Life isn’t the same when you sign on to play for the Dallas Cowboys.
The stage is bigger, the lights are brighter ... and sometimes people watch you while you are in the weight room.
The topic of tours when it comes to AT&T Stadium or The Star, the team’s training facility in Frisco, has been long discussed. But in a recent ESPN article, some former Cowboys players have spoken out about the negative affects the outside interference had on their day-to-day lives while wearing the star.
Dorance Armstrong spent the first six seasons of his career in Dallas before following Dan Quinn to Washington this offseason, where he has now been able to see how the other side of the NFL lives while not in the Cowboys bubble.
“I’m smiling ... when I walk in the building here, I just know, like, I just have work,” Armstrong said.
Dante Fowler Jr. also jumped shipped from the Cowboys to the Commanders last offseason with Quinn.
“You got real facilities here [in Washington]. ... “You might not see tourists coming around, but it keeps the main thing the main thing,” said Fowler Jr., according to ESPN, though the defensive end later disputed ever saying the comments via social media.
Not everyone agrees with some former players’ sentiments.
Cowboys edge rusher Micah Parsons took to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday to counter some of the claims of his former teammates.
“Sometimes you gotta call bull s--- when you see it! This ain’t it,” Parsons wrote.
In a later post, he said: “Some people just ain’t meant for the lights and that’s okay!!!”
The Dallas Morning News covered the topic of off-the-field distractions the team creates for itself before the season began.
Opinions on both sides of the argument were gleaned from the story.
“Honestly, who cares if there’s a tour going on when there’s meetings?” running back Ezekiel Elliott said in August. “When we’re playing there’s 100,000 people in the stands. I think you got to learn how to block out the noise and learn how to block out the stuff that’s whatever.”
Tight end Jake Ferguson said that while he was at Wisconsin there were tours of the athletic center. Even when he lifted weights.
”We had school groups, tour groups coming through watching us in the weight room,” he said. “It is what you make it. In everything in life, you’re going to have distractions, especially when you’re blessed enough to play for this organization. You got to look at it as a privilege.”
Troy Aikman, who more recently has been critical on the on-field product in Dallas, said: “I think it creates another layer that a head coach and a staff and players have to try to departmentalize, so that they can be the best football players that they can be.”
Perhaps there is a certain bit of freedom for players to speak their mind when the team signing the paycheck is no longer located at 1 Cowboys Way in Frisco.
“This is more about football, just X’s and O’s,” Titans running back Tony Pollard, who became a free agent last offseason after five seasons with the Cowboys, told ESPN.
“I’m in a better place mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, just all around.”
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