Jason Garrett: La’el Collins maturing, experience is making him better

Training camp is rolling along and our coverage rolls along as we check in with the head coach at his press conference today.

Jason Garrett took the podium on Saturday. Here’s what he had to say (all answers are paraphrases of Garrett, not direct quotes).

Can you talk about bringing the officials into camp?

They will be here for three days and participate in all the practices. The thing we emphasize is communication, we want to gain a greater understanding of how they will call the game. We’ll ask them to throw flags and to grab players and coaches and tell them why they are calling something and what would cause a flag. We’ll meet with the team after 72 hours and have a presentation and Q&A with officials. We’ll spend time as a coaching staff to learn as much as we can

How has Dorance Armstrong been doing?

He’s done a nice job, he made a good impression in spring and has carried that through. He’s a young player and he goes about things the right way. He comes off the ball and gets after the runner/QB, he doesn’t shy away from vets. We feel like he can play both sides, the more versatile he is the better, sometimes you want to find a player a home but if he can handle a couple of spots that a good thing for the team.

Who will not practice or be limited today?

Most of the team will practice, Maliek Collins and other players with big injuries won’t practice. Trying to get guys involved and acclimated, probably won’t see much of Deonte Thompson or Chris Covington today. We anticipate Sean Lee doing some stuff today.

You’re going to have a goal line practice today?

We’ll run an eight play set of goal line today. It’s the only time we’ll practice this way where you can tackle tackle the runner. We’ll run 4 plays with the 1s and four plays with the 2s. Give them a chance to come off the ball, to run it and chance to stop them. There aren’t many goal line plays in a season but they are critical

What do you consider a goal line play?

Inside the two is goal line. Also the formation of 3 three TE and two RB. and the defense will be beefed up.

La’el Collins improvement?

He has a maturity that comes with experience, it trickles down to everything he does. He’s getting more experience and understanding how to play better. Emotionally, he’s a physical guy, he wants to play physical, but you have to channel that to play with physicality and technique. You don’t want the defense to use your aggressiveness against you. Whether it’s foot work or hand placement, he’s matured a lot.

Making practice competitive, even keeping score for individual drills, compete drills?

Lot of individual stuff we do at practice is to refine skills, then do group stuff when you’re putting scheme stuff in, then 11-on-11 to run plays. We believe every part of practice needs to be competitive. Even in the early part of practice. We try to create competitive situations throughout practice, that’s how the game is played. There is a progression, individually and schematically, guys growfrom competing.

Why the sprints at the end of practice?

We’ve done it in the past, just not in recent years. But we decided to implement it. With this young team we thought it was the right thing to do, condition our guys. It’s not a sprint, more of a strider, we have several different kinds we use, it provides better conditioning. Two reason are it’s a younger team, and we want to be a team that can sustain in the fourth quarter of games.