Christian Parker Explains Stance on Dallas Cowboys Video Recording After Ban Lifted

The Dallas Cowboys briefly had a policy at training camp this year that forbid the media from recording videos of team drills at practice.

The idea behind the policy is that videos of team drills posted to social media can give valuable information to the Cowboys' upcoming opponents, which obviously wouldn't be ideal.

However, it wasn't long before the Cowboys thought the better of that policy and reversed course, a decision that is good news for not only beat writers, but fans who enjoy following along with practices and seeing the videos from it.

"We’ve been told we’re now allowed to resume our coverage of team drills with video highlights. Carry on," Joseph Hoyt of the Dallas Morning News reported.

While it's understandable for the Cowboys to fear giving up some semblance of a competitive advantage to opponents, the big hole in that policy is fans were still able to record videos at practice, so one way or the other, clips were going to hit the internet.

Christian Parker not a fan of practice videos

Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator Christian Parker at training camp at River Ridge Playing Fields. — Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator Christian Parker. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Eric Chiofalo asked defensive coordinator Christian Parker about the subject while the coach was a guest on 105.3 The Fan and Parker admitted he thinks it's "weird" to see videos of practice floating around the internet.

"Yeah, it's weird," Parker said when asked if it's weird to see clips of practice on the internet. "Not a fan."

"Yes and no," Parker responded when asked if practice videos can give an opponent an advantage. "Once you get past game three or four, everything's on tape. But when you're in Week 1 or 2, you're looking for things."

Parker went on to say that when he was a coach with other teams, he would look for videos of his opponents' practices online and could actually get helpful information from them.

Parker even noted that he was already following Cowboys beat writers before he got the job for that exact reason.

"I don't know if people realize this, but I was following some of our media members and stuff even before I got here because when I was in Green Bay, and then Denver and Philadelphia, I played Dallas in all three spots," Parker said.

"You're kind of trying to look for things. A lot of it's not even training camp stuff. It's injury reports, who was out there, who wasn't, the normal job. The job (the media) is supposed to do," Parker added.

"Sometimes you can find some things. I won't tell all of the stories but there have been some things I've found along the way, either when I was a (quality control coach) or a position coach that might have been posted by the team or might have been posted by a fan or might have been posted by a player," he said. "You never know, but you just want to turn over all those stones and see what you can find."

NFL coaches are notoriously paranoid about giving opponents a competitive advantage, and sometimes to an obsessive degree.

Based on what Parker is saying, those fears are apparently legit, but clearly not enough for the Cowboys to keep the ban hammer on practice videos.

Add us as a preferred source on Google