Cowboys

Cowboys QB Joe Milton said he preferred being traded to Dallas from New England and was excited to work with QB Dak Prescott.

“Definitely, I preferred it,” Milton said, via the Cowboys’ website. “That was something me and my team put together. They were able to get it done, I really didn’t have to do much or say much. So just shout out to my agent, that’s pretty much it. Dak is a great leader,. All respect to him. He literally goes out of his way to help me, no matter if the coach is talking in the meeting, he literally goes out of his way to help. I’ve been in another building. I know how that goes. It’s just very different over here.”

Cowboys

Cowboys COO Stephen Jones detailed how HC Brian Schottenheimer didn’t even realize how serious the team was about hiring him as the next head coach during meetings after the season ended.

“At first, he was just coming in wearing his coaching garb,” Jones said, via NY Times. “Then he upped his game and started showing up in a suit and tie, ʼcause he was getting an inkling that maybe there’s more to this.”

Schottenheimer added that he believed he would never become a head coach and reflected on getting the call as he turned 50.

“I thought I had missed my window,” he concedes. “It’s a young man’s game. My wife and I would sit around at night sometimes talking about it during the offseason, like, ‘Damn, it would have been cool to lead my own team at some point,’ because I knew I would be good at it. I say that humbly. I knew that I’d be good at it because of my people skills, my ability to lead. But I had to come to peace with that.”

Giants

Giants QB Jaxson Dart says the game is already starting to slow down for him as he reached training camp and spoke about improvements and adjustments he has made so far since being drafted by New York. 

“I can definitely feel a difference in the first day [last Wednesday] to even today,” Dart said, via GiantsWire.com. “Just that the game’s starting to slow down a little bit the more that I get comfortable with the plays and the system. I felt confident in the different installs that we had, and I felt at the same time the coaches gave me a lot of freedom. So I was able to make some checks that I wanted to, and I feel like that just allowed me to play just faster and be able to make quicker decisions.”

“Just trying to take advantage of the opportunities that I get. Trying to study late as much as I can,” Dart added. “I’m learning every second. I don’t want to play like a robot. I think that’s just my play style. When I’m on the field, I’m going to be aggressive in any situation. A quote that we go by in the quarterback room is, ‘Being aggressive but not reckless.’ So, when you have opportunities to put the dagger in, that’s what you have to do. And, at the same time, you can’t be reckless.”

Giants

Giants QB Russell Wilson spoke about the cost of leadership, noting that it can be lonely at times, even when receiving praise from teammates. 

“I think leadership is about 100 percent of the time. It’s not 80 percent of the time or 90 percent of the time. It’s got to be 100 percent of the time. I think that it gets lonely sometimes, it can,” Wilson told reporters on Wednesday, via GiantsWire.com. “The best part, it’s the camaraderie, it’s the fellowship, it’s the time together, it’s the leading other groups and other guys to believe more than they even it can even see sometimes. And I think that’s really important,” Wilson said. “I think, and it’s not just the players, it’s everybody in the building. . . It’s the training staff, to the chefs, to everybody that’s helping early in the mornings and late at night that you don’t see. And I think that’s what matters more than anything else. “And then obviously the culture that we continue to establish and bring daily, and the energy, we get the best jobs. I was telling the guys on the practice field, halfway through, ‘Man, we got the best job in the world. We get to play with the New York Giants,’ the opportunity we have, the gift that it is to play the game. If anybody’s battle-tested, I am. I can handle anything. And I think the best part about it, too, is that as a leader, you want everybody to know what they’re getting every day. And I think that’s what I want to be able to establish every day. Like I said, it’s 100 percent of the time, it’s not 80, it’s not 90, it’s 100 percent every day, 100 percent of the time every day. And so that’s the great part about it, and that’s the gift that God’s given me, and to be able to lead and to be able to play and love the game that I love and play the game I love.”