Weeks after the Dallas Cowboys announced training camp festivities would begin Wednesday, with the annual state of the team news conference, the team announced Monday that the presser featuring the franchise’s brass would be pushed to Saturday due to “scheduling conflicts.”
Jerry Jones reported to a Texarkana, Texas, courtroom Monday morning in regard to a civil paternity case. The team is set to arrive Tuesday in Southern California. The first practice is scheduled for Thursday in Oxnard, Calif.
The Cowboys are entering training camp in an environment that has come to define them: various avenues of distractions, enough talent to get the optimistic fan excited, balanced with enough questions to leave a contingent of fans pessimistic that the postseason ineptitude of the last 28 years will change.
Jones, the successful owner and underwhelming general manager, remains at the center of it all.
The Cowboys are one of the most popular sports brands in the world. Even a diminishing level of interest from a portion of the fan base won’t knock them off their perch, especially once they start piling up wins in October and November. While many fans would argue there were plenty of reasons to temper expectations through the first 27 years of wandering the championship wilderness following the dynasty years of the 1990s, there’s a particularly strong bad taste that has lingered from last season and this offseason.
As The Athletic’s Cowboys fan survey indicated, there isn’t a ton of confidence in the direction of the team.
Even for those who had been jaded by the decades of postseason failure, last year appeared to be a glimmer of hope. Following an early October reality check in San Francisco, the Cowboys got on a roll. Their success featured a few hiccups in December, but those were canceled out by a reeling Philadelphia Eagles team that helped gift the division — and the No. 2 seed in the NFC. The Cowboys entered the playoffs incredibly healthy and playing against the league’s youngest team at home, where they had not lost since the 2022 season opener against Tampa Bay.
What followed was an epic disaster.
Dan Quinn’s defense was atrocious. Dak Prescott’s big-game issues were on full display. Head coach Mike McCarthy’s job status became blurry. Dallas put forth arguably the worst postseason performance in franchise history.
After Jones decided to retain McCarthy for the final year of his deal, the Cowboys owner made comments at the Senior Bowl that the team would be “all in” this offseason. Regardless of the football operations merit behind those words, they served as a shrewd marketing move. Attention shifted away from the wild-card loss to the Green Bay Packers and to Jones’ words. Those words helped the Cowboys carry relevance in the sports news cycle in the months to come.
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For a man who believes any press is good press, the fact it came in mocking fashion wasn’t bothersome to Jones. In fact, Jones invoked the phrase multiple times throughout the offseason with a smile on his face, to make sure nobody forgot what he said in February.
Nothing the Cowboys did this offseason indicated the team was “all in” on 2024, at least not in the way most fans interpreted the comment. Aside from adding a veteran linebacker and a running back past his prime, the Cowboys did little in the way of free agency. The draft was solid — at least on paper — but it was mostly used to replace key cogs who departed rather than additional upgrades.
Three major contract extensions continue to hover over the franchise. They were constantly referred to as the reason the team couldn’t spend elsewhere. Many assumed a Prescott extension would get done in short order, especially given the major cap hit that comes without an extension and handcuffs the team’s spending abilities. A CeeDee Lamb extension felt inevitable, especially after major dominoes fell around the league, most notably Justin Jefferson’s new deal in Minnesota. Micah Parsons became eligible for an extension, too.
As the first week of training camp begins, no extensions have been signed. Prescott is set to play the final year of his contract, after which he will test the open market. The Cowboys can’t give him the franchise tag or trade him. They do not have a quarterback under contract in 2025. Lamb is expected to hold out of training camp until he gets a new deal. He missed all of the offseason workouts. Parsons is content not getting a new deal and will likely be an even more expensive piece of business for the Cowboys next year.
california dreamin’ ☀️#CowboysCamp | @AmericanAir pic.twitter.com/djWokG280J
— Dallas Cowboys (@dallascowboys) July 22, 2024
Aside from those big-ticket items, the Cowboys are relying on hope.
They’re hoping Ezekiel Elliott has more left in the tank than what he showed at the end of his first stint in Dallas and last year in New England.
They’re hoping linebacker DeMarvion Overshown, who tore his ACL last year in a preseason game as a rookie, will return strong to be the savior at the position that he’s being hyped to be.
They’re hoping Trevon Diggs returns to his old form after his ACL tear.
They’re hoping Brandin Cooks and Jalen Tolbert have more to give in their second and third years in Dallas.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. The Cowboys have been a good team — they’ve won 12 regular-season games in three consecutive seasons — and appear headed in that direction again. The issue is the way they’ve been good has worn thin — lots of regular-season success and excitement generated by beating up inferior opponents. Even Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones bluntly stated earlier this year that until postseason results follow, anything else the team does will be a moot point.
That’s what makes this time of year somewhat confusing for Cowboys fans. The return of football is a joyous occasion, but how does one roll out the welcome mat when the real wait is for what happens in January? Whether it’s the Cowboys or their fans, every step along the way matters, including the next month in Oxnard.
Training camp is meant to be a time for questions. The Cowboys aren’t the only team looking for answers. They are the only team, though, whose 81-year-old general manager has business to take care of in a courtroom and business to take care of to get his superstar receiver on the field.
How this season goes for the Cowboys, and the bevy of coaches and players in contract years, is a mystery. What isn’t a mystery is that there will be plenty of storylines to follow. The days leading up to training camp are serving as a reminder.