March and that the club should move on.

Prince acknowledges that the 27-year-old has had a long and difficult road back from the ACL tear he suffered in January 2022. Gallup himself admitted that it took over 16 months for him to feel like his old self and trust his body again.

“Obviously, he was coming back from his knee last year and thinking he’s going to have a better year this year. And unfortunately, sometimes things didn’t work out,” explained Prince. “But we put MG out on the island out there when we go on a three-by-one set, and he’s going to get press coverage, and we’re asking him to win those battles.”

While Monday’s bumpy performance had fans (with apparently very short-term or selective memory issues) calling for his job, Gallup has actually come up big as recently as Week 4.

He reeled in five out of six targets (83.3%) for 60 yards versus New England, six out of seven (85.7%) for 92 yards the week prior in Arizona. In those two games, played less than a month ago, Prescott averaged a 113.2 passer rating when going to Gallup.

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Overall, his stats (regular season only) do show that Gallup hasn’t quite returned to his pre-injury level of play. But he’s not that far off, either. Certainly not enough to cut bait.

Gms Catch % Yds/Gm Yds/Rec
Pre-ACL tear 55 55.5% 52.8 15.04
Post-ACL tear 20 53.8% 31.4 11.02

Prince is preaching patience with Gallup. And he’s got a vocal disciple in the WR room in Cooks, who’s already shown a willingness to mentor the team’s younger receivers; after Cooks worked with Lamb to get through his Week 5 frustrations (and his own touchdown drought), No. 88 caught every single ball that came to him Monday night at SoFi.

Before the game was even over, Cooks had already taken his message to Gallup.

Now, with promising newcomers Turpin, Tolbert, and Jalen Brooks waiting in the wings to sneak a few targets away here and there, the team will have to wait until Week 8 to see if the lesson has sunk in and Gallup starts to return to form.

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Giants WR Jalin Hyatt: ‘No hard feelings’ toward Cowboys WR coach after viral pro day moment

From @ToddBrock24f7: Many believed Robert Prince was taking a swipe at Hyatt at his pro day and now look forward to Hyatt chirping back come Sunday night.

Expect Cowboys wide receivers coach Robert Prince to be a central character in one of Sunday Night Football‘s hyped-up Week 1 subplots come gametime, even though the other key figure in the story now claims the chapter is closed.

Back in the spring, the 58-year-old assistant, who joined the Dallas staff prior to the 2022 season, found himself in a bit of a brouhaha with wide receiver prospect Jalin Hyatt, who now plays for the Giants.

During Tennessee’s pro day, an NFL Films camera crew captured a brief exchange between Prince and Hyatt that quickly went viral after it was featured in promos for the series Hey Rookie, Welcome to the NFL.

There are two ways to interpret the conversation. To the Giants faithful and those looking for drama, Prince is unabashedly pigeonholing the Volunteers draft prospect as nothing more than an undisciplined receiver who is fast and nothing more. Hyatt himself certainly seems to take Prince’s comments as a personal slight.

The flip side would paint Prince, who has coached football at the college and pro levels for over three decades, as merely trying to coax maximum effort out of the young man, urging him to take his game to another level with the NFL’s top scouts watching.

As soon as New York selected Hyatt with their third-round pick, though, the exchange became a juicy new bit of bulletin-board material for the longstanding Cowboys-Giants rivalry, the 123rd edition of which will play out Sunday night.

Asked about it recently by Dan Duggan of The Athletic, though, Hyatt seemed to downplay any sort of ongoing beef with the Cowboys assistant, calling him a “good dude, great coach.”

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“It was a competitive pro day,” Hyatt went on to explain. “We were both talking back and forth. That’s just how it sometimes is with football. He wanted me to do the best, and I respect him for that. There was obviously some stuff we didn’t see eye-to-eye on, but it is what it is. He has his opinions, I have my opinions, and at the same time, I’m trying to work to be the best player I can be. Whatever tips and things he had for me, I’m going to make sure I observe them. There’s no hard feelings. He’s obviously been in the league for a while, so I have a lot of respect for him.”

But a promising rookie with a chip on his shoulder who’s making his NFL debut and specifically looking to show up a coach on the opposite sideline in one of the sport’s premier rivalries is made-for-primetime intrigue. So plan on the NBC crew milking the Hyatt-Prince storyline for every ounce of contentious drama they can get.

Of course, Cowboys cornerbacks Trevon Diggs, Stephon Gilmore, and DaRon Bland may have something to say about how much chirping back at Prince the rookie actually gets to do.

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Giants’ Jalin Hyatt on Cowboys WR coach: ‘No hard feelings’

New York Giants WR Jalin Hyatt addresses his viral moment with Cowboys wide receiver coach Robert Prince, saying there are no hard feelings.

Leading up to the 2023 NFL draft, wide receiver Jalin Hyatt was the subject of uncertainty. Some viewed him as a first-round talent while others believed he was a product of Tennessee’s offensive system.

The argument was that Hyatt was a speed-only guy incapable of running a full route tree or being impactful within the confines of a more conservative offense.

During his pro day, an exchange between Hyatt and Dallas Cowboys wide receivers coach Robert Prince went viral. It featured that same skepticism.

Coach: You know what you are.

Hyatt: What am I, coach?

Coach: You know what you are.

Hyatt: What’s that?

Coach: I’m sayin’ like you have a skill set, right?

Hyatt: What’s that skill set?

Coach: It’s your speed.

Hyatt: But can run routes, though.

Coach: We’re about to see.

Hyatt: We will see.

The Cowboys ultimately passed on Hyatt in the draft, leaving the Giants to scoop him up in the third round.

Thus far, there have been no issues with Hyatt, his maturity or his route running. In fact, it’s been quite the opposite.

As for Hyatt and that viral exchange with Prince, he says there are “no hard feelings.”

“It did become a big deal. I remember looking at my phone and seeing it and I was like, ‘Man!’ I have a lot of respect for the Cowboys receivers coach. He was one of my 30 visits that I had to go meet — good dude, great coach,” Hyatt told Dan Duggan of The Athletic.

“It was a competitive pro day. We were both talking back-and-forth. That’s just how it is sometimes with football. He wanted me to do the best and I respect him for that. There was obviously some stuff that we didn’t see eye-to-eye on, but it is what it is. He has his opinions, I have my opinions and at the same time, I’m trying to work to be the best player I can be. Whatever tips and things he had for me, I’m going to make sure I observe them. There’s no hard feelings. He’s obviously been in the league for a while, so I have a lot of respect for him.”

Hyatt will make his NFL debut on Sunday night against Prince and the Cowboys, who believe the rookie is nothing more than a one-trick pony.

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Tracking Saints interviews for offensive and defensive coordinator

Two of the most important jobs are still open on Dennis Allen’s coaching staff: offensive and defensive coordinator. Keep up with our interview tracker:

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Two of the most important jobs are still available on Dennis Allen’s New Orleans Saints coaching staff: offensive and defensive coordinator. While there are options already in the building, the Saints have started their search by evaluating outsiders.

You can keep up with our Saints interview tracker. Here is every candidate to interview with New Orleans about the jobs, organized chronologically:

New Cowboys WR coach to interview for Saints OC job 2 days after hire

Robert Prince barely had time to unpack his boxes in Dallas, yet he’s interviewing for the offensive coordinator position in New Orleans. | From @ToddBrock24f7

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It’s been a whirlwind of a week for Robert Prince.

It was announced on Monday that the Cowboys were finalizing a deal to bring the 56-year-old wide receivers coach from Houston to Dallas to serve in that same role for the Cowboys in 2022. On Wednesday, the club made it official, formally hiring the longtime assistant who has also spent time on the sidelines in Detroit, Seattle, Jacksonville, and Atlanta.

And on Thursday, the very next day, it was revealed the Prince would be interviewing on Friday with the New Orleans Saints for their offensive coordinator vacancy.

It’s a surreal turn of events for someone who ostensibly hasn’t even figured out yet how their key card works at The Star in Frisco.

 

Prince’s only OC experience came in the college ranks, at Boise State, coincidentally enough. Prince was the school’s wide receivers coach for Kellen Moore’s senior season, then graduated to offensive coordinator for two more seasons with the Broncos after Moore went pro. The two reunited in Detroit in 2014; Prince was the Lions’ new WR coach during Moore’s final year with the club.

With the Lions, Prince led a position group that included Calvin Johnson, Marvin Jones, Golden Tate, Anquan Boldin, and Kenny Golladay. He’d have quite an assortment of weapons in Dallas, too, with a corps that finished 2021 at just under 5,000 receiving yards.

But several Cowboys receivers currently have questionable futures in Dallas. Michael Gallup, Cedrick Wilson, Noah Brown, and Malik Turner are all set to become free agents, and Amari Cooper is among the most speculated-about names in the league these days.

If they all- or even most of them- return to the Cowboys, Prince would have plenty to work with.

But right now, it’s not even a lock that Prince will keep the job he just accepted on Wednesday.

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Cowboys hire Texans receivers coach Robert Prince

The Dallas Cowboys have hired Houston Texans receivers coach Robert Prince to fill the same job with the NFC East club.

The Houston Texans will be in the market for a new receivers coach in 2022.

According to Todd Archer from ESPN, the Dallas Cowboys have hired Robert Prince to be their new receivers coach, replacing Adam Henry.

For the Texans, it is another vacancy across the entire coaching staff. Houston fired Tim Kelly as offensive coordinator, and defensive line coach Bobby King left to become the inside linebackers coach for the Tennessee Titans. Multiple teams have also been interested in quarterbacks coach Pep Hamilton to fill their offensive coordinator vacancies.

Prince has big ties to Dallas offensive coordinator Kellen Moore, who was on the Detroit Lions in 2014, the year that Prince joined the NFC North club as a receivers coach. Prince also coached at Boise State, Moore’s alma mater, from 2001-02 and later from 2011-13.

The Texans have reportedly hired defensive coordinator Lovie Smith as their new coach. Houston has another assistant role to fill as they finalize Smith’s promotion and new staff.

Nico Collins credits Texans WR coach Robert Prince and the veterans for his development

Houston Texans rookie receiver Nico Collins gives the credit to WR coach Robert Prince and the veterans for his development.

Houston Texans receiver Nico Collins has shown promising development throughout his 12 games in 2021.

The Texans drafted Collins with a third-round pick (No. 89 overall) from Michigan. The 6-4, 215-pound receiver, who opted out of his final year at Michigan, has caught 28 passes for 344 yards and a touchdown through 12 games with the Texans.

Collins doesn’t take the credit entirely. The 22-year-old knows that his development has been the result of the investment that receivers coach Robert Prince has put into him throughout 2021.

“Just coming in from college to the NFL, it’s a whole different league,” Collins said Monday. “Everybody’s good, so I’m glad I got R.P. (Prince). He’s my coach, and I’m glad I got the vets in our room.”

Collins caught three passes for 33 yards and a touchdown in the Texans’ 41-29 upset of the Los Angeles Chargers Sunday afternoon in Week 16 at NRG Stadium.

It isn’t just Prince that has had a role in Collins’ progression. Collins also credits veteran receivers Chris Conley, Danny Amendola, and Chris Moore — among others — for his development through 12 games.

Said Collins: “I appreciate them for getting me ready for this opportunity. We came up and my time came and they trusted me because they’ve always been there for me. Whatever questions I have, they’re always there to help me out. I appreciate them a lot, being there in my corner. I’m just glad that I have them in our room together.”

Collins doesn’t just see himself as an understudy, but also as a partner. The Texans’ passing game will need Collins to be a part of the downfield attack as they play the San Francisco 49ers in Week 17 in their last road game of the season at Levi’s Stadium.

“We’re still growing as a unit, we’re still getting better,” said Collins.

WR Danny Amendola says Texans have ‘a lot of familiar faces’

Houston Texans receiver Danny Amendola says that he sees a lot of former connections with his new team, and not just with the New England Patriots.

The Houston Texans signed free agent receiver Danny Amendola to provide veteran depth to the unit.

For Amendola, a former The Woodlands High School product, coming to play for the AFC South team is somewhat of a homecoming.

However, it isn’t just a homecoming in terms of Amendola’s relationship to the greater Houston area. Amendola also feels old connections with some of the front office and coaching staff for the Texans.

“A lot of familiar faces in the building,” Amendola said.

The most notable connection is general manager Nick Caserio, who was the New England Patriots’ director of player personnel going back to 2008. Amendola crossed over with him from 2013-17, and also with fellow receiver Brandin Cooks, whose lone season in New England was 2017.

Amendola also played for Texans receivers coach Robert Prince, who was the interim coach for the Lions for the final five games of 2020.

While the Texans provide a chance to restart old connections, it also presents a chance to start new connections for Amendola, chiefly with Houston’s new starting quarterback, Tyrod Taylor.

Said Amendola: “Great player, Tyrod, a guy I have been watching and playing against for a long time. We finally got to link up and play on the same team so I am excited about that.”

While Amendola was in New England, Taylor was the Buffalo Bills’ starting quarterback from 2015-17, even leading the Bills to the postseason in his final season with the AFC East club that saw New England twice a year.

“Lot of respect for a lot of guys in this locker room,” said Amendola. “We got a lot of good players, a lot of good athletes. This team is hungry and I could tell that when I walked win the locker room the other day, how hungry this team is to win. And I am excited to strap it up on Sunday.”

The Texans play the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 1 Sunday at 12:00 p.m. Central Time at NRG Stadium.

5 takeaways from Texans training camp Day 14

The Houston Texans held their 14th day of training camp. Here are some takeaways from practice at Houston Methodist Training Center.

HOUSTON — The Houston Texans held their 12th practice on the 14th day of camp at Houston Methodist Training Center. After making his return on Monday, head coach David Culley said Deshaun Watson is unlikely to play in the Texans preseason opener against the Green Bay Packers on Saturday.

“Well, as I said before — it’s day-to-day with him,” Culley said prior to Tuesday’s practice. “He’d been out for a while, and he was back today. We’re just taking it day-to-day, as we have been from the start of training camp.”

Here are five observations from the Texans’ practice.