It’s weird enough for the Dallas Cowboys to practice in an empty and eerily quiet AT&T Stadium.
But anyone who followed the annual Blue and White scrimmage Sunday evening was treated to a truly bizarre sight: the absence of distinguishable player characteristics. No numbers on either side of the jerseys. No names on the back. Just a battle of colors — anonymous vs. unknowns, as ESPN’s Ed Werder put it.
The Cowboys like you’ve never seen them before.
A bunch of no name guys getting ready for work. @vernonbryant DMN Photo
QB throws 🏈 to WR for a touchdown 🙌😬
Heading into the scrimmage, new Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy stated his intention to stay “as close to the vest as possible.” Afterward, he explained the decision (his, presumably) to employ such drastic secrecy measures.
“We’d be exposing our younger players to the evaluation process [of 31 other teams],” McCarthy said, per USA Today’s Jori Epstein.
How could they have exposed themselves, you ask? The practice was televised on local television and broadcast globally via Dallas’ official website; McCarthy feared an opportunistic opponent gaining a competitive advantage from the live-stream.
So, too, did owner/general manager Jerry Jones, who endorsed the devolution to Belichickian levels of gamesmanship.
“We have some down the line guys that we may want to get over to our practice squad,” Jones said during the scrimmage, via ESPN. “Why have them come out, show up in a number and advertising for another team to look at?”
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McCarthy Lobbies Against Fake Crowd Noise
The club’s brain trust attempted to stay a step ahead of everything, including the NFL’s intention to pump artificial crowd noise into stadiums where fans aren’t present this season. It’s the league’s attempt to restore a semblance of normalcy amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and a begrudged McCarthy was forced to go along with manufactured sound effects echoing throughout JerryWorld.
“It’s league mandated,” he said after practice, via Pro Football Talk. “They’re trying to pull all the football criteria together for the regular-season games. It seems like they’re not settled on a decibel level – a level of noise – so I was kind of waiting to see exactly how loud it was going to be, particularly the crowd noise that’s going to be the same in every stadium. So that’s a pretty accurate example of what to expect.”
Dallas opens the 2020 campaign at the Los Angeles Rams’ brand new SoFi Stadium, in front of exactly zero spectators, where boos and cheers will be emitted from speakers rather than the stands. McCarthy emphasized he’s “not a fan” of this unique circumstance but conceded “there’s a reason for it, and we’ll be fine.”
“It’s just not real,” he added, per PFT. “I don’t know what you thought of it. You play in stadiums throughout your career and some stadiums have really bad fake crowd noise and some are better than others. You do this long enough, you know what it sounds like. It’s just not the real thing.”
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Mike McCarthy Makes Stunning Alteration to Annual Cowboys Scrimmage [LOOK]