Via FOX 4 News (Source)
As the Cowboys gear up for training camp, radio analyst and former Dallas QB Babe Laufenberg shares his biggest concern about the team. Plus, he and Mike Doocy discuss the NFL’s new rule changes.
Via FOX 4 News (Source)
As the Cowboys gear up for training camp, radio analyst and former Dallas QB Babe Laufenberg shares his biggest concern about the team. Plus, he and Mike Doocy discuss the NFL’s new rule changes.
Via SportsDayDFW.com (Source)
Ballzy podcast host Kevin Sherrington talks to Babe Laufenberg about all things Cowboys. Here are some highlights.
Sherrington: What is the next step for [Dak]? What do you see for him and his progression as a quarterback?
Laufenberg: You do forget how young he is. I don’t think three years into it in the past you had these great expectations for players, and they were still learning. You feel like Dak has been here for 10 years. In part he started two seasons, but in part because of his leadership. He’s been a leader for this football team since Day 1. That’s difficult to do. … For Dak to assume that leadership from the get go as a fourth round pick was pretty impressive.
He’s still on a learning curve. He’s going to be a much better player two, three, four years from now than he is today. You just have to make sure that learning curve keeps ascending. The learning curve can also go down at time. We’ve seen that. Robert Griffin III after that rookie season he had you said the Cowboys are going to have to deal with this for next 10 years, twice a year. And we see where that went.
Sherrington: The thing that impresses me the most about him is his head. I think the reasons he lasted until the fourth round were the mechanical, fundamental issues he had. When you watch him throw a football, do you still see things that he needs to work on and correct?
Laufenberg: Oh, yes. I’m going to preface my Dak answer with this answer: Tom Brady still goes out to Tom House in the offseason and works with him on mechanics. The notion that you say OK, he’s got it, let’s just tell him what time the game is and when the bus leaves, is flawed. You’re constantly working and tweaking, trying to find a better way to throw it, trying to find better foot work. Dak is in that stage.
When I first saw him he had a real bounce. When he went back and set up in the pocket, he would really bounce up and down. It was almost like you were on a ship. I give Wade Wilson credit for that, along with the rest of the coaching staff, but if you go back and look at his first training camp I said this is going to be an issue for his accuracy and consistency. They got that out of him. You do that, but you don’t just say OK we’re finished. I just think you’re in a state of constant tweaking.
Can you tweak too much? Tiger Woods won the US Open by 15 at Pebble Beach and decided he couldn’t win with that swing. You gotta be a little careful about over-coaching. But there’s no question you’re always tuning up and maintaining. You kinda have to keep constant vigil on the mechanics of the throwing motion.
Sherrington: When we talk about accuracy issues with Dak are we talking about things he is doing with his delivery? Some guys just aren’t going to be as accurate as other guys. So is it something that can improve?
Laufenberg: Absolutely you can improve it. I don’t recall a bunch of throws last year when you just said wow he missed an open guy. I think we look at the numbers and the completion percentage and you say he was inconsistent throwing the ball. Naturally there were some throws in there that he wants back. Everyone wants some back.
You just don’t visualize a lot of guys running open and Dak missing them. I think it was a little overblown with the accuracy issues he had. It seemed like every ball he was throwing to Dez there was someone draped on Dez. So we’ll see. What scares me more than Dak’s accuracy is the level at the wide receiver position. You’re counting on a lot of things to happen. Allen Hurns has been hurt the last couple of years. Tavon Austin, there’s a reason he was available for a sixth round draft pick. Cole Beasley is always going to be limited because of his size. He’ll never be an outside receiver. There’s a lot of limitations to the wide receivers group. I think you really have to keep your fingers crossed for Michael Gallup, the third rounder out of Colorado State, and just hope he becomes a little bit better than when he was drafted.
Sherrington: I would agree with that, but I would make the point are they any worse off this year than they were last year at the wide receiver position?
Laufenberg: I think they are only in the sense that when you break the huddle there’s no where they’re going to say where’s 82, where’s 88. To me that’s always offensively or defensivly. When team’s where playing the Cowboys and DeMarcus Ware was there, that offense would break the huddle and offensive line, all five guys, would say ‘There’s 94.’ Offensively, you break the huddle and when you’re playing Atlanta you find Julio Jones every time you come out the huddle, if they huddle anymore. They know 21 is going to be in the backfield. After that, there’s not an 82, there’s not an 88, so that could be problematic.
Sherrington: I just feel like there’s more of an issue for me losing Witten than losing Dez, just because of what you could count on from Witten. Teams were covering Dez with single coverage a lot. He may have been the Cowboys’ No. 1 receivers, but he is not a No. 1 receiver anymore.
Laufenberg: It obviously happens in many areas of sports and even life, you forget how good he was. He did not have a good year last year. Why? There’s a whole litany of reasons why, but the way doesn’t matter. He did not have a good year. But he was as good as there was for a three-year span, and he was a No. 1 receiver.
Which was interesting to me why he reportedly turned down the two-year deal from Baltimore for the one-year deal, a make it deal. He’s gonna be 30-years-old. I don’t think his career arc is ascending at this moment. The longer he stays out of a camp, the harder it will be for him to learn an offense. He’s not a guy that’s just gonna jump in and a week later say I got this.
Sherrington: I don’t know who’s advising him. I thought it was a terrible decision. In two years he couldn’t get it going with Dak. What makes him think that in a couple of weeks he’ll be able to put something together with a completely different quarterback. I do feel like in training camp something will happen, someone will get hurt and someone will sign him. What do you think?
Laufenberg: I think he’ll be in someone’s training camp, but I think it’s going to be staggering how limited the amount of money they’re going to give him is going to be. He’s been available to sign.
I remember when he first was released, the number has since gone up to six teams, but I immediately called four people I know in the league. Either head coaches, GMs, personnel directors, decision makers. They had no interest. It wasn’t let’s see what his price is, we’re going to look at some tape. I was like, do you want to wait a minute before you text me back?
I think the league thought there would probably be a bigger market for Dez. I’m sure Dez thought that, clearly than there was. I understand you’re not going to get the big money deal. The free agency period came and left before you were available. But it doesn’t mean teams can’t sign you. It just means you can’t get the five-year, $80 million deal you might have been looking for. To not be signed is amazing to me.
I will say this, too. Doing the game with Brad Sham at Philly, meaningless game. Many times you then start pointing ahead to what happened that year and you look ahead to next year. If Brad had said to me during that game it’ll be interesting to me to see how this team looks next year without Dez Bryant and Jason Witten, I would’ve said what? Did they legalize marijuana in Pennsylvania? Could you have imagined after that Philly game as you’re filing your story away that there would be no Dez Bryant and Jason Witten? That’s where they are.
By Mac Engel, Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Source)
We have all stumbled, searched and grasped for the right words to offer someone who is experiencing great fear, sadness or loss, and in the end, we mostly feel stupid, small and embarrassed.
Because sometimes there truly are no words, even if we are unable to grasp that simple reality.
In the last week, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Babe Laufenberg and his son, Luke, have shared their story with a few local outlets; Luke was diagnosed with Burkitt leukemia on Dec. 26. He did the whole nightmare that is modern cancer treatment.
“Dad, there must be 2,000 people praying for me. Why am I so sick?” Luke, 20, asked his dad during his stay in the hospital.
“As a dad, that’s so hard,” said Babe, the color analyst in the Cowboys radio booth. “I’d just say, ‘I just know those prayers aren’t hurting.'”
On Wednesday, with Luke’s weight coming back up and his hair growing, he stood on the Dallas Cowboys’ practice fields to watch next to his dad, just a few days before Father’s Day.
I am not going to do any better job than the other journalists who have told the story of pain, fear and horror the Laufenberg family experienced through this hell, but I wanted to know one thing: What are you supposed to say?
What are you supposed to say when your friend hurts? What are you supposed to say when a parent is confronting the loss of a child? What do you say when your friend is going through life-altering fear and/or pain?
Babe and his son are now both reluctant authority figures on this subject. They learned there is a way for those not in this situation to handle it and be there for those we love.
Start with process of elimination, and begin with what not to say to people in these types of situations.
“There was a real possibility that he was not going to be around. I think the one thing that made me a little bit upset was someone might say, ‘He’ll be fine,'” Babe said. “I was in the hospital. I saw him. I said to myself, ‘There’s no guarantee he’s going to be fine.’ When I saw him, I knew there was a real chance he may not leave this hospital.”
In retrospect, I may have texted those words to Babe. If I did, I can only say I am sorry.
Because, when you live long enough, you know in situations like those the last thing you want to hear is “It’s going to be OK.”
It will be OK for the person saying it. The person hearing it knows differently.
“Keep it short,” Luke said. “The big thing is not to compare it to anything in your life. Whenever I lost a bunch of weight, people would compare it to something very minor that happened to them. I was like, ‘These are totally different things.'”
Luke received a few messages from friends trying to relate to his weight loss via chemotherapy to weight loss via fraternity pledgeship. That one just missed the mark.
“I know someone compared it to mono,” he said. “Keep it concise. Let them know you are thinking about them. And, like my dad said, the ‘You’ll be fine’ got a little annoying because that person hasn’t even seen you to know. Saying something like that is just a cliche.”
What Luke Laufenberg had could have killed him.
Per WebMD, Burkitt leukemia is recognized as the fastest-growing human tumor and can be “rapidly fatal if left untreated.”
Luke’s condition was treated within a matter of weeks of discovery.
As Babe noted, every time the doctors warned Luke that he may experience “this complication” from the latest procedure, it happened. Not once. Every single time something could potentially go wrong as a result of the latest rounds of punches to the face, it happened.
“Babe or (Luke’s mother) Joan was up there at the hospital every night,” said Babe’s younger brother, John. “I guess it was about 90 days in there where it was absolute hell for him, and … yeah, I guess I did go there (in thought) and did think that we might not see him again.”
Luke, who walked on at Texas A&M to play tight end, was eventually reduced to 150 pounds.
Babe’s former college coach at Indiana, current ESPN analyst Lee Corso, called and tried to have a conversation, but Luke was unable; ever the comedian, Corso said he couldn’t talk either because he had a stroke.
Eventually, after approximately three months of near constant bone-smashing treatment, his condition improved.
Like most people, or families, who go through such prolonged periods of fear, when the stress begins to subside, there was no great celebration for the Laufenbergs. There was no champagne pop. No snapping of the finish line ribbon.
Just complete exhaustion.
There is the process of beginning to re-establish normal, and gratitude.
There’s just life.
“For me, any activity I do with friends or family, getting outside of the house and not just watching Netflix, is a blast for me,” said Luke, who plans to re-enter college in the spring intent on playing football. “For so long, I couldn’t drink or eat. So seeing my friends or eating Mexican outside, it’s something I no longer take for granted.”
So the next time a friend or loved one is going through something similar, heed the words of Babe Laufenberg on how to console them.
“The best thing, as far as I was concerned, some people would text and say, ‘There are no words,'” he said. “Because there were no words.”