Do you like sitting around watching grown men in jerseys, shorts and cleats stand around on a football field? Not really? Me neither, but that’s what I did this afternoon for an hour as the Cowboys spent the entire practice working on all situations associated with special teams. They worked on kickoffs, punts, punting from the endzone, onside kicks, receiving punts after a safety, even snapping the ball out of the endzone when punting from their own endzone. Sound exciting? I didn’t think so.
But there was one piece of news that isn’t good. Jason Hatcher left practice after the first 30 minutes or so holding his hamstring. The trainers all gathered around him as did Jerry Jones before he walked off with a trainer to the locker room. I don’t know the severity of the injury, so don’t get too upset yet. I’m just reporting what I saw.
Also Gramatica and Folk kicked FG’s and both of them seem to make them all, although my angle wasn’t the best to see if they were through the uprights. I do know that Folk booted one through from about 49 yards.
For completeness sake, it appears the kick return team lines up with Carpenter, Ayodele, Spencer, Glymph and Watkins across the front line, Hoyte, McQ, Ratliff and Polite form the wedge and Austin and Thompson are the return guys. When they lined up to receive the punt from the opponents 20-yard line after a safety, Newman and Crayton came in to take the punt.
Meanwhile, the QB’s all gathered around Wade Wilson and Jason Garrett in the other endzone and were having a long discussion, and Terrell Owens joined them. He was probably lobbying for more passes in his direction. The practice was so casual that Owens had time to walk over to Clarence Hill and grab a handful of popcorn from his bag and munch it down. T.O. eating popcorn, it’s too rich with implications.
I caught Jerry Jones talking with Isaiah Stanback for a little while, then with T.O. before he wandered over to check on Hatcher’s status.
That was really about it. One hour of sheer boredom. But I did it for you guys!