FRISCO, Texas – Every year, Super Bowl radio row is full of familiar faces, both old and new.
That's certainly the case for the Cowboys this year in San Francisco, who had plenty of current and former player walking around and doing interviews each and every single day. One of those was former LB Sean Lee, who still keeps up with the team he spent 10 years with.
"I love the Cowboys through and through," Lee said. "Every single game, every single play. Love the Cowboys, love the fans, and excited to watch them next year, they're going to bounce back and have a huge year."
If the Cowboys are in fact to bounce back, they'll especially need to do so on the defensive side of the ball after giving up the most points per game in the NFL last season at 30.1. Having played on that side of the ball, Lee believes that Dallas has some of the pieces necessary to improve, and now it's about putting them together.
"Getting the coordinator in, getting the personnel healthy again. I think there were a lot of games where they had a lot of personnel in and out, a lot of people who weren't healthy," Lee said. "Getting some continuity with a new coordinator, drafting some guys, bringing some young guys in, I think this defense is going to bounce back quick because the talent is there."
"There are guys who know how to play football, and you're gonna have a lot of young guys moving into year two. From year one to year two, I took a huge jump in understanding football and being able to play at a high level."
One of the most important positions on a defense is the one that Lee played for Dallas: Linebacker. The Cowboys have a need at the position heading into the offseason, and have several avenues like free agency and the draft to make additions. In Lee's mind, what makes the perfect linebacker?
"From a standpoint of skill set, a guy who's instinctual, a guy who's quick, a guy who loves to hit," Lee said. "And then ultimately from a leadership standpoint, a guy who always leads from the front, who's preparing constantly, who's trying to make his teammates better every day, who wants to compete every single day. Those are what make not only great linebackers, but great football players."
When it comes to players that Lee took the field with, the textbook example of the leader he described was Dallas' quarterback, Dak Prescott.
"When I think of a guy who competes every day, Dak Prescott," Lee said. "There's nobody better who competes more, pushes his teammates, who loves football, who loves his teammates, and loves the Cowboys. So that's a guy, if you can be like Dak, you're going to be doing alright."
Not only is the leadership needed in the locker room, but it's needed on the coaching staff too. Although their interactions have been brief, Lee sees the right man for the Cowboys in head coach Brian Schottenheimer.
"I love Brian," Lee said. "Haven't talked to him a lot, but I think he's a great coach, historically a great motivator, a great play caller, and I think he's got them in the right direction."
Nowadays, Lee is taking his love for football in his own direction. He's currently the Head of Sports Data for Adrenaline, a company that delivers real-time predictive analytics driven by advanced machine-learning and AI models on football broadcasts.
"We're working with Monday Night Football to produce an [alternate] broadcast called Monday Night Football Playbook, where basically we're able to identify formations in real time with Next Gen Stats sensor data," Lee explained. "We take it to our historical database that we have, and we make predictions on run/pass probabilities, on targeted receiver probabilities, on blitz probabilities, so all the things that I would try to track as a linebacker."
Now, the hope is that Lee and his group can track some positive probabilities for the Cowboys defensively in 2026.
