Jaydon Blue was expected to compete for a starting job with the Cowboys after they turned over their running backs room. Instead, the fifth-round pick was a healthy scratch in Week 1.
Blue, whose work habits were questioned in the offseason by a former Cowboys offensive assistant in the know, has not earned the right to play, coach Brian Schottenheimer said this week.
“He’s extremely talented,” Schottenheimer said, via Schuyler Dixon of the Associated Press. “He really is talented, but there is a way you have to perform, especially with a mantra of compete every day. If you’re not putting it out there and doing right every day and if you take a step back on a Thursday — maybe you did great on Wednesday but on Thursday, not saying he did — that’s going to get noticed. This is an incredibly talented roster, and you have to earn your chance to get out there. It’s not because I was the first overall pick of the draft or whatever it is. Like, there’s got to be consistency.”
Schottenheimer all but said it will be up to Blue when he makes his Cowboys debut.
“Some of the young guys that were inactive, we’ve had some of those hard conversations with them,” Schottenheimer said. “They understand where they need to go. I have no question that they will respond to that. Will that be this week? I don’t know. We’ll see. But the cool thing for them, they can determine that. . . . Consistency is clearly the thing that we’re looking for from young players.”
Blue defended himself against a report by Glenn Smith two days before training camp opened that the University of Texas product is “borderline lazy” and the team wasn’t pleased with his offseason work habits.
But Miles Sanders’ costly red zone fumble in the third quarter in the Week 1 loss to the Eagles may have opened the door for Blue to play this week.
