Cowboys’ Mike McCarthy pushes back on NFL offseason schedule overhaul: ‘I hope it doesn’t happen’

FRISCO, Texas – The NFL Players Association proposed the league redo your entire offseason calendar on Monday The big change being the elimination of voluntary spring practices and organized team activities (OTAs).

Instead, the NFLPA would like to see “an extended OTA-style build-up – strength and conditioning, non-padded work, etc. – straight into training camp, without a six-week break/de-escalation in between” before training camp in mid-June or early July. This would eliminate the responsibility of attending your teams’ facilities in May and early June. On the other hand, both NFL players, coaches and staff would miss the six-week break they receive from June until training camp in late July, during which many who work. NFL teams They usually spend time with their family, especially their children, as school ends in the summer.

“Hypotheticals are what they are. This is a hypothetical, I hope it doesn’t happen,” Dallas Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy said Thursday. “I think any coach would feel that way. At the end of the day, I don’t know the nitty-gritty details. Just like everything with the league and the union, when they interact, there’s a lot of studying and education that goes into this. I’ll be curious to know why .

McCarthy sees the six-week break he and the players receive between June and July as a crucial period of rest and recovery. Under the NFLPA’s proposal, there wouldn’t be the same gap between the team’s lighter, non-contact practices and training camp when helmets and pads return along with full-contact practices.

“When you look at all the variables of coaching your football team and preparing for a season, there are fluctuations in your training. Rest and recovery are part of that. You need to have the involvement and understanding that your players will have outside resources to train with,” McCarthy said. “We’ve talked about it here from time to time and we’re very fortunate because of the city we live in and because our resources are plentiful. Our resources are so plentiful that you have a lot of NFL players from other teams that come here to train. So that’s part of it, I spend my time talking mostly to the rookies and just using the term ‘car wash’ to make sure they get it right. have things lined up, because that’s the state we’re in.”

He also doubted the implementation of players who train exclusively at their respective teams’ facilities, pointing to players who always choose to find external training to complement what they do with their teams. Cowboys three-time All-Pro edge rusher Micah Parsons utilized boxing trainingamong other things, outside team headquarters to prepare for the 2024 season. Like the rest of the NFL world, McCarthy is awaiting the “nuts and bolts” of the NFLPA proposal.

“So whether it’s five [or six] weeks, the timing of this is irrelevant to me because it will never set up,” McCarthy said. [not] it will be a completely internal training method for players to do within the organization. So, there will always be externals and internals. So that’s what I focus on. So how they organize and why they organize, I would be very curious to see why.”