INDIANAPOLIS -- The Dallas Cowboys’ luxury bus, complete with the plush seats, marble tables and hardwood finishes, is rolling down Capitol Avenue toward Lucas Oil Stadium around lunchtime on a Saturday.
It is out of place in any other week of the year, but each winter the bus becomes part Indianapolis tourist attraction, part Uber and part mobile office, playing a key role in the Cowboys’ business doings at the scouting combine.
Executive vice president Stephen Jones is on the bus, coming from a meeting with an agent for one of the Cowboys’ 18 free agents. As the bus sits parked outside the stadium, a cadre of Cowboys coaches, scouts and executives, including owner and general manager Jerry Jones, is watching quarterbacks and receivers in the upcoming draft work out.
The combine is not just about the draft, though. It is about much more than that for the Cowboys.
“It’s like a convention,” Stephen Jones said. “It’s business.”
In addition to assessing draft prospects, the other two aspects of the combine are meeting with the agents of the team's free agents to-be and interacting with the 31 other teams to see what may be possible down the road in trades for players, which rarely happen, and trades for picks, which may happen.
While not an around-the-clock work day, it can be close, depending on how late the night goes at a local steakhouse or how early the meetings begin in the morning.
“Once you do that part of it [with the draft prospects], which is what everybody thinks you’re here for, then the other stuff is just as important, which is all the meetings that we have with our players that are going to be free agents,” Stephen Jones said.
The legal tampering period starts today, allowing teams to talk to other teams’ free agents, and the Cowboys can discuss financial details with their free agents, Ronald Leary, Barry Church, Brandon Carr, Morris Claiborne, Terrance Williams and Darren McFadden.
“Because we’ve signed Tyron Smith, we’ve signed Dez Bryant, we’ve got [Tony] Romo on the books, trying to get Zack [Martin] signed, obviously got a high pick in [Ezekiel Elliott], the Sean Lees of the world, we’ve got some tightness there,” Stephen Jones said, “so we can’t just say, ‘OK, we’re going to do this,’ with all our guys.”
Stephen Jones doesn’t mind if agents inflate their clients’ prices. “They’re just doing their jobs,” he said.
Knowing what it will take to keep their own players prepares the Cowboys to plan to look elsewhere, either in free agency, where there won’t be big-time players, or in the draft. Or it tells the teammhow competitive it can be in the market.
“What you love is that it causes you to pick the best players you have on your team,” Stephen Jones said. “There will be very little movement from us in free agency, so we’ll really have to focus. I think with Will [McClay] and his staff, Jason [Garrett] and the coaching staff, what Jerry and I do with our interactions, we’ve been able to really build a solid foundation for our team through the draft.”
And that’s where the combine comes back into focus on the draft.
The Cowboys arrive in Indianapolis with the scouting reports for every player in attendance at the combine on their iPads. Not long after each player lifts, jumps and runs, the stats are loaded automatically into the reports.
Scouts are given specific groups to work with. The position coaches focus on their specialties. The coordinators observe it all. The workouts matter, but Jones said the biggest part of the week is the medical exams and official interviews.
McClay, Garrett, the position coach, the coordinator and special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia sit in on most of the meetings with the team’s more senior scouts.
In 2014, the Cowboys fell in love with Byron Jones at the combine. It wasn’t just his record-breaking broad jump of 12 feet, 3 inches, which Stephen Jones called “freakish.”
“His nickname’s the Governor and he was amazing in the interview,” Stephen Jones said. “He did everything to the nines. And his tape was good. He fell to us. I think he’s the one guy lately you could say helped himself through the process.”
Now that the combine is over, the staff is back at The Star. The scouts will begin firming up their final grades. The coaches will be asked to watch tape on a number of players at their positions.
In a few weeks, the work at the combine on the draft and free agency will come to fruition.
“It’s all worth it,” Stephen Jones said. “All the interactions you get with the players, the interviews. Then all the interactions you get with the agents and the teams, it’s very much an efficient event.”
After 25 minutes, Stephen Jones' phone buzzes with a text message. It’s another agent wanting to set up a meeting, but first Jones had to duck back into Lucas Oil Stadium to see more receivers and quarterbacks work out.
Outside the bus, some fans have gathered to take pictures. Stephen Jones poses for a picture, shakes a hand or two and goes in through a side door.
The work in Indianapolis never seems to end.