The Dallas Cowboys are at a crossroads with their franchise. Much like the prior season, when they had to decide whether or not to re-sign quarterback Dak Prescott, the Cowboys need to determine which direction their team goes at head coach.

Will they re-sign Mike McCarthy to a new contract and stay the course, or will they bring in a new coach and start a new chapter in Dallas? If they choose the former and keep McCarthy, who will they add to the staff to make things better? And if they choose the latter and let McCarthy leave, what style of head coach will be replacing him?

Assuming Jerry Jones’ patience stays intact for the next hire, whoever the head coach hire is in 2025 is likely to be the head coach throughout the rest of the Prescott era. That’s a significant period of time because it coincides with the athletic peaks of players such as CeeDee Lamb, Micah Parsons and Trevon Diggs. As such, the importance of this decision cannot be understated.

The value of coaching has ebbed and flowed throughout the years but in today’s day and age it’s at an absolute premium. The parity in roster talent is extremely tight, often making scheme, strategy, and play design the difference between winning and losing. It’s an area the Cowboys have historically struggled in considerably throughout the last few coaching regimes and an area that’s repeatedly ended in embarrassment.

The importance of such factors has given rise to the Kyle Shanahan coaching tree. Nearly half the NFL now employs some branch of the San Francisco mastermind. His is a system that makes things easy for its signal callers. It simplifies reads, schemes players open, plays out of unpredictable formations and personnel groups and still values the big plays. Different product lines of the Shanahan brand lean on different strengths, but overall, it’s a system that seeks to make things as easy as possible on the offense and as confusing as possible on the opposing defense.

Master-schemers such as Shanahan are en vogue in the NFL right now but curiously so are their polar opposites. Running concurrently to the brainiacs of the NFL are the meatheads, so to speak.

Dan Campbell has taken the NFL by storm with his success in Detroit. The former NFL tight end embodies leadership and inspiration at the coaching ranks. Tough guys like Mike Vrabel and Campbell fit a completely different profile at the head coach position. Their ability to keep order, dictate culture and demand respect has real value in the NFL today, providing a very different alternative to teams looking for a new coaching direction.

The impending split in Detroit will be telling as to which brand of coach is worth more. Both of Campbell’s assistants fall under the scheme-master category. It’s been said it’s their ability to design plays and strategize that makes Campbell’s leadership style work so effectively. But a case could also be made Campbell’s firm position at the top of the flowchart is what allows these brilliant men to get in the weeds and be brilliant in the first place.

The Cowboys have to determine which direction they want to go. They may not even want to go a new direction and choose to stick with McCarthy.

McCarthy isn’t the disciplinarian Campbell and Vrabel are, but he falls under the leadership brand of head coaching rather than scheme master.

That’s not a problem, unless he’s the one left to design gameplans and call plays, as has been the case the last two seasons.

There haven’t been many games where an evenly-matched Cowboys team was able to outcoach the opposing sideline. Whether it’s playoffs or top tier regular season matchups, the Cowboys have been outcoached consistently during the McCarthy tenure. It speaks to the importance of the scheme-master coach and shows that leadership without a gameplan doesn’t amount to much.

There are a number of directions and combinations the Cowboys can go at coach this winter but the one direction they can’t go ignoring the importance of scheme and play design. If they prioritize leadership at head coach, they have to find a way to upgrade and empower a new offensive coordinator to design plays.

The Cowboys’ shrinking window of opportunity depends on it.

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