Plankton
Well-Known Member
- Messages
- 12,258
- Reaction score
- 18,650
https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/07/31/nfl-training-camps-tour-cowboys-broncos-rams-chargers-peter-king
The Cowboys have been here. On the verge of great expectations, I mean. Two years ago Dallas was coming off a 12-4 season and divisional playoff loss to the Packers. Tony Romo got hurt, and a 4-12 debacle followed. Now, they’re coming off a 13-3 season and another divisional playoff loss to the Packers.
And Garrett decided to confront the we’ve-arrived, Dak Prescott/Zeke Elliott-fueled runaway optimism in an oddly negative way when he addressed the full squad this offseason.
We’re not good enough.
“Have you read the Springsteen book?” Garrett said the other day in a lengthy conversation before practice. (“Born To Run,” an autobiography, 2016, Simon & Schuster.) “He’s 20 years old, everybody at the Jersey Shore loves him, but he’s unknown nationally, and a good friend and adviser tells him, ‘If you really want to be great, you’ve got to get off the Jersey Shore.’ And so they pile everything in a couple vehicles and head west to this sort of open mike night in San Francisco.
As Springsteen wrote, the band was part of a four-band showcase; one band would get the chance to move on and perhaps get a recording contract. The Jersey guys went third and thought they killed it. The fourth band, though not as energetic, was very good. Via “Born To Run:”
“They got the gig. We lost out. After the word came down, all the other guys were complaining we’d gotten ripped off. The guy running the joint didn’t know what he was doing, blah, blah, blah.”
That night, Springsteen reflected, sleeping on a couch in his transplanted parents’ home in the Bay Area. “My confidence was mildly shaken, and I had to make room for a rather unpleasant thought. We were not going to be the big dogs we were back in our little hometown. We were going to be one of the many very competent, very creative musical groups fighting over a very small bone. Reality check. I was good, very good, but maybe not quite as good or exceptional as I’d gotten used to people telling me, or as I thought … I was fast, but like the old gunslingers knew, there’s always somebody faster, and if you can do it better than me, you earn my respect and admiration, and you inspire me to work harder. I was not a natural genius. I would have to use every ounce of what was in me—my cunning, my musical skills, my showmanship, my intellect, my heart, my willingness—night after night, to push myself harder, to work with more intensity than the next guy just to survive untended in the world I lived in.”
This was music to Garrett. Because after last season, even after the crushing 34-31 playoff loss to Green Bay, he thought the team was just a little too happy with itself. Not without reason. Prescott went toe-to-toe with Aaron Rodgers and acquitted himself well (Prescott 103.2 rating, Rodgers 96.6), Elliott outgained the Packers team 125-87 on the ground, and it took the miracle catch from Jared Cook and two late 50-yard-plus Mason Crosby field goals for the Packers to survive.
The Cowboys have been here. On the verge of great expectations, I mean. Two years ago Dallas was coming off a 12-4 season and divisional playoff loss to the Packers. Tony Romo got hurt, and a 4-12 debacle followed. Now, they’re coming off a 13-3 season and another divisional playoff loss to the Packers.
And Garrett decided to confront the we’ve-arrived, Dak Prescott/Zeke Elliott-fueled runaway optimism in an oddly negative way when he addressed the full squad this offseason.
We’re not good enough.
“Have you read the Springsteen book?” Garrett said the other day in a lengthy conversation before practice. (“Born To Run,” an autobiography, 2016, Simon & Schuster.) “He’s 20 years old, everybody at the Jersey Shore loves him, but he’s unknown nationally, and a good friend and adviser tells him, ‘If you really want to be great, you’ve got to get off the Jersey Shore.’ And so they pile everything in a couple vehicles and head west to this sort of open mike night in San Francisco.
As Springsteen wrote, the band was part of a four-band showcase; one band would get the chance to move on and perhaps get a recording contract. The Jersey guys went third and thought they killed it. The fourth band, though not as energetic, was very good. Via “Born To Run:”
“They got the gig. We lost out. After the word came down, all the other guys were complaining we’d gotten ripped off. The guy running the joint didn’t know what he was doing, blah, blah, blah.”
That night, Springsteen reflected, sleeping on a couch in his transplanted parents’ home in the Bay Area. “My confidence was mildly shaken, and I had to make room for a rather unpleasant thought. We were not going to be the big dogs we were back in our little hometown. We were going to be one of the many very competent, very creative musical groups fighting over a very small bone. Reality check. I was good, very good, but maybe not quite as good or exceptional as I’d gotten used to people telling me, or as I thought … I was fast, but like the old gunslingers knew, there’s always somebody faster, and if you can do it better than me, you earn my respect and admiration, and you inspire me to work harder. I was not a natural genius. I would have to use every ounce of what was in me—my cunning, my musical skills, my showmanship, my intellect, my heart, my willingness—night after night, to push myself harder, to work with more intensity than the next guy just to survive untended in the world I lived in.”
This was music to Garrett. Because after last season, even after the crushing 34-31 playoff loss to Green Bay, he thought the team was just a little too happy with itself. Not without reason. Prescott went toe-to-toe with Aaron Rodgers and acquitted himself well (Prescott 103.2 rating, Rodgers 96.6), Elliott outgained the Packers team 125-87 on the ground, and it took the miracle catch from Jared Cook and two late 50-yard-plus Mason Crosby field goals for the Packers to survive.
