Mike McCarthy channels Robin Williams, Dead Poets for Dallas Cowboys theme for season

Dallas Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy is not an actor, but he is doing his best Robin Williams impression heading into the 2023 season.

Similarly to Williams as a teacher in the classic 1989 movie Dead Poets Society when he implored his students to seize the day with a ‘Carpe Diem’ mantra, McCarthy channeled a similar Latin phrase at the team meeting on Wednesday to inspire and motivate the Cowboys in their quest to end a 28-year drought and reach the Super Bowl for the first time since 1995.

“The theme is Carpe Omnia, seize everything,” McCarthy said. “I think themes are important. 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.

“Just giving them the touchstone to connect with of Carpe equals seize, Omnia equal everything. That’s the way we’re looking at this season.”

McCarthy’s has used themes throughout his coaching career and has actually used Carpe Diem as his theme during Super Bowl week with the Green Bay Packers before their victory against the Pittsburgh Steelers at AT&T Stadium in 2010.

This year’s theme came with it’s own prop that the Cowboys will reflect on all season.

“We have an empty picture frame in the front of the team room,” McCarthy said. “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. 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.”

McCarthy’s message really hit home with the players because before he put up the empty picture frame he showed a picture of every player on the roster with the families

That was the best part of McCarthy’s Carpe Omnia presentation, according to linebacker Micah Parsons.

“I think him showing a bunch of the families and what is your why and who you are fighting for,” Parsons said. “I thought that was important. Seeing my family up there, sometimes in life you take this for granted. You’re like, ‘I got next week to get better. Or, ‘I got tomorrow to do this.’ But every day you just got to take life for what it is, and you got to be great. You got to remember why you’re here, your purpose and everything. Because you just never know when it’s your time. You got to take every day as its own.”

Parsons said that McCarthy took the time to find pictures of every player and the family showed how much he cared and his commitment to the team.

It certainly made an impression on receiver Brandon Cooks, who is in his first with the Cowboys after stints with four different teams during his his previous nine years.

“I think this is a unique, this is unique,” Cooks said. “Obviously teams have their theme. But as far as making a showcase about it, this is the first time and I enjoyed it and I loved it.”

“You got chills because the fact that he’s talking about our families,” Cooks added. “He put a picture up of everyone with their family that gave me chills, especially my wife and my two little ones, but to also understand what the guy beside you is fighting for as well.

And that empty picture set the tone for the season as it was a symbol of what the Cowboys are trying to build. Cooks said McCarthy said a picture means a thousand words but the frame means everything.

“That empty picture of just 2023. What is our identity and what are we going to be? That’s when you start visualizing and manifesting and things like that,” Parsons said. “I’m a big person in manifesting and closing my eyes and thinking about the plays I’m going to make the night before and what’s going to happen in the future. Sometimes it almost feels like it’s Deja Vu. So, I thought that was important.”