Football season hasn't even started yet, but Dak Prescott and the Dallas Cowboys are already hard at work trying to get as many people as possible to groan at their shit. That's because Prescott and his offensive teammates gave Yahoo's Jori Epstein the scoop on how they plan to finally achieve their Super Bowl aspirations.
If you tried to engineer a maximally annoying NFL offseason story, I don't think you could come up with one that is more off-putting than this one, headlined "Inside Cowboys’ crash course with ex-Navy SEALs, whom Dak Prescott recruited to help end Super Bowl drought" and which includes the phrase "interactive lessons on tactical resets." The story is about how Prescott trapped a group of his teammates in a big house in Georgia this July so that they could be put through a three-day workshop by two ex-Navy SEALs who now run a life-coaching company called O2X. That stands for "Optimize to the X," by the way. The story starts like this:
Gathered in the basement of a three-floor home on Georgia’s Lake Oconee, 17 Dallas Cowboys players fell silent.
A former Army Ranger and lieutenant colonel stood before them. The Silver Star and six Bronze Stars he had earned in combat spoke loudly even as Brian Kitching spoke softly.
The first words out of his mouth: “February 11, 2024.”
The date of this season’s Super Bowl set the tone for the three-day mental performance workshop that quarterback Dak Prescott organized in July for his teammates.
Yahoo Sports
As predictable as an NFL player running to some ex-Navy SEALs for help in getting over the postseason hump is, this story isn't without surprises. You might expect two former operators who spent their careers deploying with a unit that is best known for its deadly training program, rampant steroid abuse, drug-smuggling, and the cultivation of some of America's most accomplished serial killers to bring some fire and brimstone to their motivational sessions. Surely there's an inspiring speech to be made about how the skills that are required to sneak into a home and shoot a bunch of teenagers and old people while they sleep in their beds are similar to those needed to convert a third-and-9 on the road.
It seems, however, that Prescott and his buddies got put through the same kind of team-bonding exercises that you'd expect to see at any standard corporate retreat. The story describes them being divided into teams and competing against each other in solving brain teasers; the ex-SEALs also taught the players how to inhale for five seconds and exhale for seven, or, if they're short on time, take one deep breath. Perhaps the Navy SEALs, like everything else, have finally gone woke.
The story does, however, describe one exercise which I think could be genuinely useful to Prescott and the Cowboys going forward:
Cowboys players have also begun integrating what O2X calls a “three by three,” saying aloud three things they feel, three things they hear and three things they see as a means of blocking out internal and external distractions.
Yahoo Sports
Now, see, this would have been helpful during last year's playoffs. If Prescott had been trained to take his time and say what he sees—I see my running back lined up all alone at center; I see my head coach's brain leaking out of his ears; I see a final play so humiliating that I will spend the next six months in constant torment before desperately seeking salvation from two ex-military hucksters—he could have just walked off the field before the final snap of his season and saved himself a lot of trouble.
