OXNARD, Calif. – The Cowboys won't be going straight to their hotel when they land in the San Francisco Bay Area – rather, they'll be heading straight to Levi's Stadium.
It's not exactly out of the ordinary for a Jason Garrett-coached team to do so. The Cowboys went immediately to CenturyLink Field for a Saturday walkthrough last year in Seattle.
"Sometimes we vary these schedules around a little bit," Garrett said. "We thought it was a good idea to go over there."
Knowing Garrett, though, it's not hard to imagine an ulterior motive for that trip. The Cowboys' preseason continues this weekend in Santa Clara, Calif., but it's also the site of Super Bowl 50 – a fact that can't be lost on any NFL fan.
Garrett smiled when he was asked if that thought had crossed his mind.
"We just thought it was a good idea to go over there," he said.
Pushed for further detail, he elaborated a bit – though not entirely.
"We probably won't share our message to the team with you guys right now, but when we start -- if you're a player, a coach or staff member in this league and you don't have a goal of winning the Super Bowl, you're doing the wrong thing.
"So we all have that very tangible goal, but we have a lot of different goals. We have larger goals than that. We have smaller goals than that and things that we focus on each and every day. So certainly everybody wants to be a part of a Super Bowl-winning team, so that's our goal. But we have a lot of little goals, we have a lot of goals we want to accomplish today so we're going to focus on those right now."
There's also the matter of the turf at Levi's Stadium, which the Cowboys will want to take a look at. The condition of the field in Santa Clara has been a topic of much conversation recently, as it hasn't held up to sustained wear and tear. The 49ers only used the stadium for three of eight scheduled preseason practices, and they just had the field re-sodded ahead of Sunday night's exhibition.
"We're going to go up there and we're going to go over to the stadium once we get there before we go over to the hotel and have a little bit of a walk-through and we'll take a peek at it, but it sounds like it has been an issue and they're trying to address it as best they can," Garrett said. "We're going to play a game on Sunday afternoon, so we've got to figure it out. Hopefully they've taken care of their end of it."
