Part of their conversation is how to make up for the missed opportunity last season, when after matching a team record with 13 victories and earning the NFC’s top seed, Dallas didn’t win a playoff game. The Cowboys have now gone 12 seasons since their last Super Bowl championship, 11 without winning a game in the postseason.

It actually took an earthquake to shake things up during training camp, but even that measured as only a minor tremor.

The lack of drama and intrigue among the players probably isn’t exactly what HBO executives had in mind when they decided to highlight the Cowboys again on their “Hard Knocks” series. Those cameras will be gone and the final episode of the series will air before the Sept. 7 season opener at Cleveland.

“Everybody has done a great job as far as interacting when they need to with the cameras, but at the same time, when it’s time to focus on football, then we’re playing football,” Owens said.

They have done an even better job of maintaining a determined calm about what they need to do on the field.

“We handled things well when we had a lot of odd games and Dallas Cowboys-type games last year,” Phillips said. “They handled that well and going into it last year we had a lot of high expectations, maybe not from everybody, but from us. We’re going through the same thing.”

After breaking camp in California and spending a week in Denver, the Cowboys returned home, where nearly 25,000 people showed up at Texas Stadium to watch the team go through a midweek practice without pads.

There is always plenty of attention on the Cowboys, whom Phillips often refers to as a bunch of “characters with character.” It is also a veteran group that knows what it has to do now.

“Wade wants you go be who you are, wants your personality to show,” Witten said. “But the team’s got to be first and I think everybody’s bought into that. We’ve got something to prove.

“The most impressive thing for me is being able to put last year behind us and move forward because none of that matters now,” he said. “It’s a new season.”

And so far, a surprisingly calm one.

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