Brian Schottenheimer built an 11-player leadership council in his second year running the Cowboys, and the headline isn't that Dak Prescott is on it. It's that he insisted on not being the only voice in the room. Prescott has been blunt about it: "I couldn't be the chief leader in there because I'm going to speak up." That's a quarterback deliberately diluting his own authority so the locker room doesn't live and die by his press conferences.
The council includes CeeDee Lamb, Tyler Smith, Tyler Booker, Jake Ferguson, Bryan Anger and Jalen Thompson, but the names doing the heaviest lifting are the defensive vets: Kenny Clark, Quinnen Williams and Rashan Gary. Clark's pitch is old-school and simple, that leadership is about how you show up every single day, not what you say in the huddle. Quinnen Williams, who got a $105.9 million extension partly because Dallas trusts his voice as much as his get-off, is holding down the same job. Gary is out there leading without needing Prescott to babysit the room. It's a defense that ranked as the league's worst a year ago trying to police itself into respectability, and early camp buy-in, players volunteering for extra conditioning sprints, suggests it's sticking.
And then there's Javonte Williams, the one non-quarterback offensive skill player who made the cut. His inclusion isn't about touches, it's about how he carries himself with teammates and how much winning visibly means to him. For a locker room that's spent two years being picked apart for chemistry issues, a running back who leads by giving a damn is exactly the kind of quiet-strength story a new coaching staff wants to publicize.
None of that is why fantasy managers should care, though. What matters is the role underneath the leadership talk. Williams is Dallas's clear-cut lead back heading into 2026 after a breakout 2025 that ended with 1,201 rushing yards and 13 total touchdowns, and it earned him a three-year extension. He's been running with the first team early in camp and the offense is reportedly humming. That's a bell-cow profile in a division where Dallas is currently the betting market's second choice behind Philadelphia at +235 to win the NFC East.
Where it gets interesting for drafters is the workload question. Dallas is comfortable with Williams as the guy, but the team reportedly doesn't want to run him into the ground the way it did last season. That's the kind of note that should nudge his ADP without tanking it. He's currently going in the fourth round, around pick 37 overall, territory that assumes something close to a bell-cow workload. If Dallas is genuinely planning to trim his touches, that's a soft red flag for anyone drafting him as a true RB1, but it's also a green light for handcuff speculation on whoever eats the backup carries in camp.
The betting market angle backs up the general optimism here. Dallas is sitting around 8.5 to 9.5 wins depending on the book, with the defense expected to be genuinely improved after last year's collapse. A defense that stops embarrassing itself means fewer shootout scripts where Dallas abandons the run in the second half, and that's good news for a lead back trying to hold onto touches all season. It also lines up with Dallas being +1300 to win the NFC and a longshot at +2500 for the Super Bowl, respectable enough that game scripts should stay competitive rather than desperate.
What to watch: how camp reps actually split once padded practices and preseason games start eating into the sample size. If Williams keeps getting run with the ones and the coaching staff's "manage his workload" talk turns out to be more lip service than plan, he's a value at his current draft slot in a offense that trusts him enough to put him on the leadership council. If Dallas actually follows through on limiting his snaps, monitor the backfield behind him closely, because that's where the touches go, and that's where the waiver-wire value shows up in October.
Either way, this is a rare situation where a locker-room story and a fantasy story point the same direction. A team spreading out accountability instead of leaning on one quarterback is a team that believes in its depth, and Williams sitting at that table is proof Dallas believes in him as more than just a name on the depth chart.