IRVING, Texas – After taking the weekend off, the Cowboys will return to work Monday at Valley Ranch as they prepare to play at Seattle on Sept. 16.

But the schedule remains a little off with the 10-day break between the opener and Week 2.

Monday will serve as a “Friday” practice as the Cowboys are able to get in some extra prep time for the Seahawks.

With the Sept. 5 opener, the Cowboys were not in a normal practice week and won’t be until Week 3, when they host Tampa Bay on Sept. 23.

“Well, it’s never normal with the Dallas football Cowboys as you guys know,” coach Jason Garrett joked. “You’ve just got to get your arms around that.”

The Cowboys will play games on a Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday and Monday this year with kickoffs at 7:30 p.m., 3:05 p.m., 3:15 p.m., 7:20 p.m. and noon.

Garrett views the mini-break as a good thing.

“We’ve played a lot of football in a short period of time,” Garrett said. “We played four preseason games in 16 days. We finished one up, we cut our team down (and) we were practicing like a Monday practice two days later, so I think our team really handled that part of it really, really well.

"And they hear me say this all the time, ‘Do your best regardless of circumstance, whether you’re playing at home or on the road, or you’re playing this day or that day.’ If we’re playing Wednesday night in New York, it really doesn’t matter. What matters is somehow, some way getting yourself to be your best, and I thought our team did a really good job of that because logistically, there were some challenges that we had -- kind of transitioning back from training camp, playing a lot of games in a short period of time. I thought our guys just kind of came to work every day, got themselves prepared, went up there and played well.”