Fans will get a second and last chance to look at the Cowboys when they hold their final preseason scrimmage Friday morning.

Once again though they will have to get up pretty early and head inside Cowboy Stadium to watch. The workout begins at 7 a.m.

A week after showing promise, McNeese State hopes to clean up some of the miscues from the first scrimmage as they expect to roughly double the number of plays per group to about 60.

“We want to clean up some of the missed assignments and eliminate the penalties,” said McNeese head coach Gary Goff.

A total of six holding penalties were called as Goff told the officials to “call everything”. He wants the second scrimmage to be called just as tight to keep players focused and put mistakes on tape to go over.

The Cowboys moved off the hot stadium turf to the grass practice fields some this week. They also practiced twice at 2:30 p.m. instead of in the mornings Monday and Wednesday to simulate game-time conditions for the opener.

McNeese starts the season with an afternoon kickoff in the Texas heat on Aug. 24 at Tarleton State.

“We wanted to get them off the turf a little bit and get them on the grass, it is better for their bodies,” said Goff. “There is also more space out here as well.”

Goff said he wanted to do more work on the practice fields, but the heavy rains at the start of camp left the grass fields too wet.

As for moving some work to the afternoon, that is designed to get the players used to the heat they expect when the season opens in two weeks. McNeese will play two of its first three games on the road in Texas with daytime starts.

Two weeks after Tarleton the Cowboys are in College Station for a game against the SEC’s Texas A&M, which like the opener will be on national television. The game against the Aggies has an 11:45 a.m. kickoff.

“We will be used to the heat,” said Goff. “We have to be smart with that. We are not going to have them out here every day at 2:30 and practice at that time, we will lose them.”

Goff expects this scrimmage to be even more physical as the countdown to the season continues. He also hopes that there is an even greater sense of urgency and improved tackling.

“Early in the year you don’t have a ton of opportunities to do live tackling so you are always worried about that,” Goff said. “I’m pretty proud of the guys, we had some moments, some tempers plated, but we didn’t have any fights. They got through that and went back to work.”

Last week two running backs, Tre’Vonte Citizen (7 carries, 131 yards, 2 TDs) and D’Angelo Durham (5-97, 4 TDs) turned the most heads, as the Cowboys ran for 322 yards on 36 carries as a group.

After the scrimmage, the Cowboys will take the rest of the weekend off before returning to workouts Monday. Goff said they will start to turn their attention to Tarleton next week and slowly put in the game plan.