Mike McCarthy press conference: Jourdan Lewis won’t practice this week, Everson Griffen working his way in

Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy got behind the mic to take questions (virtually) from the local Dallas media. Here’s a quick recap. (All answers are paraphrased and not actual quotes).

How much will Everson Griffen practice today?

We’re just looking for him to progress, he’ll go through individual drills today, then Britt Brown and Markus Paul will lead the direction of his workload.

Asst. coaches talked about body language and chemistry, does that come from you?

It’s like anything. Direction comes from the head coach then down. Have to have a common thread of coaching principles. Then you get into scheme when you break out into offense, defense, and special teams. Body language is important, especially on offense, CeeDee Lamb has a natural characteristic in body language, that’s important in route running.

Is Lael Collins in shape and will he practice?

LC will be limited today. Seeing him yesterday, he’s getting better but he’ll be primarily with the rehab group today. He’s got a couple of dings he’s dealing with. He’s making up for missing some of the strength and conditioning phase now.

You mix and match guys at practice, putting them in different positions on the field. Why?

Tempo is such an important part of football. The ability to play fast and react to different situations, there’s a couple of things you try to achieve there from a training standpoint. The obvious is the physical conditioning, but it’s the mental component and the emotional component because things come at you fast in a football game. We want to make sure our team is ready for it. It’s something I’ve always done and it’s really starting to come into play, we didn’t have the type of offseason to teach all the drills we’re doing. The players have done a good job and the energy has been tremendous. Today is going to be a big day for us because we’re going to do a little more than we did on Friday.

What areas will you be doing more today?

We’re going to do a little more work in the group and the fundamental drills to emphasize some specifics, but we’ll stay with the three team periods. The tempo will be fast like Friday, I was very pleased with Friday’s practice.

Where is the team three weeks away from first game?

I think we’re where we need to be but I’m not naive, we have a lot to get done in the next three weeks. We’re still in the install phase of a normal training camp, We will be in that until we come off the field on Tuesday, with Thursday and Friday being more of a review of the install. We really want to get into more game structure and we’ll do that a week from today at AT&T Stadium. But we’ll need a little more than one night so the schedule is up in the air as to where we are. We have a good plan and we’ll be ready, but how we get there is really to be seen. We’re evaluating every practice, every snap and this week we want to hit everything thoroughly.

Will you be taking an extended look at younger players?

That’s something we’ll do at the end of this week and carrying over to the work at AT&T Stadium Sunday. If you look at a normal training camp, we’d have eight installs then a scrimmage and that’s really the first time getting into live action. If we stayed on that same timeclock our first live action would be this Thursday. That’s the way I’m looking at it.

Jourdan Lewis status?

I’ll probably have a better handle on it next week. He won’t practice this week. He’s been doing great, I really thought he had made the transition on doing the things we were asking him to do. Just basic things like how we were handling pre-snap alignment and things like that. He was having a heck of a camp.

Sean Lee status?

Day-to-day right now, he’ll be working with the rehab group today.

Why was it important to get special teams coach John Fassel?

He’s an established coach, you have coaches you want to work with. He’s exactly what I’m looking for, we want special teams to be a focus. It’s part of my vision and John has been outstanding, We’ve been doing game management things together. He’s an excellent coach and an even better person.