The offseason is supposed to be downtime for NFL players. A chance to rest up and heal after the brutal punishment of a year on the job, all while gearing up mentally and physically to do it all over again. That’s not how it went for former Cowboys center Travis Frederick. He didn’t get to enjoy the carefree release of January, February, and March… because he was contemplating walking away from the grind that he knew would come soon after.
Frederick joined former NFLers Joe Thomas and Andrew Hawkins on their podcast The ThomaHawk Show this week. Over the course of their conversation, the five-time Pro Bowler recapped his well-documented battle with and return from Guillain-Barre Syndrome, shared his thoughts on Dak Prescott’s contract negotiations and the team’s prospects for 2020, and talked about whether coaching might be his future.
After six seasons anchoring the offensive line, Frederick said electing to not come back for a seventh was hard. But now he feels it was the right move.
“I feel relieved,” Frederick said on Wednesday’s show. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and it was tough. It’s a tough decision to make. You try to weigh all the options and see where you’re going to be, but I’ve spent probably the last three months going through it. And it’s been a lot of pressure and a lot of stress. So now it feels like the world’s off my shoulders.”
The former first-round draft pick, chosen 31st overall by the Cowboys in 2013 out of Wisconsin, knows his retirement caught many off-guard, especially after earning a Pro Bowl nod last year. But that accolade in his comeback season of 2019 actually made it easier for him to hang up his cleats for good.
“There’s something about not being able to get to the level that you expect of yourself. Whether you believe that the level that you’re currently playing at is good enough to serve the team is one thing, versus being as good as you think you can be. I always said going in that I didn’t want to get to the point where I couldn’t leave on my own terms, and I didn’t want to get to the point where I was a problem and needed to be taken out or asked to leave. I wanted to be near the top and get out and try to be as healthy as I possibly can be.
“So after going through what I went through last year and making it back and going through the year, I felt like I got better through the year. And I got to the end of the year and was playing well again and got selected to the Pro Bowl, which I’m so fortunate to, I thought that was a great cap for the comeback. I felt like I was ready. I was ready to move on.”
Once he made the decision to retire, Frederick says he reached out to Jerry and Stephen Jones in the team’s front office. The standard pomp and circumstance of a farewell press conference, which one might have expected for a Cowboy of Frederick’s caliber, didn’t happen… thanks to COVID-19 isolation guidelines.
But while Frederick still has a place at the team table, don’t expect him to strap on the headset as a member of the Joneses’ coaching staff anytime soon.
“I got a chance to talk to them when I retired; I called them and let them know it was happening. Unfortunately, we couldn’t meet in person because of the restrictions down here. They both mentioned that they were willing to have me around as much or as little as I want. The Cowboys organization does a tremendous job of supporting their alumni and providing opportunities for them to be around the fans and to be around the game. I may or may not take advantage of that, but I don’t see myself moving into any sort of coaching role or anything like that.
“One of the benefits of retiring is that you get more time. The coaches have much less time. The year that I was out, they allowed me to be a quasi-coach. So I could go in there and work with the players and help with some of the stuff, but then I got to go home at the same time as the players. I didn’t have to stay until midnight working on gameplan stuff.”
So what is next for the 29-year-old Frederick?
“Number one, the thing that’s next for me is spending time with the family and being back around,” Frederick said. “We’re working on building a house back up in Wisconsin, so moving back up to the Promised Land. You have these things called seasons up there that we don’t get a lot of in Texas.”
But Frederick’s excitement about floorplans and Midwestern weather cycles doesn’t mean there aren’t some items on his career accomplishment list that went unchecked.
His biggest regret is a goal he thinks this year’s team could still accomplish without him.
“Yeah, I think for me, number one is: win the Super Bowl. That’s the ultimate goal for so many teams, and generally, when you come into the league, that’s what you’re looking to do. And we weren’t able to do that. That was one of the hard parts about retiring this year: I feel like the players that the Cowboys have on their roster and the direction that they’re moving and the coaching staff, I feel good. I feel like this is a year that they can have a chance to compete for that. I had to walk away from that opportunity.”
For his teammates to make good on that chance, much will depend on the man Frederick handed the ball to at the start of every play. Having spent so much time with and around Dak Prescott, Frederick had a unique perspective on his quarterback’s ongoing contract situation. And he knows that the way it is playing out in the public eye is only part of the story.
“I think everything in the media is probably on the right track: I think, at this point, it’s probably a matter of how long the deal is. And I think it makes total sense. When you talk about the TV contracts and when they come up and how the TV contracts affect the cap, it makes total sense that you want to make it work that way. And it also makes total sense for the Cowboys that they don’t want it to meet up with those TV contracts, that they would like to have a little more time with them under a certain contract. You definitely see both points equally being made.
“So that’s probably where there’s some stuff there, but I think it’s been clearly made on both sides that Dak would like to play for the Cowboys, and that the Cowboys would like to have him. But ultimately, this isn’t a game about what everyone likes to happen. There aren’t people that are going to compromise on certain things because it’s your livelihood, it’s the livelihood of your entire family, and oftentimes for some guys, it’s about how much good you can do in the world and things like that.
“And I think Dak is one of those people that is thinking about a lot more people than just himself in a deal like this. You see a lot from the fans: ‘Oh, it’s so much money. How can you possibly turn that down?’ or, ‘Quit arguing over whatever it is.’ It’s so much bigger than that. There’s so much more that goes into it. And I think it’s important that people understand that, that it’s not just him that he’s thinking about.”
A thoughtful answer from a thoughtful guy. As it stands now, it sure sounds like Frederick may just decide to quietly ride off into the sunset: no goodbye presser, no coaching gig, no broadcast job that keeps him in front of the fans. Just a highly-decorated and universally-respected Cowboys career that came to a close way too soon… and may well end with his name someday hanging forever in the team’s Ring of Honor.
