Former Dallas Cowboys tight end Dalton Shultz, who is now with the Houston Texans, did not hold back when describing what the culture and atmosphere are like between the two clubs.
When Shultz appeared on The Pat McAfee Show, he talked about the difference between the Cowboys and Texans clubhouse.
“The focus is just football, you know what I mean?” Schultz said about playing in Houston. “I’m going back and telling some people about being around the Cowboys practice facility and game day and describing some of the interactions and stuff that you see on a day-to-day basis and it surprises a lot of people. They’re like, ‘Holy crap. That actually happens at a practice facility?’ You think it’s normal, and then you come to a place like this.”
Shultz gave an example of what it was like some days in the Dallas locker room.
“It’s literally a zoo, dude,” Schultz said. “There’s people tapping on the glass trying to get people’s attention while they’re doing power cleans or whatever. It’s different. That’s the brand that they’ve built, that’s what [owner] Jerry Jones likes, that’s the way that they run things and there’s nothing wrong with that. You don’t realize how many eyeballs and how much that can maybe distract in the locker room, just being in the facility until you go somewhere else and you’re like, ‘Holy crap, there’s none of that.'”
This is not the first time the Cowboys culture has been called into question. The club has been under extreme scrutiny since losing in the first round of the playoffs to the Green Bay Packers after securing home-field advantage.
Many believe that since Jimmy Johnson left the organization in the 1990s, the franchise hasn’t been the same. Johnson was a strict disciplinarian who was known to cut players for the slightest mistake and leave popular players on the tarmac at the airport if they didn’t make the flight on time.
The Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson relationship deteriorated because Jones was upset that Johnson was getting most of the credit for building the Cowboys dynasty of the ’90s.
The talk of lack of discipline on this team has increased under Mike McCarthy, who some feel is a puppet under Jones who makes no real decisions.
Each year the Cowboys don’t make it past the first round of the playoffs makes all of the arguments against McCarthy and Jones louder, especially if people continue talking about how it’s a “zoo” behind the scenes.
