Randall Cobb had a very interesting thing to say about Jason Witten and leadership

Leadership has been one of the biggest talking points with the Dallas Cowboys. That will happen when a team loses three games in a row. In fact, the leadership has come under such fire recently that it was talked about on Sunday morning on the NFL Network. Mike Garafolo reported that the Cowboys aren’t getting the leadership expected from younger players and that such was supposed to be the case with older veterans like Jason Witten and Sean Lee taking a backseat of sorts.

Cowboys wide receiver Randall Cobb was a guest on BTB’s The Ocho on Tuesday and one of the central themes of our discussion with him was leadership. You can listen to our entire conversation right here.

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Cobb is doing some great work with Gillette and The Boys and Girls Club to help teach leadership skills to today’s youth and that’s very commendable. There’s no question that Cobb has been one of the better guys in the locker room since joining the team.

What about that locker room, though? What of the leadership - or supposed lack-thereof - happening there?

Randall Cobb is somebody that has always been held in high regard through his almost-decade in the NFL so I was curious to see which Cowboys have impressed him over the course of his first season with the team. I asked him which players have surprised him in the leadership department and to no real surprise he said Dak Prescott and Jason Witten. Read his words about Witten carefully, though.

“Well I don’t think this is a shock, but I think Dak is a great leader. Being around him and watching his routine, his daily routine that he goes through. I think you look at his background, you hear his story, and the way that he continues to fight, and the faith that he has in everything that he does. You watch the little things that he do to prepare himself for game day, for practice, the way he talks through the week about our opponent, in the meeting rooms, and stuff like that. By no surprise I think Dak is one of our leaders and I think everybody will go to fight for him every time we step out on the field.”

“I definitely think Witten, he’s been doing this for a long time, and a lot of guys have a lot of respect for him. Being kind of an older player it’s sometimes difficult for younger guys to listen to you so sometimes you want to take a step back and allow some of those guys to step into the roles, younger guys to step into the roles. I can’t really speak for defense because we’re not really around those guys as much besides the practice. I really couldn’t tell you. I know Jeff Heath, his practice habits, Xavier Woods, you watch what they do every day, the way that they work, they come to work and they’re very professional about what they do.”

The subject of Jason Witten has been one that many people have offered an opinion on as of late. While nobody can deny his career numbers or leadership abilities, what Cobb said is very interesting in that it might be difficult for players, younger ones especially, to follow Witten given the gap in age.

Some players on the Cowboys are in their very early 20s. While they’re obviously capable of understanding what Jason Witten has meant to the Cowboys, that happened a while before them. It makes sense that there would be a potential disconnect between players that far apart in birth.

Consider if you were part of last year’s Cowboys. You fought back to the point that you turned a 3-5 record into a 10-6 one that featured an NFC East title and playoff win. Shortly after that the organization just drops Jason Witten on you and says that he’s a guaranteed starter? That would definitely be an interesting dynamic to say the least.