For Klayton Adams, it all starts, by his own admission, on the offensive line.

The newly-named offensive coordinator of the Cowboys, Adams was himself a walk-on O-lineman at Boise State in the early 2000s. Early in his coaching career, he was the run game coordinator and offensive line coach at D-II’s Western Washington. He’s since worked with the front five at Sacramento State and Colorado, and then at the pro level in both Indianapolis and Arizona.

But just because Adams is now an OC for the first time- and for one of the most stored franchises in the sport, no less, with all-world talents like Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb now under his jurisdiction- don’t expect him to stray too far from the big boys up front.

“I definitely won’t stay away from that,” Adams laughed Tuesday, when he spoke with the Dallas media for the first time since his Jan. 31 hire. “I want to have a great relationship with all these guys, and I really want to build genuine relationships so that they know that I’m here to help them play the best football of their careers and they know that we’re going to have a very clear and communicated standard for what we expect from them.

“For me, that’s going to start in the offensive line room, and I’m very excited about developing a relationship with those guys. But I need to have that same relationship with Dak. I need to have that same relationship with CeeDee, so my time’s going to be spread a little bit more in that way, but it’s going to start on the offensive line.”

And Cowboys fans who may have felt like something has been missing in recent years will absolutely love what Adams says he’s looking for from his linemen… and the rest of the unit at large.

“The same thing that I want from every player on offense,” he says, “and that is to create violence in the game. Be aggressive. Run. Hit. I think that every decision that we make schematically needs to lean that direction. So if there’s gray area, what is going to allow these guys to play more free and run and hit and be violent?”

Adams will be creating the plays that hopefully check those boxes for the offense, but it will be first-time head coach Brian Schotteneheimer actually calling the shots on Sundays. So for now, the Sacramento-born Adams will be the intermediary: ascertaining what his offensive players are best at and cooking up plays to fit… but also putting them together on a menu that works for Schottenheimer on gameday.

“Just trying to mesh what the vision of what he wants,” Adams explained. “I think it would be dumb on my part to try to force a lot of things on that call sheet that he doesn’t want to call or he doesn’t feel comfortable calling.

“I’m going to see some things differently, he’s going to see some things differently. It’s going to be a growing process.”

But much of the job will also come down to the same basic principle that has been at the heart of football since the game’s very beginning: lining up in such a way that the other side can’t tell what’s coming.

“Our job,” according to Adams, “when we’re putting things on the call sheet, is to be problem solvers. So we’re trying to figure out: what do we do good? And how do we make that look multiple? How do we make that look different? That’s the part that I’m really looking forward to focusing on.”

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The Dallas offense struggled mightily last year. But the fact that Adams takes over an offense whose core contributors have finished in the NFL’s top three in points and the top five in yards in three of the past five years means it won’t have to be a total rebuild from scratch.

And having five offensive players with a combined 19 Pro Bowl nods (Zack Martin included, for now) has to be considered a massive bonus for Adams as he gets to work.

“I’m really excited about the opportunity to let it unfold and look at it and say, ‘How do we put these guys in an advantageous position as many times as we can within a game?’” he told reporters. “That’s the challenge to me, and when you have good players, that’s a little bit easier.”

But don’t mistake Adams’s easygoing nature in front of the media for a passive approach on the sideline. The just-turned-41-year-old still has some of that hard-nosed, no-nonsense, O-lineman mentality deep in his DNA.

He’s the first to admit it’s ready to come out when it needs to.

“How I communicate with the players- on the field, in the meeting room- [it’s] controlled energy,” Adams said. “So I’m not going to have a lot of blowups, but it’s going to be very focused beams of ‘Here’s the problem; here’s the solution, here’s where we’re going to try to get that done.’ I’m not really a big blowup scream guy. But, you know, they’ve got to feel the intensity.”

And hopefully under Adams, the Cowboys offense will be showing plenty of intensity, too.