Post by ccboy on Nov 29, 2009 9:57:04 GMT -7
ROAD WARRIORS
A look behind the scenes during the Cowboys' recent trip to Green Bay.
by Josh Ellis, photos by James Smith
You'll notice something once you've secured your bags, locked the car and begun heading toward the plane. Everyone backs in when they park. Lexuses, Range Rovers and Escalades, one after the other, all of them positioned for a quick escape.
Win or lose, there will be a mad rush once the return flight touches down and unloads at the Cowboys' American Airlines charter site at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. It's late on Sunday night, and the guys are sleepy or just ready to get home. Their legs are stiff after a long flight, and the gas pedal happens to be on the wrong end of some overdue stretching.
They all wave as they pass the nice young lady who shows up and waits for the team after each road game, rain or shine, displaying her signs of encouragement: "Way 2 Go Cowboys!" or "Keep the Faith" or "Stick Together." Some stop to talk and thank her, but most will whiz by, eager to get on the highway, eager to get home, the woosh of air from their passing cars fluttering her brown curls.
It's been a long weekend.
Saturday isn't an off day, and the guys are at team headquarters in Valley Ranch at 7:30 in the morning for treatments, followed by a 30-minute special teams meeting, an hour of offense and defense classroom work and a walkthrough on the field until everyone gets it right. At about 11 a.m., Wade Phillips turns them all lose, leaving the 52 players headed to Green Bay with just over a couple of hours to grab their bags, clean up, button those fine-tailored suits and head to the airport.
For the rookies, there is another stop to be made. This week linebacker Victor Butler is tasked with heading to Chipotle to pick up burritos for his fellow linebackers. The travel-day waiting job doesn't help much in paying the rent, but it's one of a few ways he and his fellow first-year players are kept in check by the guys who have been through all this before.
"It's whatever they're feeling like," Butler says of the contents of his oversized sack full of food. "If one day they want subs from Jersey Mike's, it's Jersey Mike's. Lately it's been Chipotle, but that's easy because it's right by my house. You've got to take everybody's orders and you've got to get it right or you'll have some problems. And the bill—it's up there."
Butler sets the burritos down and offers up his driver's license. His identity verified, he moves along and sets the burritos down again. The security screening process is much the same as it would be for any commercial flight. The pat-down is still necessary, and everyone is thoroughly wanded by Transportation Security Administration officials.
A bright November sun hangs high overhead, reflecting brightly off the silver American Airlines 757, its engine humming as huge blue bags full of uniforms and equipment are stacked neatly in the cargo deck below. Four members of the Cowboys equipment staff have organized a couple tons of gear for the players and trunks full of other junk the team needs, changes of cleats, contact lenses, extra footballs and more.
By 1:30 p.m., 157 people—players, coaches and team staff as well as sponsors and local media, plus several crewmembers—have made their way onto the charter. The Cowboys are one of the few teams in the league that makes space on their own charter for some of the reporters and cameramen who cover the team on a daily basis. They sit in the middle of the plane, intermingled among the Cowboys staff of security personnel, public relations specialists, technology experts, marketing and sales people, a television crew, web designers and writers, plus the Cowboys radio network talent.
The coaches and team executives sit up in first class. Phillips and his wife Laurie have the first two seats, with Jerry and Gene Jones across the aisle.
The players sit in the coach cabin, their seats assigned by close approximation of who-hangs-out-with-who. They're given some space, sitting two to a row of three, because leg room is probably more of an issue for an NFL offensive lineman than for the general population. It may take more effort for 6'7" pass blockers to get comfortable than for the rest of us, but comfort food will help, and the rookies pass out everyone's take-out lunch while flight attendants comb the aisle in search of anyone needing a bag of chips or a candy bar or anything to drink. American takes good care of the Cowboys.
Last minute text messages are fired off and college football games are followed wirelessly, everyone on the plane seemingly wrapped up in that glowing rectangle they hold in their hands, knowing that the toy will be rendered useless when the cabin doors close.
Tight end Martellus Bennett works his way up the aisle to borrow a camera from a member of the team's Internet department. The biggest guy on board and the only person who gets a row all to himself, right tackle Marc Colombo pulls out his playbook, a thick binder that includes not just the base offense but the weekly game plan and scouting reports of the Packers. For many of the players, the flight up to Wisconsin is a great time to get some work done.
Veterans like Colombo and linebacker Keith Brooking are accustomed to the travel, and can devote their attention to something productive.
"It's a business trip for me," Brooking says. "I'm in and out of hotels and used to the planes and the buses. None of it really affects me. All the distractions that come your way, the guys that learn to deal with it and act in a professional manner are the guys that stick around and have success in the league. If you don't have the ability to handle those situations, you're not going to make it very far. You've got to have the ability to put your blinders on and focus on what's important."
While the jet is still parked, what's important changes entirely. Among the players, almost all of the attention is focused on tight end Jason Witten, standing in the middle of the aisle with a deck of cards and a handful of envelopes.
"Kosier, six!," he calls out. "Felix, queen! Romo, nine!"
Next to the game itself, this is the most exciting part of the weekend for the folks willing to try their luck. In a tradition passed on from year to year, those players with a gambling spirit will risk their expense per diem, usually $40 or so, in hopes of hitting the jackpot.
This week, the winner is assistant equipment manager Steve Mangus ("Mango—ACE!") and, vicariously, rookie kicker David Buehler.
"Witten goes through an collects everybody's per diem," Mangus says. "And it's just an envelope that's got your name on it. Beforehand, me and Buehler made a deal: If he wins he splits it with me, if I win I split it with him. So it's basically just high card. You get a deck of cards and whoever has the highest card wins the pot. This week it just happened to be big. Sometimes it could be 800, 900 bucks, this time it was $2,000. Good week to win."
At least two people are grinning ear to ear by the time the jet gets rolling for takeoff. The in-flight movie has already begun. This week it's "The Fast and the Furious." The flight attendants make their ways up and down the aisle serving lunch to anyone who wants it.
The flight is two hours and 25 minutes, and most all the players are snoozing by the time owner Jerry Jones makes his way to the back of the cabin to get the pulse of his quarterback. Though the boss may be an arm's length away, slight turbulence keeps the guys rocked to sleep.
At 4:25 p.m. the Cowboys' charter touches down at Green Bay's Austin Straubel International Airport, and the glowing rectangles reappear, heralded by the announcement of final scores from the college football landscape.
The Cowboys are lucky to be here in November and not late December, as the permafrost has yet to take over the ground and make Sunday's playing conditions the toughest in the league. Through the window capsule passengers can see that all the leaves are off the trees. Outside it looks like the coldest days these Texans can remember.
Luckily it's not, with temps in the 60s mild enough to elicit surprised comments from the unloading travelers.
Mangus and his fellow equipment managers head directly for Lambeau Field to begin setting up for the game. He says they actually prefer road games, since piecing the locker room together for when the players arrive takes about half the time.
As for the players, they cross the tarmac to the three buses waiting to take them to downtown Appleton, a 30-minute drive. Green Bay is unlike most away markets, the smallest in the league with a population just over 100,000, and it has no hotels large enough to suit the Cowboys' rather demanding list of needs—more available rooms, meeting space and ballrooms large enough for the entire team to eat.
It's dark by the time the Cowboys reach Appleton and the Radisson Paper Valley Hotel in the heart of what appears to be a bustling little community of 72,000. As usual, there's a crowd to greet them, something that doesn't happen for other NFL teams.
"This reception is a lot different," Brooking, a former Atlanta Falcon, says. "There were probably 100 people outside our hotel. They take us in through the back door, away from the lobby, and there's no telling how many people were waiting for us inside there. My agent has represented a lot of Cowboys through the years, and he kind of warned me when I signed here when we roll into another town or someone else's stadium it's like the Rolling Stones are coming to town."
The crowd is still waiting when one final bus arrives, though they have to feel disappointed it's filled with staff and media members instead of players. It doesn't take long before the crowd disbands, scattering through Appleton in search of somewhere to watch the Manny Pacquiao-Miguel Cotto fight, which has been the talk of the Cowboys' traveling party as well.
Unfortunately for the boxing fans on the team, there will be no pay-per-view on this night. After a couple hours of free time, those players battling bumps and bruises have another 90-minute round of treatments in a private room on the lower level of the hotel. For those interested, a 30-minute chapel meeting with team chaplain Dr. John Tolson begins at 7:45 p.m., followed by a group meal.
Phillips conducts his traditional meeting with the team after everyone has eaten.
"There's always a message he wants to get across," Butler says. "They're all tailored toward the individual game. You can tell he's ready to play. He's focused, and he wants us to be focused on the task at hand. With Green Bay his message was pretty much that they were going to be a hungry team. Their record was 4-4, but that's not how they were going to play us. They were going to play us like they were 8-0, and we had to go out there and be hungrier than they were to win."
After the big meeting come more meetings. Special teams coordinator Joe DeCamillis passes out a written test for his guys during their 20 minutes together, before the squad is broken up into offense and defense, both sides going over last-minute reminders of what coaches expect the Packers to show.
All week it's been meetings, meetings, practices and meetings, which makes the team snack and 11 p.m. curfew and bed check a huge relief. Players are allowed to wake up at their own pace on game day—they can even pass up the Radisson's continental breakfast if they like. A pregame meal is held, most everyone taking the opportunity to load up on carbohydrates before the game.
Finally, the first wave of buses to Lambeau Field starts arriving at 11:30 a.m., almost four hours before kickoff. By 12:30 p.m., every member of the organization will be on the way to the stadium, rolling along Highway 41, passing billboards advertising four-wheeler dealerships and signs pointing toward places like Ashwaubenon and Little Chute.
The players' buses are dead silent, each of them listening to music on expensive-looking headphones and staring out the window.
By 1:15 p.m., the buses are empty. A week of preparation, untold man hours and hundreds of air miles have gotten the Cowboys here. Inside, Lambeau has the feel of hallowed ground. On this Sunday, anyway, it's not the best site for a weekend getaway, the Cowboys falling 17-7.
Players are banged up on the return flight to Dallas. Colombo has broken his fibula, possibly ending his season. Safety Ken Hamlin has a badly sprained ankle. Cornerback Mike Jenkins banged his elbow pretty hard. The toe of kicker David Buehler has turned black and blue.
It's been perhaps the Cowboys' worst offensive showing in years. It was a long weekend, as can be any away weekend in the NFL. Not even a week after they went to Philadelphia and won an important game against a tough NFC East opponent, the Cowboys head home in disappointment, realizing fully how tough it is to win on the road.
No wonder they back their cars in.
A look behind the scenes during the Cowboys' recent trip to Green Bay.
by Josh Ellis, photos by James Smith
You'll notice something once you've secured your bags, locked the car and begun heading toward the plane. Everyone backs in when they park. Lexuses, Range Rovers and Escalades, one after the other, all of them positioned for a quick escape.
Win or lose, there will be a mad rush once the return flight touches down and unloads at the Cowboys' American Airlines charter site at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. It's late on Sunday night, and the guys are sleepy or just ready to get home. Their legs are stiff after a long flight, and the gas pedal happens to be on the wrong end of some overdue stretching.
They all wave as they pass the nice young lady who shows up and waits for the team after each road game, rain or shine, displaying her signs of encouragement: "Way 2 Go Cowboys!" or "Keep the Faith" or "Stick Together." Some stop to talk and thank her, but most will whiz by, eager to get on the highway, eager to get home, the woosh of air from their passing cars fluttering her brown curls.
It's been a long weekend.
Saturday isn't an off day, and the guys are at team headquarters in Valley Ranch at 7:30 in the morning for treatments, followed by a 30-minute special teams meeting, an hour of offense and defense classroom work and a walkthrough on the field until everyone gets it right. At about 11 a.m., Wade Phillips turns them all lose, leaving the 52 players headed to Green Bay with just over a couple of hours to grab their bags, clean up, button those fine-tailored suits and head to the airport.
For the rookies, there is another stop to be made. This week linebacker Victor Butler is tasked with heading to Chipotle to pick up burritos for his fellow linebackers. The travel-day waiting job doesn't help much in paying the rent, but it's one of a few ways he and his fellow first-year players are kept in check by the guys who have been through all this before.
"It's whatever they're feeling like," Butler says of the contents of his oversized sack full of food. "If one day they want subs from Jersey Mike's, it's Jersey Mike's. Lately it's been Chipotle, but that's easy because it's right by my house. You've got to take everybody's orders and you've got to get it right or you'll have some problems. And the bill—it's up there."
Butler sets the burritos down and offers up his driver's license. His identity verified, he moves along and sets the burritos down again. The security screening process is much the same as it would be for any commercial flight. The pat-down is still necessary, and everyone is thoroughly wanded by Transportation Security Administration officials.
A bright November sun hangs high overhead, reflecting brightly off the silver American Airlines 757, its engine humming as huge blue bags full of uniforms and equipment are stacked neatly in the cargo deck below. Four members of the Cowboys equipment staff have organized a couple tons of gear for the players and trunks full of other junk the team needs, changes of cleats, contact lenses, extra footballs and more.
By 1:30 p.m., 157 people—players, coaches and team staff as well as sponsors and local media, plus several crewmembers—have made their way onto the charter. The Cowboys are one of the few teams in the league that makes space on their own charter for some of the reporters and cameramen who cover the team on a daily basis. They sit in the middle of the plane, intermingled among the Cowboys staff of security personnel, public relations specialists, technology experts, marketing and sales people, a television crew, web designers and writers, plus the Cowboys radio network talent.
The coaches and team executives sit up in first class. Phillips and his wife Laurie have the first two seats, with Jerry and Gene Jones across the aisle.
The players sit in the coach cabin, their seats assigned by close approximation of who-hangs-out-with-who. They're given some space, sitting two to a row of three, because leg room is probably more of an issue for an NFL offensive lineman than for the general population. It may take more effort for 6'7" pass blockers to get comfortable than for the rest of us, but comfort food will help, and the rookies pass out everyone's take-out lunch while flight attendants comb the aisle in search of anyone needing a bag of chips or a candy bar or anything to drink. American takes good care of the Cowboys.
Last minute text messages are fired off and college football games are followed wirelessly, everyone on the plane seemingly wrapped up in that glowing rectangle they hold in their hands, knowing that the toy will be rendered useless when the cabin doors close.
Tight end Martellus Bennett works his way up the aisle to borrow a camera from a member of the team's Internet department. The biggest guy on board and the only person who gets a row all to himself, right tackle Marc Colombo pulls out his playbook, a thick binder that includes not just the base offense but the weekly game plan and scouting reports of the Packers. For many of the players, the flight up to Wisconsin is a great time to get some work done.
Veterans like Colombo and linebacker Keith Brooking are accustomed to the travel, and can devote their attention to something productive.
"It's a business trip for me," Brooking says. "I'm in and out of hotels and used to the planes and the buses. None of it really affects me. All the distractions that come your way, the guys that learn to deal with it and act in a professional manner are the guys that stick around and have success in the league. If you don't have the ability to handle those situations, you're not going to make it very far. You've got to have the ability to put your blinders on and focus on what's important."
While the jet is still parked, what's important changes entirely. Among the players, almost all of the attention is focused on tight end Jason Witten, standing in the middle of the aisle with a deck of cards and a handful of envelopes.
"Kosier, six!," he calls out. "Felix, queen! Romo, nine!"
Next to the game itself, this is the most exciting part of the weekend for the folks willing to try their luck. In a tradition passed on from year to year, those players with a gambling spirit will risk their expense per diem, usually $40 or so, in hopes of hitting the jackpot.
This week, the winner is assistant equipment manager Steve Mangus ("Mango—ACE!") and, vicariously, rookie kicker David Buehler.
"Witten goes through an collects everybody's per diem," Mangus says. "And it's just an envelope that's got your name on it. Beforehand, me and Buehler made a deal: If he wins he splits it with me, if I win I split it with him. So it's basically just high card. You get a deck of cards and whoever has the highest card wins the pot. This week it just happened to be big. Sometimes it could be 800, 900 bucks, this time it was $2,000. Good week to win."
At least two people are grinning ear to ear by the time the jet gets rolling for takeoff. The in-flight movie has already begun. This week it's "The Fast and the Furious." The flight attendants make their ways up and down the aisle serving lunch to anyone who wants it.
The flight is two hours and 25 minutes, and most all the players are snoozing by the time owner Jerry Jones makes his way to the back of the cabin to get the pulse of his quarterback. Though the boss may be an arm's length away, slight turbulence keeps the guys rocked to sleep.
At 4:25 p.m. the Cowboys' charter touches down at Green Bay's Austin Straubel International Airport, and the glowing rectangles reappear, heralded by the announcement of final scores from the college football landscape.
The Cowboys are lucky to be here in November and not late December, as the permafrost has yet to take over the ground and make Sunday's playing conditions the toughest in the league. Through the window capsule passengers can see that all the leaves are off the trees. Outside it looks like the coldest days these Texans can remember.
Luckily it's not, with temps in the 60s mild enough to elicit surprised comments from the unloading travelers.
Mangus and his fellow equipment managers head directly for Lambeau Field to begin setting up for the game. He says they actually prefer road games, since piecing the locker room together for when the players arrive takes about half the time.
As for the players, they cross the tarmac to the three buses waiting to take them to downtown Appleton, a 30-minute drive. Green Bay is unlike most away markets, the smallest in the league with a population just over 100,000, and it has no hotels large enough to suit the Cowboys' rather demanding list of needs—more available rooms, meeting space and ballrooms large enough for the entire team to eat.
It's dark by the time the Cowboys reach Appleton and the Radisson Paper Valley Hotel in the heart of what appears to be a bustling little community of 72,000. As usual, there's a crowd to greet them, something that doesn't happen for other NFL teams.
"This reception is a lot different," Brooking, a former Atlanta Falcon, says. "There were probably 100 people outside our hotel. They take us in through the back door, away from the lobby, and there's no telling how many people were waiting for us inside there. My agent has represented a lot of Cowboys through the years, and he kind of warned me when I signed here when we roll into another town or someone else's stadium it's like the Rolling Stones are coming to town."
The crowd is still waiting when one final bus arrives, though they have to feel disappointed it's filled with staff and media members instead of players. It doesn't take long before the crowd disbands, scattering through Appleton in search of somewhere to watch the Manny Pacquiao-Miguel Cotto fight, which has been the talk of the Cowboys' traveling party as well.
Unfortunately for the boxing fans on the team, there will be no pay-per-view on this night. After a couple hours of free time, those players battling bumps and bruises have another 90-minute round of treatments in a private room on the lower level of the hotel. For those interested, a 30-minute chapel meeting with team chaplain Dr. John Tolson begins at 7:45 p.m., followed by a group meal.
Phillips conducts his traditional meeting with the team after everyone has eaten.
"There's always a message he wants to get across," Butler says. "They're all tailored toward the individual game. You can tell he's ready to play. He's focused, and he wants us to be focused on the task at hand. With Green Bay his message was pretty much that they were going to be a hungry team. Their record was 4-4, but that's not how they were going to play us. They were going to play us like they were 8-0, and we had to go out there and be hungrier than they were to win."
After the big meeting come more meetings. Special teams coordinator Joe DeCamillis passes out a written test for his guys during their 20 minutes together, before the squad is broken up into offense and defense, both sides going over last-minute reminders of what coaches expect the Packers to show.
All week it's been meetings, meetings, practices and meetings, which makes the team snack and 11 p.m. curfew and bed check a huge relief. Players are allowed to wake up at their own pace on game day—they can even pass up the Radisson's continental breakfast if they like. A pregame meal is held, most everyone taking the opportunity to load up on carbohydrates before the game.
Finally, the first wave of buses to Lambeau Field starts arriving at 11:30 a.m., almost four hours before kickoff. By 12:30 p.m., every member of the organization will be on the way to the stadium, rolling along Highway 41, passing billboards advertising four-wheeler dealerships and signs pointing toward places like Ashwaubenon and Little Chute.
The players' buses are dead silent, each of them listening to music on expensive-looking headphones and staring out the window.
By 1:15 p.m., the buses are empty. A week of preparation, untold man hours and hundreds of air miles have gotten the Cowboys here. Inside, Lambeau has the feel of hallowed ground. On this Sunday, anyway, it's not the best site for a weekend getaway, the Cowboys falling 17-7.
Players are banged up on the return flight to Dallas. Colombo has broken his fibula, possibly ending his season. Safety Ken Hamlin has a badly sprained ankle. Cornerback Mike Jenkins banged his elbow pretty hard. The toe of kicker David Buehler has turned black and blue.
It's been perhaps the Cowboys' worst offensive showing in years. It was a long weekend, as can be any away weekend in the NFL. Not even a week after they went to Philadelphia and won an important game against a tough NFC East opponent, the Cowboys head home in disappointment, realizing fully how tough it is to win on the road.
No wonder they back their cars in.