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USATSI

FRISCO, Texas -- The NFL and college football are vastly different sports even though they are both football. The connection and camaraderie of teammates in college isn't easily manufactured in the NFL where players are initially linked simply by their paychecks coming from the same place. Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy fights this reality every season with a unifying theme with two primary goals: to define team expectations and to bring his players together. 

McCarthy has the Silver and Blue winning in the regular season like it's the 1990's again: consecutive seasons with 12 victories in 2021 (12-5) and 2022 (12-5), with quarterback Dak Prescott playing 12 or more games each season. The last two seasons mark the first consecutive Dallas seasons with 12 or more wins since the 1992-1995 seasons, when the Cowboys won three Super Bowls in four years with Hall of Famers Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, and Michael Irvin leading the way. That meant the Dallas head coach needed a theme to indicate his team is on the cusp of making a run all the way to the Super Bowl for the first time since the 1995 season. Thus, Carpe Omnia because the mantra for the 2023 Dallas Cowboys. 

"The theme is Carpe Omnia, seize everything," McCarthy said Wednesday. "Presented it to the team today, and it really has a few parts to it. I think it [the theme] needs to illustrate where you feel your football is at, where they are in their progression toward winning the championship. I think it's very, very difficult to win a Super Bowl in this league, there's no question about it. That's proven every year. I think sustaining success is, personally in my experience, a bigger challenge. It's the touchstone to connect with… carpe, seize, omnia, everything. Just giving them the touchstone to connect with of Carpe equals seize, Omnia equal everything. That's the way we're looking at this season."

Following the reveal, the Cowboys displayed a banner with the team photos of all five of their Super Bowl championship teams in their hallway that goes from their locker room through the team cafeteria and out to their practice field at The Star in Frisco, Texas -- the team's headquarters -- with the theme emblazoned it. In the middle of the sign, there's a blank picture frame for the 2023 team, not so subtly indicating the the franchise's internal Super Bowl-or-bust expectations in 2023. 

"We have an empty picture frame in the front of the team room," McCarthy said. "It illustrates that pictures say a thousand words. But the reality of it is an empty frame is everything because it is all the possibilities, capabilities, what's in front of us. Are we going to do what we need to do every single day, everything that we can possibly do to fill that frame and be part of the history and tradition of the Dallas Cowboys."

New Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Brandin Cooks, who has played for Sean Payton with the New Orleans Saints (2014-2016), Bill Belichick with the New England Patriots (2017), and Sean McVay with the Los Angeles Rams (2018-2019), has suited for other Super Bowl-winning head coaches with distinct messages. However, he has never seen a team fully embrace a head coach's message quite like the Cowboys. McCarthy also won over Cooks and the rest of the roster by including photos of each player and their families during the presentation of the 2023. Each player also received a sweatshirt at their locker on Wednesday with the theme front and center.

"I think this is a unique, this is unique," Cooks said Wednesday. "Obviously teams have their theme. But as far as making a showcase about it, this is the first time, I enjoyed it and I loved it. You got chills because the fact that he's talking about our families. He [McCarthy] put a picture up of everyone with their family that gave me chills, especially my wife and my two little ones, but to also understand what the guy beside you is fighting for as well. He went through the whole roster, somebody with their family. That goes to show that he cares about us as players, but like once again, he's showcasing what everyone is fighting for with you guys."

This presentation rollout wasn't just effective among new Cowboys. Linebacker Leighton Vander Esch, who is entering his sixth season in Dallas in 2023, teared up during McCarthy's unveiling of the upcoming season's theme. 

"This is our best one yet," Vander Esch said Wednesday. "It's extremely relatable, and I love what they chose for us. I just love the delivery of it. That [including players' families] was special too... It almost brought me to tears. It made me emotional because obviously everybody plays for their reason why. It was cool. It was neat to see that."

Seeing everyone's families left two-time First-Team All-Pro Micah Parsons, a 24-year-old, contemplating his entire life's outlook.

"It was super dope…I think him [McCarthy] showing a bunch of the families and what is your why and who you are fighting for," Parsons said. "I thought that was important. Seeing my family up there, sometimes in life you take this for granted. You're like, 'I got next week to get better. Or, 'I got tomorrow to do this.' But every day you just got to take life for what it is, and you got to be great. You got to remember why you're here, your purpose and everything. Because you just never know when it's your time. You got to take every day as its own."

The vacant picture frame for 2023 refocused Parsons, achieving McCarthy's desired effect of firing him and his teammates up to go play real deal, regular season football again starting with "Sunday Night Football" against the New York Giants. 

"That empty picture of just 2023: What is our identity and what are we going to be?" Parsons said. "That's when you start visualizing and manifesting and things like that. I'm a big person in manifesting and closing my eyes and thinking about the plays I'm going to make the night before and what's going to happen in the future. Sometimes it almost feels like it's Deja Vu. So, I thought that was important."

Parsons, above all others, embodies everything McCarthy is looking to get out of Carpe Omnia in 2023. 

"Micah is obviously extremely gifted, but he's so competitive," McCarthy said. "He's sponge-like, a quarterback-type personality, and I mean that in a positive way. He's really into everything. He is a great example of Carpe Omnia [seize everything] because he's trying to seize everything. He does it with such a competitive fire. He has tremendous skill and gifts to go with that." 

His competitive mindset is currently manifesting itself in the form of Parsons thinking about winning a Super Bowl at all hours of the day, even laying in bed night. The 2022 Defensive Player of the Year runner-up's thirst to win it all is unrelenting. 

"I have been sleeping on it, I have been dreaming about it, and It's late at night, and I just think 'Super Bowl, Super Bowl, Super Bowl,'" Parsons said. "I don't get too caught up on it at the same time because I know I have to take care of each week as its own. Every day will have worries of its own. Every day you have to focus on just getting better that inch-by-inch, and eventually you'll be enough inches to where you are in the Super Bowl. But, your preparation, your work, and mindset all lead there. What you do every day leads to the Super Bowl. You can't just say I want to go to the Super Bowl."

Parsons' 26.5 sacks through his first two NFL seasons stand as the sixth-most since sacks became an official statistic in 1982, but in McCarthy's eyes, his defensive wrecking ball has matured into much more than a whirling dervish on Sundays. 

"I have seen him grow in every way as a young man," McCarthy said. "The responsibility he has off the field… I thought he did a really good job with his offseason plan and his personal plan that all these players in today's NFL have to have away from just the facility because of the way it [the offseason] is structured now. I think he has taken that step. You went to see all your young players there. I think he has surrounded himself in a good way there. His understanding of the defense is significantly higher today than it was this time last year and definitely his first year. I don't know that there is an area where he hasn't grown."

Entering his third season on a defense that has led the NFL in takeaways in each of his first two years and a defense that acquired 2019 NFL Defensive Plater of the Year cornerback Stephon Gilmore, Parsons' passion while describing his enthusiasm for the Cowboys' Week 1 matchup against the New York Giants on "Sunday Night Football"  continued to rise. 

"Yeah, man, it's super exciting," Parsons said. "When you just prepare so hard and you just know what you're capable of, now it's just going out there and executing it, understanding how people are going to try to attack you. So, it's not so much of what you can do. It's a matter about what they're [the opponent] is going to do, and you just have to be prepared for every moment, and everything that's going to come in the game, the good and the bad."