OXNARD, Calif — Maybe it’s how quickly the Dallas Cowboys flipped their Micah Parsons trade capital into securing defensive linemen Quinnen Williams, Kenny Clark and Rashan Gary.
Maybe it’s the release of Netflix’s Jerry Jones documentary that evokes memories of a riskier time in the team owner and general manager’s leadership.
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Or maybe it’s just the recognition that a Cowboys offense coming off a high-flying year managed to keep their core intact while a Cowboys defense coming off a cellar-dwelling year received reinforcements at the player, coach and system level?
Whatever the primary reason, quarterback Dak Prescott has noticed a shift from his team owner.
Consider Prescott’s Super Bowl and “greatest offense there is” talk less a reflection of newfound confidence from Prescott and more of newfound belief that the confidence the quarterback has long held is now shared.
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“This is as urgent as I’ve ever felt Jerry,” Prescott told Yahoo Sports during a sitdown interview on Monday. “Sure, there’s times he’s said it, and then we’ve looked up and he hadn’t done much in free agency. Or this, this and that. But starting from free agency, they started doing things they hadn’t done. And it’s kudos to [head coach Brian Schottenheimer] and [VP player personnel] Will [McClay] and the whole team, but it’s also Jerry making that decision of being aggressive and trying to go out and get what he wants.
“It definitely feels different.”
So Prescott showed up to Cowboys training camp in a Super Bowl XXX shirt, one step in the manifestation process. He challenged his teammates to become what he’s called “GOTI,” or the greatest there is, not because he believes they’ve already accomplished it but because he believes vocalizing that goal on repeat can help the team accomplish it.
And for those critical, or suspicious, that the Cowboys’ ego is just at it once again and the product on the field won’t match their talk? Absolutely, Dallas needs to prove it.
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But players want that pressure.
“I’m happy that he said that to the media because then I expect that puts more pressure on us as an offense to go out there and not let him look crazy,” receiver CeeDee Lamb told Yahoo Sports on Sunday. “He said that to the media, oh we’re this? Let’s go do it.”
Citing a philosophy that was a favorite of former Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy, Prescott said he’s not worried about the Cowboys handling adversity. He believes handling success is a taller task — and talking about what that success might look like helps manufacture that need to handle it early.
“It’s like, put the biggest distractions on us now or the things that are going to distract us, and allow us, if we’re that type of team, if we’re that type of brotherhood, allow us to mesh … with that already there,” Prescott said. “Let’s use that as part of why we’re going to be so tight at handling success and adversity together.”
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Williams: ‘If you’re not about that, get the f*** out’
Part of speaking goals into existence is creating a contagion in which others speak them, too.
Prescott’s words have had that effect.
Defensive tackle Quinnen Williams — with whom the Cowboys agreed to a three-year, $105.9 million extension on Monday — has begun wrapping up practices with similar mantras.
“I don’t think Q’s broken down the team or spoke to the team without saying words of that, whether it be ‘Super Bowl’ or whether it be ‘championship,'” Prescott said. “He said the other day: ‘If you’re not about that, get the f*** out of the huddle.’
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“When you got guys saying it in their rooms away from you, meaning it and believing it, hell yeah, you want to say it. Why not?”
What exactly would a 2026 Cowboys Super Bowl season look like? Setting aside the expectations of 30 years outside of the conference championship, let’s consider the strategic vision.
On offense, the Cowboys believe Prescott is playing his best ball as Year 11 gives him a deep mental bank of defensive diagnoses on which to draw and broad familiarity with his weapons, knowing how his skill players run their routes and how to motivate them if they hit a dry spell.
Prescott completed 67.3% of his passes last season for 4,552 yards, 30 touchdowns and 10 interceptions as he anchored the league’s second-ranked offense. Alongside running back Javonte Williams’ 12 touchdowns, Prescott aired it out to star receivers in Lamb and George Pickens while also finding receiver Ryan Flournoy and tight end Jake Ferguson as complements. Dallas seeks a balanced offense. But they value first and foremost another year with two No. 1-caliber receivers.
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“Year 2 is just truly learning [that] when you’ve got two ones and truly two ones, it’s putting them in their best place to make more out of what they’ve got,” Prescott said. “So I know their route, but it’s like, ‘OK, that guy’s on him and that route, yeah, this is what he does best.’ And so it’s knowing which one is just maybe a little bit craftier than the other one in a certain route versus the press or versus off [coverage] and being able to decipher that. But it’s a blessing.
“I tell you, they’re both f***ing amazing.”
Prescott demonstrated a slice of that discernment in Monday’s practice, as he and Lamb rebounded from a shakier camp start to connect on multiple plays, including two deep balls down the right sideline.
And the play they most notably didn’t complete? Rookie safety Caleb Downs’ end-zone pass breakup gives the Cowboys a different source of confidence.
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Cowboys’ defensive upgrade includes area where they struggled ‘for years’
No one is sugarcoating the Cowboys’ 2025 defensive season. No defense allowed more points than the Cowboys’ 30.1. Only two allowed more yards than the Cowboys’ 377 per game.
Out went defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus, the recent history of Dallas’ 4-3 defensive front and several key players. (In fairness to Eberflus, trading edge rusher Micah Parsons one week before the season opener didn’t help the plan nor execution.)
In came 34-year-old defensive coordinator Christian Parker, with his 3-4 defense that the Cowboys believe will allow them to stop the run better than they have in years.
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“We hadn’t been stopping the run for years,” Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones told Yahoo Sports. “We’d make plays on the ball with Dan [Quinn], we’d do a lot of things. But we never, ever, ever, even when Dan was here, stopped the run well.
“And certainly in the playoffs, that’s a big deal.”
The defensive front of Williams, Gary and Clark will start that run stopping, also aiding coverage the Cowboys invested in by drafting Downs in the first round and signing free agent defensive backs including Jalen Thompson, Cobie Durant and P.J. Locke. Even former San Francisco 49ers linebacker Dee Winters comes up in staff praise to reporters, unprompted. But yes, it’s fair to say all of this means nothing until the unit proves it.
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“The last time there were this many changes of any team that I’ve been involved in, where we changed the system, changed out all the players, and plus changed out the coaches was the first year with Jimmy Johnson, and we won one football game,” Jerry Jones told reporters at his opening press conference of training camp. “So we know that changing out and starting new can obviously create quite a challenge. But I like what we’ve got to work with.”
The Cowboys like that a unit struggling to communicate last season is bordering on overcommunication this year, emphasizing that communication is a fundamental, like tackling, and thus one that must be trained. The Cowboys are running a split-safety system that focuses on pattern-matching, and staff members praise Parker for how he’s tied the rush and coverage together rather than only focus on the secondary background from which he comes.
A stouter defensive line, anchored first by the newly paid Williams, will take pressure off the secondary, the Cowboys believe.
“He helps us because he can get to the quarterback at a high rate and he can stop the run at a high rate,” defensive backs coach/passing game coordinator Derrick Ansley told Yahoo Sports. “That allows us to play pass on second and 8-plus. Third down, it allows us to pin our ears back and play man-to-man because we know we don’t have to cover very long because you have direct pressure at the quarterback.”
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Take that end-zone try from Prescott to Lamb that Downs broke up on Monday? Pressure up front helped Downs play the ball aggressively. And Downs’ talent allowed him to recover from a pick he wasn’t expecting, staying upright to still make a play denying Lamb the ball.
The acquisition of Downs in the first round was another example of Jones’ recent sense of urgency. Dallas traded up from 12 to 11 to select the Ohio State product, continuing the aggressive tone they set when they dealt a 2027 first-round pick, 2026 second and defensive tackle Mazi Smith to the Jets to acquire Williams.
At each of these moments, Prescott saw Jones sending messages with his actions rather than his words. Perhaps that’s why Jones took so much issue with reporters describing the Cowboys’ offseason as quiet — because while Dallas was quiet in its public messaging and drama, it was active in its seemingly steady team-building and talent acquisition.
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Jones also said at the start of training camp that he would “invest something substantive to get the right kind of deal to improve us opening day.” He added: “I feel that good about this team.”
So his quarterback does too, the 33-year-old Prescott well aware that his now second-decade career won’t last forever. Williams’ time with the Jets taught him that playoff berths are hard to earn and harder to capitalize on, so consider the urgency at a premium from him. Ansley tells his players: This a year-to-year deal. There is no next year. And on, across the staff and roster, it goes.
Beginning with Jones. And continuing with his quarterback.
“You feel like he’s more guns blazing than I’ve ever seen in my obviously 10 years, but even a little bit before that being a Cowboys fan,” Prescott said of Jones. “He’s urgent. It can be age, it can be whatever it is, or it can be ‘I’ve got these parts on my team already, let’s me add [these] other core parts.’ And it could be having the offense we had last year and the defense being that way that [Jones] is like, ‘F*** that, I’m not doing it again.’
“I just feel like the urgency and the goal and the message is felt throughout.”
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