Despite a difference of 20 degrees between the two cities, Dallas will practice outside in advance of Thursday night’s game in Chicago.
Weather was a significant factor in the Cowboys’ Week 12 loss in New England. The elements may come into play once again in Week 14 when the team travels to Soldier Field for a December night game against the Bears.
As of Monday morning, Chicago’s Thursday forecast calls for a high temperature of 41 degrees during the day and a nighttime low of 31. While the chance of precipitation is just ten percent, winds are expected to be between 10 and 20 miles per hour and could make both the passing attack and the kicking game trickier than usual.
Coach Jason Garrett says the team- which is treating this Monday like a Thursday of a normal game week, with kickoff just over 96 hours away- is doing what they can to prepare for the conditions.
“We’re just going to practice outside today on the grass field,” Garrett told 105.3 The Fan on Monday morning. “Obviously, you can’t simulate the weather exactly, but it’s a little bit chillier today for this time of year in Dallas. Hopefully that will help our guys. And that’s really what we always try to do when we play on the road in different environments- you try your best, if you can, to simulate the environment. If you can’t, you just go with the normal routine.”
But that’s not exactly the strategy the team seemed to take ahead of their Foxborough trip a few weeks ago. Heavy rains had been almost guaranteed for that November 24 gameday in New England. Yet Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott played the entire first quarter struggling with grip on a wet ball before finally deciding to try a glove on his throwing hand.
The morning after that 13-9 defeat, Garrett confirmed that the team had not, in fact, spent the entire week outdoors as a way to help prepare for the cold and soggy conditions.
“We practiced outside on Wednesday, and we practiced inside on Thursday and Friday,” Garrett told The Fan during a phone interview on November 25.
Many felt as though Prescott and the offense could have easily been better prepared for rain.
“We chose to do what we did for lots of different reasons, and that’s what we did,” Garrett said the day following the New England loss. “You certainly could have gone outside as well.”
Or you could have done what the Ravens did leading up to their home game this past week in rainy Baltimore.
For this road trip to Chicago, Garrett is deviating from what he did leading up to the New England trip by holding the team’s “Thursday” practice outside. But is it really simulating the gametime cold they’ll feel at all? Daytime temps at the club’s facility in Frisco are expected to reach a high of 54, twenty degrees warmer than it is supposed to be for kickoff at Soldier Field.
Short of practicing late at night, moving a session to an ice skating rink, or flying up to Chicago early, the idea of prepping for Windy City cold is largely impractical. (Maybe those aren’t actually terrible ideas; Garrett’s “normal routine” is obviously having disappointing results as of late.) But it is at least interesting that Garrett is having the squad go through drills outside leading into the Bears trip when he didn’t for the Patriots.
Cowboys fans can only hope it helps the team look better suited than last time to play in harsh conditions come kickoff.
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A combination of a later-than-normal start (the event was moved from May 21-24 to this week due to the coronavirus pandemic) and above-average heat in the Dallas-Fort Worth area could make the first PGA Tour event after the break a difficult one.
