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The Dallas Cowboys training camp is underway, and the team starts its 2023 NFL preseason on Saturday, August 12, against the Jacksonville Jaguars. As players fight and claw for Cowboys roster spots and starting positions, some players are rising to the top while others are struggling. Here are the four key players struggling early in Oxnard during NFL training camp, starting with quarterback Dak Prescott.
TE Luke Schoonmaker
The first player on the Cowboys roster struggling in training camp hasn’t made it on the field yet in Oxnard, California.
Second-round pick Luke Schoonmaker, the tight end out of Michigan, is a player the Cowboys thought could come in and immediately help replace the departed Dalton Schultz. However, Shoonmaker’s plantar fasciitis landed him on the non-football injury list (because it happened before he joined the team), and a rehab setback means he hasn’t appeared in Cowboys training camp yet.
Mike McCarthy has said he hopes the pass-catcher will return before the first preseason game, but we’ll believe it when we see it.
There is a lot more for a rookie tight end to figure out in the NFL than a rookie wide receiver. The blocking component of their job makes it so not all that many rookie TEs come in and have a ton of success in Year 1.
The more time Schoonmaker misses, the less chemistry he will have with Dak Prescott and the less comfortable he’ll be with the blocking schemes. Combine these issues with the reports that young veteran TEs Jake Ferguson, Peyton Hendershot, and Sean McKeon along with undrafted rookie John Stephens (a converted WR from Louisiana) are all playing well, and Schoonmaker’s Cowboys roster spot could be slipping down the depth chart.
Ks Tristan Vizcaino and Brandon Aubrey
The competition for the kicker spot on the Cowboys roster is not going well at all.
Tristan Vizcaino and Brandon Aubrey are the two combatants, and neither seems all that ready or willing to win the job.
Vizcaino has played just 10 games for three teams in four NFL seasons. He’s 11-of-12 on field goals and 15-of-20 on extra points in his career. And he’s the more experienced of the Cowboys’ two kickers heading into the 2023 NFL season.
Aubrey is a fascinating story. He played soccer at Notre Dame, was a first-round MLS draft pick, and after failing to reach the big leagues in soccer, he kicked for the Birmingham Stallions in the USFL, making 14-of-15 field goals last season and 100% of his PATs.
However, neither of these players are kicking well in camp. On the weekend, Vizcaino was 4-of-8 on field goals, and Aubrey was 5-of-7, with many of the misses coming from inside of 40 yards. It got so bad that, at one point, the crowd watching camp started booing the kickers!
McCarthy seems to be committing to the two battling it out in the team’s first 2023 NFL preseason game against the Jaguars. That said, if this keeps up, don’t be surprised if the team cuts both these players and signs a veteran or two who are still on the market or a better kicker who loses his own training camp battle.
QB Dak Prescott
They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If that’s true, then Mike McCarthy and Dak Prescott are insane.
For the third season in a row, McCarthy has told the media at Cowboys training camp that his QB will not play in any preseason games. This is despite the fact that Prescott has a new play-caller in McCarthy, and he’s struggled in practice at times so far this year.
McCarthy and the Cowboys staff treat Prescott like he’s Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady and doesn’t need preseason games to get in the flow of the offense. However, outside of the Nickelodeon Valuable Player on Thanksgiving 2021 (yes, seriously), Prescott hasn’t won anything since his Rookie of the Year Award in 2016. He hasn’t even made the Pro Bowl since 2018, and for some reason, the Cowboys think he doesn’t need NFL preseason reps.
One player who doesn’t hold Prescott on the same pedestal the rest of the franchise does is All-Pro cornerback Trevon Diggs.
In a social media video from camp on a day where Prescott was tossing interceptions and taking bad sacks, Diggs finally lost his cool and berated the QB, calling him a “b***h” multiple times.
The two players ultimately cleared the air, but it’s hard not to wonder if there is a little Russell Wilson v. Legion of Boom going on in Dallas.
Allegedly, the Seattle Seahawks defense always thought that Pete Carroll coddled Wilson too much, and they ended up not liking him (to put it mildly) for that reason. As the Cowboys D continues to grow into one of the best in the league, Prescott’s struggles and McCarthy’s reaction to them could end in a similar situation.
