LAS VEGAS – In the Carolina Cowboys locker room in T-Mobile Arena following their first game at the PBR Team Series Championship, it was business as usual.

Assistant General Manager Tiffany Davis had her bag full of candy and snacks for the riders. Managing Operator Richard Childress introduced riders to some of his friends and invited everyone to dinner. Riders huddled in groups, chatting as they changed out of their gear.

Other than Davis praising the lord and Boudreaux Campbell exclaiming, “Thank you, Daylon and Sandroooo!” you would’ve had no idea they’d just won their first-round matchup against the Kansas City Outlaws by the skin of their teeth.

It had been a tense game, with the first seven riders between both teams bucking off.

Sandro Batista – who had just won the PBR Challenger Series Championship event title the night before – broke the ice for the Cowboys as their second-to-last rider, making the 8 aboard Cold Chill for 86.75 points.

“Into his hand, that guy really rides good,” said head coach Jerome Davis on CBS Sports Network. “I felt good about this matchup. It was out of a right-hand delivery, but he was going to go left and went into his hand. It worked out tonight.”

But immediately afterward, Kansas City’s Bob Mitchell rode UTZ BesTex Solutions Red Clark for 88.25 points to give the Outlaws a lead with one rider remaining.

That rider, however, was 2022 PBR World Champion Daylon Swearingen.

“It was coming down to the end of it,” Swearingen said. “We didn’t have any scores, and then Sandro rode, and that was big for us. So I just knew I had to go out there and do the job. I don’t really watch the person right before me, but I could hear a little bit. I knew I had to make something happen, and just take a deep breath and just have fun and do what I love to do.”

If making the 8-second whistle counts as fun, then Swearingen succeeded.

He rode Lone Survivor for 88.75 points to seal the Cowboys a 175.5-88.25-point win and a spot in Round 2.

Swearingen had previously ridden Lone Survivor in Round 5 of the 2022 PBR World Finals for 91.5 points en route to his world title.

“That bull, for a while there, he just went left,” Swearingen said. “When I got on him at the Finals, his history was left. The last couple outs, he’s went one or two and then around to the right. So I just knew he was going to be good either way, and I just had to make it work.”

He makes it sound easy, but his ride made General Manager Austin Dillon, who’s in Phoenix, Arizona, for the NASCAR Cup Series Championship, erupt in cheer in the middle of a casino.

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Swearingen is in the midst of the best stretch of his career. He finished third at the last regular-season Unleash The Beast event of 2022 in Billings, Montana, and then again at the 2022 Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour Finals. He then, of course, won the 2022 PBR World Finals event title to clinch the World Championship. Since then, he’s won two Challenger Series events – leading the Challenger Series standings until being usurped by Keyshawn Whitehorse at the Challenger Series Championship – and two PBR Canada events.

In the Team Series, he’s been by far the MVP of the Cowboys, going 17-for-28 (60.7%) in the regular season, with 11 of those rides coming as the last rider out.

He notched the Cowboys a walk-off win in front of the hometown crowd at Cowboy Days in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and now again in Las Vegas.

“I’ve learned how to handle it,” Swearingen said of high-pressure moments. “Take a deep breath and relax, and then you go into your zone or wherever I need to go.

It’s a zen philosophy from the World Champion, but don’t let that fool you – he’s not immune to nerves.

“I’m nervous every time,” Swearingen admitted. “This is what I love to do and what I’m excited I have the opportunity to do.

“If I didn’t have the nerves, I’d think something was wrong.”

The Cowboys will face the Oklahoma Freedom in Round 2 on Saturday (11 p.m. ET, CBS Sports Network). The Freedom fell to the Nashville Stampede in their first-round matchup but exploded for 359.5 points in the Last Chance Game to advance. The season series between the Cowboys and Freedom is tied, 2-2.

The Cowboys struggled mightily down the stretch of the season, going a league-worst 1-5 in October. But Swearingen says they turned it around at just the right time to come into Las Vegas with some fire in them.

“We did struggle for a little while there, but the last game we were in, we won,” Swearingen said. “We turned it around before. We made a statement at the last event that we weren’t going to lose that game. We made it happen, we had that, and we’re just going to keep moving forward.

“We’re going to enjoy tonight. Tomorrow’s a new day. We’re going to have a good day today.”

Photo courtesy of Andy Watson/Bull Stock Media