For any head coach, roster cutdown day is never easy.
Each year, a head coach will have to call in over 30 guys into his office, one at a time, to tell them that they did not make the 53-man roster.
For Dallas Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer, Tuesday’s cutdown was the first time he’s ever had to do it.
It was as advertised. “It was hard to sit down in front of those guys,” he said. More often than not, coaches only call in the players who are cut. If you don’t get called in, you can assume it’s good news.
So when defensive tackle Perrion Winfrey said that Schottenheimer wanted to see him in his office, he assumed that his time with the Cowboys was coming to a close. Winfrey had rebounded after being released by the Cleveland Browns after just one season because of multiple legal issues off the field.
He was out of the NFL for almost two years, but when he arrived at training camp for the Cowboys, he had shined in a defensive tackle room in desperate need of some life. However, it was beginning to look like his strong preseason would just barely not be enough — at least to him. “He assumed he was being cut,” Schottenheimer said.
“He walked in, sat down in my office. [Vice president of player personnel] Will McClay and I were in there. We played it up a bit. I was a good actor.”
Perrion Winfrey, Brian Schottenheimer, Will McClay all emotional Schottenheimer opened his conversation with Winfrey with a negative tone, playing into the idea that he thought he was being cut. “These are hard days,” Schottenheimer told Winfrey.
“And there are a lot of hard conversations that you have to have. But this is one that I’ve been looking forward to, because I’m telling you that you made the team.” Winfrey became emotional in the first-year head coach’s office. It’s not often you’ll see three grown men with tears coming down their face in a room together, but that’s what the moment created, Schottenheimer said. “He became very emotional,” Schottenheimer said.
“I became emotional. I look over at McClay, he’s emotional. You talk about a guy who’s had this amazing game taken away from him. You really realize how much these players love this game, how much they sacrifice for this game, what they have to give up and go through, the pounding it takes on their body.” “I’m emotional for him. What I saw in my office was real tears of joy.
He means it.” Just simply recalling the moment caused Schottenheimer to swell up with tears in his eyes in Tuesday’s press conference.
He has frequently displayed emotion with the media when explaining how an individual player has moved him, and this one was no different. “It showed me the passion that he has for this game and the pain that he’s had to go through in having this taken from him,” he said.
“I told him, ‘The reason we wanted to do it is, I wanted to see your reaction.’” Dallas Cowboys defensive tackle Perrion Winfrey (right) battles Los Angeles Rams center Beaux Limmer during a preseason game Aug. 9 in Inglewood, Calif.
Jayne Kamin-Oncea Imagn Images Defensive tackle battle It came down to the wire for all of the Cowboys’ defensive tackles, as only Osa Odighizuwa and Solomon Thomas got the luxury of sitting out the preseason.
What put Winfrey over the edge was a sequence in one of the final few snaps he played in the final preseason game. “We’re playing in the fourth quarter of a preseason game we’ve already won,” Schottenheimer recalls.
“We’re on the goal line at the 1, defense is trying to get a stop. He’s absolutely trying to go crazy motivating those other guys.
If you can’t cheer for that, I don’t know what you can cheer for.” In an exclusive interview with the Star-Telegram after the game, Winfrey showed appreciation to the Cowboys for giving him an opportunity to play again in the NFL. He said that he was willing to put his “life, body, whatever else on the line” to see the team win.
When Schottenheimer heard that quote, it affirmed his own decision from just a few hours earlier. “He’s a special young man who deserves this opportunity,” he said.
“He’s earned it. I tip my cap to him.”
