Former Cowboys TE Dalton Schultz details locker room at The Star, notes focus on brand

Dalton Schultz described the culture at The Star to be heavily influenced by the Dallas Cowboys caring about their brand and it serving as a distraction.

Over the course of this brief offseason a lot has been said and pondered about the Dallas Cowboys culture.

At every turn those involved with the team – recently Jerry Jones, Stephen Jones and Dak Prescott as examples – have refuted that there is any issue there. When the cameras and microphones are on the company line is that the culture is fine. It very well may be.

Criticism of the Cowboys culture seems to center around how much their brand and the brands of those involved with them lives at the center of things. Players being involved in shows and/or podcasts has been one point of criticism, but anyone who has a problem with culture is likely upset at a deeper level of brand activity.

On the subject of shows, a former Cowboys player was on one on Wednesday in Houston Texans tight end Dalton Schultz. You will recall that Schultz was left to forage for himself in free agency last year after playing the 2022 season for the Cowboys on the franchise tag. He turned his 1-year deal in Houston into a brand new 3-year, $36M deal which is highly impressive.

Schultz spoke Wednesday on The Pat McAfee Show and was asked about the difference between playing in Dallas and Houston, the distractions that playing for the Cowboys offers, so on and so forth. Jump to the 2:29 (two hours and 29 minutes) mark for the back and forth.

Pat McAfee: You’re on national tv every single week. Practice facility is filled with people paying for tickets for practice. It’s a whole different world, allegedly. Obviously you enjoyed our time in Dallas. I’m not going to say that. But when you get to Houston, is it vastly different than your time in Dallas whenever you’re talking about all of the off the field? Is that real?

Dalton Schultz: For sure. That was one of the first things that kind of stuck out to me is like… it feels like much more… I don’t want to say college because it’s not. But the focus is just football, you know what I mean? Going back and telling some people how kind of being around the Cowboys like practice facility and you know gameday… describing some of the interactions and stuff that you see on a day to basis like surprised a lot of people. They’re like holy crap, that actually happens at a practice facility? You think it’s normal and then you come to a place like this.

Pat McAfee: Like what? You don’t have to out anything.

Dalton Schultz: There’s people literally going on tours while you’re lifting in the weight room. And they’ve got like a, they’ve got a one-way mirror for people to like look at, it’s literally, it’s a zoo, dude. There’s people tapping on the glass trying to get people’s attention as they’re doing power cleans or what not. It’s just… it’s different. That’s the brand that they’ve built. That’s what Jerry Jones likes. That’s the way that they run things and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just you don’t realize how many eyeballs and how much that can maybe distract from stuff just in a locker room being in the facility until you go somewhere else and you’re like… holy crap dude there’s none of that. This is also a really well run organization in Houston. I think that was one of the things that kind of scared me about leaving Dallas the most is I wasn’t sure what another organization would kind of feel like. And dude I got here and I was like… this place is a well-oiled machine. Coaching staff, the coaching changes, I can’t speak to the previous stuff. The strength staff is phenomenal. The training staff is unbelievable.

If you have ever paid attention to what Cowboys players have said when they have left the franchise, this checks out with that. We can sit here and discuss whether or not people watching a football team in the weight room is or is not a distraction, but in the assessment of one player it is. You cannot help but wonder if others share that sentiment.

As noted the culture of this team has been under heavy fire this season so this will surely not do anything to help that cause. Additionally it doesn’t help that the Texans are coming off such a strong season and that Schultz was a big part of that. History is written by the winners as they say and the in-state Texans have a lot more ink on their quill right now than they have in recent memory.