OXNARD, Calif. -- When the Dallas Cowboys went through goal-line drills on Saturday, Sean Lee was practically begging for some work in his first day in 11-on-11 drills, but he could not prevail.
“It’s a good thing they didn’t have a mic on me,” Lee said.
Lee was able to get some goal-line snaps on Sunday as he continues to make progress from a torn anterior cruciate ligament that knocked him out of last season. In fact, Lee took all 22 snaps in team drills with the first-team defense.
“The only way to get better at football is playing it at a certain intensity level,” Lee said. “That’s why I need to be in there and I need to improve. I haven’t played football in a long time, so it was a nice first step but I obviously have to continue to improve and stay healthy and get better.”
As they did in the offseason the Cowboys made Lee progress from individual to seven-on-seven and team drills in camp. He does not expect to be limited the rest of camp.
“It’s tough because as soon as you come to camp and put pads on you want to be out there,” Lee said. “You want to walk every step with your defense and get ready for the season. There’s certain ways to progress and they’ve done it with me and it’s worked very much.”
Lee has been the defensive signal-caller the past two days with the first team.
“To me he’s an All-Pro player at the end of the day,” defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli saod. “So you guy out there [with] his resume and what he’s done in this league, I mean it’s instant credibility for everybody. The strength of the calls, all those things, and you know the guy is going to go 100 mph and he’s going to make plays.”
Lee said he has not experienced any added soreness with his knee. He doesn’t wear a knee brace for extra protection.
“When you’re in camp you have general soreness and that includes your knee and that includes other things,” Lee said. “I think you have to take care of it, manage it and if it gets really bad you do something, but I’ve not had any of that. I’ve had no issues like that. The knee’s continuously responded to the load. A lot of that is because of how they progressed me.”