{"id":688302,"date":"2026-06-06T17:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T17:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/688302\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T17:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T17:32:09","slug":"dallas-cowboys-news-what-the-first-week-of-otas-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/688302\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas Cowboys news: What the first week of OTAs revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"

During Thursday\u2019s practice, Curtis Robinson and Shemar James were getting snaps at middle linebacker. What was interesting for both is that Robinson is listed as an outside linebacker. James was paired with Dee Winters during team drills.<\/p>\n

Winters, acquired in a trade<\/a>, played off-the-ball linebacker with the 49ers and was supposed to get middle linebacker snaps. That still may be the case, but with the media watching, it was James getting the calls.<\/p>\n

Changing the offseason schedule<\/p>\n

When the Cowboys began their voluntary offseason program this spring, coach Brian Schottenheimer decided to shorten it by a week, from nine to eight weeks this year.<\/p>\n

The offseason program takes place in three phases, and the first phase typically starts during the NFL draft process. Schottenheimer moved that back a week. In the past, rookies would join the veterans in the offseason program during phase two.<\/p>\n

Schottenheimer didn\u2019t want his coaches to be distracted with preparing for the draft and getting with veterans at the same time.<\/p>\n

One of the biggest differences in the lost week is the review days. The Cowboys previously would have nine install practices then three review days during OTAs. The lost week eliminated the review days. So instead of a review day, the Cowboys conduct phase two of the offseason program for a day, which consists of individual drills and walkthrough sessions.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the young players are spinning a little bit, it\u2019s moving fast for them,\u201d Schottenheimer said. \u201cWe don\u2019t set the installation to [the rookies]; we set it to the veterans.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During Thursday\u2019s practice, Curtis Robinson and Shemar James were getting snaps at middle linebacker. What was interesting for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":688303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[15976,349,99],"class_list":["post-688302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-dallas-cowboys-news","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}