FRISCO, Texas — With the season officially kicking off in four days, head coach Mike McCarthy revealed the team's 2023 theme on Wednesday morning as the phrase "Carpe Omnia" – meaning "Seize Everything" – will be the team's motto for the journey ahead.
McCarthy has instituted a theme for each year he's been in Dallas, and for this year's edition, he sees it as a bulletin board for what is on the table for the team to accomplish this season.
"I think themes are important," McCarthy said. "They come to you at different points of the offseason. This came a little different. I think it needs to illustrate where you feel your football team is at, where they are in their progression towards winning a 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 each and every year. But sustaining success – I think personally in my experience – is a bigger challenge. That's the way we're looking at this season."
When it was presented to the team by McCarthy, the fourth-year head coach put up pictures of all of the players with their families before diving into what the theme really means. For veteran wide receiver Brandin Cooks, who is in his first season in Dallas, it helped to communicate what everyone around him is trying to seize as well.
"I think this is unique," Cooks said. "Making a showcase about it, I would say this is the first time. You get chills because [of] the fact that he talked about our families. It also helps you understand what the guy beside you is fighting for as well."
For Tony Pollard, uniting as a team under those two words and one theme allows everyone to take off into the season knowing that it's a group effort to accomplish the end goal.
"It's gonna take all of us to get to where we wanna go," Pollard said. "We play for each other, we play for our family."
Even for the starting kicker in week one, Brandon Aubrey, the motto represents his own personal opportunity to seize his chance as well as the team's chance to maximize potential.
"Seize everything," Aubrey said. "What we went through, seizing the day or seizing the moment isn't enough for us. We want to go out and seize everything."
After McCarthy revealed the theme to the team, he put up an empty picture frame in the front of the team meeting room to illustrate that "everything" sits in front of them going into the year. What will fill in that frame? That will be for the team's success to answer.
"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," McCarthy said. "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?"
