For nearly the entire history of the franchise, it’s been one of the non-negotiable quirks that comes with being a Dallas Cowboy: You’re going to suit up and go to work on Thanksgiving Day. On a national holiday set aside for the rest of the world to simply spend time with family and friends and sit down to a feast, you’re going to get your own stuffing kicked out of you by other grown men on a professional football field.
And while the annual Thanksgiving game creates a grueling and topsy-turvy schedule for the players, coaches, and support staff of the organization- not on just the fourth Thursday of November, but also for the weeks leading up to and then following the game- the tradition and pageantry of America’s Team being the backdrop for the quintessential American holiday is also one of the great privileges of wearing the Cowboys star.
Just ask DeMarcus Ware. The Hall of Famer played in nine Thanksgiving Day games as a Cowboys player, going 6-3 in those contests. He even won Phil Simms’s postgame All-Iron Award in 2011’s win over the Dolphins for recovering a fumble and seting up a key touchdown in what was eventually a one-point Dallas victory.
But in a sit-down this week with Cowboys Wire, the franchise’s all-time sacks leader admitted that upon joining the team in 2005, he didn’t immediately warm up to the idea of skipping his usual turkey with all the fixings.
“The first year, it was, ‘Hold on, I’m not used to playing football and missing my family on a day of Thanksgiving,'” Ware told us. “Year Two, Three, and so on, I started to think a little bit different.”
Ware says he was able to pivot from a one-day dinner to a three-day celebration of family, football, and food. And the Cowboys’ late-afternoon kickoff was the centerpiece.
“So Wednesday, I would have a Thanksgiving meal,” he explained. “All the family would come in, and [I know] I’m going to have to get about 50 tickets. Everybody’s coming to the football game, all right? [They] didn’t watch it at home. Like, everybody was at the game. It was almost like a small family reunion every single year, so I really enjoyed that. And then we’ll have Thanksgiving after the game, right? I mean another meal. And then Friday we’ll have off, and we’ll have another meal.”
The Thanksgiving Day game does present a yearly scheduling gauntlet for the team. This year, their battle with the Chiefs falls within a brutal stretch of four games in only 18 days. Players’ conditioning, a higher risk of injury, dehydration, exhaustion: it’s all suddenly on the table this time of year.
But Ware revealed that the short turnarounds and abbreviated prep weeks are something most outsiders turn into a bigger deal than it really is to the players.
“Yeah,” he smiled. “If you want to play, you want to play, all right? I mean, if you’re a warrior, you’re a warrior. If you’re a gladiator, you’re a gladiator. When you put the pads on, you’re a football player. So we play on Thursday. Everybody’s feeling the same way. It’s a short week. It’s like, who wants it the most? And then it’s almost like you get an extra bye week because you’re not playing on Sunday. … And I feel like it was an advantage. It wasn’t an advantage when you have a short week [ahead of Thanksgiving]. But afterward, the rest that you get and with the technology and everything to be able to just bounce back and have, like, two bye weeks? It was great.”
Over his career, Ware got to see from up close how watching the Cowboys had become an integral part of the Thanksgiving Day holiday for so many, including other families who would spend it in the stands at both Texas Stadium and AT&T Stadium. And he says being a part of it became more meaningful to him every year he was with the Cowboys.
“That game started meaning a lot more to me,” he shared. “And so that was probably one of the cool moments for me every year. And it grew to something more important: not just a game. It was family and fans.”
Ware will be at AT&T Stadium again this Thanksgiving, tailgating with the Crown Royal Rig in Lot 3 prior to kickoff. Fans 21 and over are encouraged to stop by pre-game to meet DeMarcus and are asked to bring donations of canned goods that will go directly to the North Texas Food Bank to help families in need this holiday season.
Follow Cowboys Wire on Facebook to join in on the conversation with fellow fans!
This article originally appeared on Cowboys Wire: Cowboys great DeMarcus Ware: Thanksgiving Day games meant more to me
Reporting by Todd Brock, Cowboys Wire / Cowboys Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
