Jim Rassol-Imagn Images
The arrival of Memorial Day weekend and the summer may not be the most synonymous holiday with football season, but boxes are indeed being checked when it comes to the arrival of the 2025 season. Last week, the Dallas Cowboys found out their schedule, and this week they were on the fields in Frisco for OTAs.
The release of the schedule always creates an interesting and very wide array of opinions from football fans. Considering the opponents on the schedule are known well in advance, some don’t see the point of all the fanfare in simply finding out when and where the games will be played. There is also the aftershock that comes from having a tangible schedule that includes things like win/loss predictions, key matchups within games, and shots in the dark at how the division standings will play out.
All of this comes despite the collective understanding by the very fans and media members taking part in it that surprise teams are a guarantee from year to year, injuries are an unfortunate lock to change matchups, and a true week-to-week nature still exists at the highest level of football. Of all teams, certainly the Cowboys don’t have to look far to see recent examples of this from just a season ago. As defending division champions themselves, the injury bug bit hard in their efforts to repeat, and an even bigger blow to this effort was the surprise run all the way to the NFC Championship game by the Washington Commanders.
The Commanders of course met another NFC East team in that game that went on to win the Super Bowl, a Philadelphia Eagles team that will now look to be the first repeat NFC East winner since 2003-04. Those were the final two years of a four-year run atop the division by Philadelphia.
This mix of things has led to predictable takes like the Cowboys still being projected as the third best team in the East, and how a tough stretch to end the season with six of their last seven games being against playoff teams from a season ago is daunting as Dallas was out of the playoffs for the first time in three seasons in 2024.
The Cowboys response to these projections would hardly stand alone from other teams looking to surprise this season. The level of roster and coach turnover each offseason is at such a fever pitch, that every team gets a truly clean start come week one. The Cowboys have hopes of making the dance again with their near full-scale level of coaching turnover. New OC Klayton Adams is a very noteworthy addition, especially when it comes to the Cowboys getting back to being a strong rushing team again, something they’ve tried to fully recommit to this offseason. For the third year in a row the Cowboys will have a new defensive coordinator, going from Dan Quinn, to one year of Mike Zimmer, and now Matt Eberflus. Below Schottenheimer, Adams, and Eberflus as the new brain trust, the Cowboys have almost all new position coaches as well.
Just a few highlights of how these coaches will get to work with new players in key areas include Eberflus flipping the depth chart at linebacker with a trade for Kenneth Murray and signing Jack Sanborn, and Schottenheimer calling plays for not only CeeDee Lamb in the pass game, but another wide receiver he sees as a number one, the recently acquired George Pickens.
The Cowboys are going to be hard for opponents to scout based on a lot of things from their recent history, and whether this is good or bad remains to be seen. A first-year head coach will still have to handle six traditionally scheduled primetime games, Thanksgiving against the reigning AFC champions, and Christmas against the Commanders. All of these new players will have to pick up on the new schemes and terminology quickly, and as always roster health will need some good fortune – better than 2024 at minimum.
How these elements of change for the Cowboys this offseason relate to the schedule is an interesting underlying way to look at a schedule that has already been put under the microscope a million different ways. Of the six other teams with new head coaches going into the 2025 season, the Cowboys will face two of them in the first five weeks of the season, and another coming off their bye in week 11.
The Cowboys will face Matt Eberflus’ old team in Week 3 when they visit the Bears and first-year HC Ben Johnson, play the Jets and Aaron Glenn on the road in Week 5, and Pete Carroll and the Raiders on Monday Night Football in Week 11 off the bye in Vegas. While it is Ebeflus that certainly has more of a connection to the Bears, it is also interesting to point out that Schottenheimer’s longest stint in the NFL so far came with the Jets from 2006-11 as offensive coordinator, and more recently he also worked with Carroll in Seattle as OC from 2018-20.
If anything about current betting lines or win projections for any team is to be believed, the Cowboys are going to be faced with playing as underdogs fairly often in Schotty’s debut season. In order to still be successful, banking wins in “must have” games will be essential. Whether or not the Cowboys use all of their turnover to their advantage and gel quickly to hit the ground running, particularly early on against other teams with new coaches trying to do the same, could be very telling for the outcome of the season even with just a three-game sample. Only the Giants within the division will play more teams with new head coaches this season.
These games against the Bears, Jets, and Raiders will also serve as real litmus tests for even the most skeptical of Cowboys fans to the hiring of Schottenheimer as head coach to begin with. How his team looks from a preparation and chemistry standpoint compared to that of Johnson, Glenn, or Carroll’s, will equally be telling. When it comes to games fans will be expecting the Cowboys to bank wins, continuing their impressive streak against the Giants is one place to start, playing in Carolina for the second season in a row after winning with Cooper Rush there last season feels favorable, and ideally getting all three of the Bears, Jets, and Raiders games would go a long way.
It is also hard to not finally mention the health of Dak Prescott being integral to this whole equation, and should he be available for six of these games mentioned above, Dallas will also be in the familiar position of asking Prescott to squeeze the most out of being the better QB in the head-to-head matchup compared to current situations in New York (x2), Chicago, Carolina, or Las Vegas.
