Jason Garrett on Cole Beasley

[PonyPride]

During his daily press conference at training camp in Oxnard, Calif., Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett addressed former SMU wide receiver Cole Beasley's decisions to leave the Cowboys and return days later.

On if he got a call from Cole Beasley today or yesterday saying he wanted to come back to the team:
"Yes. I talked to Cole last night and once he and I had the conversation the other day, he talked to a couple of other people in our organization - he spoke with Jimmy Robinson our receivers coach; he spoke with (mental health consultant) Jacqualene Stephens and (director of player development) Bryan Wansley - and what we decided to do as an organization was to give him 24 hours and see where he was in regards to his playing career in the NFL. One of the things we liked about Cole Beasley was his passion for the game and his hunger for the game. He demonstrated that in high school and in college and since he was with us in the spring, and he came back and he didn’t have quite that same fire. Sometimes when you’re a rookie in the NFL, when you’re a rookie free agent in the NFL, the world seems really big to you and these days seem monumental and hard and challenging and maybe they take a little bit of spirit out of you. What he needed was to step back for a little bit, take a breath, regain some perspective. His dad was a former high school coach. He went home and they had a nice visit and when I spoke with him yesterday it was like the guy we signed back after the draft. So we’re excited to have him back. What happened over the past few days in my mind are done. All those issues are behind us. What matters is what he does now. A little bit analogous to the guys in the condition test - we’re moving on. Put that in your rear view mirror, don’t worry about it and go forward. It’s important for him to demonstrate that passion and hunger that he’s shown in the past to us, and I told him that. He looked at me with some conviction in his eyes and said, ‘Absolutely’ and we’re excited to have him back."

On if he will play in today’s scrimmage:
"Absolutely. He was in the walkthrough this morning."

On as a former NFL player how he views a player that leaves the squad and then comes back:
"It’s an issue. You look at that. I tried to hearken back to my days as a rookie free agent in Lacrosse, Wisconsin with the New Orleans Saints and back then training camp was a little bit longer. We did have two-a-days and there was padded practices. I can remember about three days in saying, ‘Are you kidding me? We’ve got five more weeks of this?’ Sometimes you just need a little perspective on it - you need an older guy, you need a coach, you need a dad, you need somebody to get you right. It’s not a new phenomenon and we thought that was the best thing for him to do. He seems to be refocused. He seems to have regained his perspective. Again, I told him what we see now is what’s going to matter. I don’t care what you did in the spring. I don’t care what you did the first three days. What you do going forward is going to determine our evaluation of you and we need to see that spirit and that hunger."

On if he will need to check on Beasley periodically during the year:
"It’s a day-by-day thing, as you know. So we continue to evaluate our players, see how they conduct themselves and having that passion and having that enthusiasm for the game is a big part of it. Again, he’s had a lot of it before. That was line one with Cole Beasley when we signed him. He just needs to regain that and hopefully he has a new perspective and he’ll be ready to go."