The Cowboys are desperate for winning familiarity, but have a long way to go in getting there

This has been a long offseason for the Cowboys and it has barely started.

The Dallas Cowboys introduced their newest head coach, Brian Schottenheimer, on Monday, and ever since then have been busy building the staff that will work underneath the first-time head coach promoted from the offensive coordinator role. The hires will be just one piece of the puzzle to seeing how the 2025 Cowboys differ from the team that just suffered through a 7-10 season, with the next being the full player acquisition phase to reinfuse the roster with talent. A major step in this process is already underway with the two college All-Star bowls, and the Cowboys have done well to move just quickly enough to have something of a staff direction in place while evaluating draft prospects.

Brian Schottenheimer’s introductory press conference was technically the first chance to gather info on the new direction of the franchise, with the new head ball coach seated between both Jerry and Stephen Jones. As silly as it seemingly is, there is such a perceived thing as “winning a press conference” in today’s NFL. Whether or not the Cowboys did this when introducing Schottenheimer is almost entirely dependent on any given fan’s opinion on the hire before ever hearing a word from either the front office of Schotty himself. There was not all that much from Monday’s proceedings that turned those against the hire from the start into Schottenheimer’s biggest fans and believers in the whole process, and those in favor of the hire shouldn’t have heard anything that completely swayed them the other way either.

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Two themes were persistent throughout the press conference, and they weaved their way in between long stretches of Jerry speak and cringeworthy air quotes from Stephen throughout the hour-plus session.

One theme was how the hiring of Schottenheimer represents both risk and necessary change for the sake of improvement. The risk in taking a lifelong assistant coach who did not interview for any other head coaching openings this cycle and promoting him after three seasons with the Cowboys. The changes that would come with it both in Schottenheimer’s leadership abilities and coaching style, as well as more tangibly on the field.

Schottenheimer did not get an extraordinary amount of time to discuss any scheme or philosophy changes he plans on implementing, but when he did it took no time at all to start with emphasizing the run game – surely music to the Jones’ ears after already interviewing Schottenheimer twice – as well as more play-action and the types of throws Dak Prescott thrived on much earlier in his career.

The second theme was much more consistent, and did its best to contradict both some of the good and bad from the first. This was the theme of familiarity, of the importance of family, and the overall sense of doing things the “right way” and winning with the “right guys”. It didn’t take long for all of these things to create a comparison between Schottenheimer and former head coach Jason Garrett, also promoted from an OC role.

Schottenheimer talked about the business of football always being about the people more than the X’s and O’s. As valid as this may be, the Cowboys had Monday as an opportunity for the first time since the season ended unceremoniously at home to address just how flawed they were on the X’s and O’s side of things in 2024, and all but passed on it. Without seeing a clear vision for how the team can improve here, and with all four of the conference championship participants from the day before looking leaps and bounds better in this critical area than the Cowboys, it remains hard to fully believe in this offseason being consequential enough to move this team all the way from third in the NFC East into first place again. Especially when the two teams that finished ahead of them just competed for a chance to go to the Super Bowl, both with former Cowboys coaches playing key roles in Kellen Moore for the victorious Eagles and Dan Quinn for the Commanders.

It didn’t even take very long at all for Jerry to say point blank that he “wanted to be a coach”, which is sure to draw all sorts of eye rolls and discussion about the lack of experience from Schottenheimer in a role like this compared to his near lifelong dedication to the game of football. Is this the closest Jerry can actually get to having a coach like influence on the team, even commenting at length on his “proximity” to Schottenheimer in team meetings as a key part of the hiring decision?

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Within those meetings, Jerry specifically talked about watching Schottenheimer both have “deference” to Mike McCarthy at times, and also “bite his lip” at other times when discussing game plans. If Schottenheimer’s presence was strong enough in these meetings to sell himself as a head coach without even realizing it, why was it not strong enough to make a difference on the field, where the offensive scheme persisted in the image of McCarthy’s play calling and hardly any of anything from Schottenheimer’s past in Seattle or elsewhere? If it was because a veteran head coach like McCarthy knew how to protect his own power within the team over anything else, and not allowing his coordinators to have big enough roles was a reason for parting ways after five seasons, how can the merits of a first time head coach like Schottenheimer, who will need an even stronger reliance on his support staff, be spun as a positive?

Unfortunately, these were not the only points of confusion when watching a team so desperate for a sense of direction come out and continue to look somewhat lost. Stephen Jones called Mike McCarthy the winningest coach “in the history of the franchise” at one point. Considering Tom Landry has 165 more wins than the next closest coach in Garrett, the only benefit of the doubt Stephen gets here is talking about win percentage. However, McCarthy’s .583 winning percentage over five seasons is actually fourth in franchise history, behind Barry Switzer, Landry, and Wade Phillips.

Jerry talked about how their current cap allocations would point to having a strong roster that is ready to be built upon and contend, and being “all in” on Prescott and CeeDee Lamb, and possibly Micah Parsons right around the corner. For this to be the case, the Cowboys will need to avoid forcing the round peg in a square hole by looking at the current makeup of their roster and forcing it into being a run-first team. Their only established running back from last season in Rico Dowdle will hit free agency this March. Schottenheimer pivoting to talk about how a coach must have a scheme flexible enough to highlight what its players do best could have been a saving grace here, but has also been quickly forgotten about given his more detailed answer about the running game and his own history as an OC known to favor the run.

It is going to take a ton of work in both the backfield and offensive line to make the Cowboys a great running team again, and it’s hard to find where the sense of urgency to do this work will match the perceived urgency they claim to have in winning on the remaining four years of Prescott’s contract – also the length of Schottenheimer’s head coaching deal.

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Maybe the very thing this team needs is actual football related things to be more front and center again. The news on Wednesday that Will McClay will return on a contract extension was a big boost here. The Cowboys have a coaching staff under Schottenheimer with plenty of young names that will get to work with young players that gained experience through all the injury attrition of last season. Bringing back former linebackers coach and Bears head coach Matt Eberflus as defensive coordinator is seen as a big win in replacing Mike Zimmer after just one season.

Why is Brian Schottenheimer the coach to put this all together, overcome any of the front office’s shortcomings, the larger than life brand of the Dallas Cowboys, and take this team from seven wins out of the playoffs to championship glory? Right now, the answer to that questions still feels as far off as the next Cowboys kickoff come September. The overall sense from Schottenheimer’s introductory press conference was that the more things change in Dallas, the more they stay the same.