Eleven days after announcing their divorce from Mike McCarthy, the Dallas Cowboys are hiring Brian Schottenheimer, Dallas’ offensive coordinator the past two years, the team announced on Friday.
The decision follows Cowboys interviews with Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore, former New York Jets head coach Robert Saleh, former Minnesota Vikings head coach Leslie Frazier and Schottenheimer.
Schottenheimer became a serious candidate later in the franchise’s search, meeting with franchise owner and general manager Jerry Jones and team brass first on Tuesday and then again Wednesday. No other candidate received a second meeting, while Schottenheimer’s conversations with Jones spanned multiple days.
The team will formally introduce Schottenheimer during a press conference on Monday.
“Brian Schottenheimer is known as a career assistant,” Jones told ESPN. “He ain’t Brian no more. He is now known as the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys.”
The more they discussed, the more the coordinator liked by quarterback Dak Prescott and others in the building convinced Jones he was the man to hire even though he had not called plays since his 2018-20 coordinator stint with the Seattle Seahawks.
Since then, Schottenheimer spent a year with the Jacksonville Jaguars as quarterbacks coach and pass game coordinator followed by four years with Dallas. In Schottenheimer’s first year, he was a consultant working with then-defensive coordinator Dan Quinn.
When Moore left to coordinate the Los Angeles Chargers’ offense, Schottenheimer was promoted to offensive coordinator beneath McCarthy, who took over play-calling.
The son of late head coach Marty Schottenheimer earns his promotion after 14 years as an NFL offensive coordinator for the New York Jets, then-St. Louis Rams, Seahawks and Cowboys. He has coached in the NFL for 25 of the past 28 seasons.
Leading up to the team’s season finale, Schottenheimer spoke to the uncertainty surrounding a staff on expiring contracts.
“It’s a fair question,” Schottenheimer said Dec. 30. “There’s not much I haven’t seen in this business. I saw what I think is a Hall of Fame coach named Marty Schottenheimer get fired after 14-2.
“So what I’ve learned through this year is you’re promised 17 games … and you owe that to your team, you owe that to the players, the staff. Sunday’s going to come.
“We’re going to play our last game and see what happens.”
What might Cowboys look like under Brian Schottenheimer?
There are coaches in the NFL who refuse to express their career aspirations aloud. They insist they’re focusing on the moment and the task at hand, because if they excel there, the rest will take care of itself.
Schottenheimer veered from that path during an Aug. 4, 2023 sit-down interview with Yahoo Sports.
“I will 100% be honest with you: I’d love to be a head coach,” Schottenheimer said during his first training camp as Cowboys coordinator. “I used to stay up and think about it all the time, and I wanted to be the youngest head coach in the NFL. I would still love to be a head coach. But I don’t think about it. I really don’t.
“If it happens, it happens. I honestly want to give back.”
The now-51-year-old longtime coach was transitioning from consultant to coordinator, taking with him lessons he learned from a deep dive of league defenses the prior season. Quinn had asked him to study defenses and anticipate not what he would do but what that coordinator would do — and why.
Take the Philadelphia Eagles.
“The Eagles would be a good one because we played them multiple times,” Schottenheimer said. “Just the use of the RPOs [run-pass options] versus the run-read options, and when you’re doing run-read options, it’s more of a pre-snap decision. The quarterback’s either got numbers and leverage … whereas if it’s an RPO, it’s a post-snap, there’s a reaction, there’s a piece I’m reading and if he does something, then I react post snap.’
“It was interesting to try to get into Nick [Sirianni] and Shane [Waldron]’s brain about why they were doing it vs. certain opponents.”
With McCarthy, Schottenheimer helped install a version of the West Coast offense that the Cowboys deemed the “Texas Coast” offense. Precision replaced some of the creativity that Moore had encouraged, receiver route depths now tied to quarterback footwork with less room for improvisation. Protection schemes shifted, too.
In two years, the results varied drastically.
The Cowboys led the lead in scoring in 2023, ranking fifth in total offense. Prescott finished second in MVP voting to Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson.
The following year with the same staff and similar personnel, the Cowboys struggled mightily. Their offense fell to 17th, scoring to 21st.
Prescott suffered a season-ending hamstring injury in November, but the problems — with protection, establishing a run game and generating consistent passing — predated his injury. A year after throwing a league-best 36 touchdowns to just nine interceptions, he passed for 11 to eight interceptions in eight games.
The Cowboys sought a new voice in the room and for the offense. It’s unclear whether Schottenheimer will deliver that.
While he worked under McCarthy, he’s also learned from a variety of scheme influences during more than two decades, not to mention growing up with his father.
A league executive who worked with Schottenheimer at one of his offensive coordinator stops described the blended philosophies that could guide the system he would build for the Cowboys.
In Seattle, he adjusted his system to the terminology then-Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson already knew to improve consistency for Wilson, the executive told Yahoo Sports. That process would be even smoother should Schottenheimer carry over language for Prescott as he’s already operated in the same language.
With the Jets, Schottenheimer was gap-scheme oriented, the executive said, while later working with more wide-zone and play-action concepts. Tempo and screen game wrinkles trace his Seattle play-calling, Schottenheimer unafraid then to implement pass concepts even on early downs.
The Cowboys need to build around Prescott as they enter into the first season of his record-breaking, four-year extension worth $60 million a year. It’s too soon to know whether they believe the best way to build around him is to emphasize the passing game, or to shore up his protection and the run game as NFC teams, including the Eagles, have done this season with success.
Possibilities for the rest of Cowboys’ staff
It’s too soon also to know whether the Cowboys will bring back defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer, who settled into a rhythm late in 2024, his first season back with a talented Dallas defensive roster.
While Schottenheimer has not previously been a head coach in the NFL, his extensive experience coordinating and working with his father may give him more leeway to not rely on a former head coach at defensive coordinator the way Bears head coach Ben Johnson is expected to do as he targets former New Orleans Saints head coach Dennis Allen.
The Cowboys have expressed internal interest in current Washington Commanders staff members Anthony Lynn, former Chargers head coach, and Brian Johnson, former Eagles offensive coordinator. Neither could interview ahead of the Commanders’ NFC title game Sunday in Philadelphia. But each offer draws of familiarity, Lynn the Dallas running backs coach in 2005-06 while Johnson coached Prescott at Mississippi State.
The Commanders returned to the conference championship game for the first time since the 1991 season, leaving the Cowboys’ NFC title game drought as now the longest in the conference. Dallas has not advanced past the divisional round since the 1995 season; every other NFC team has crossed that mark since 2010.
Fans will be fair to wonder what Schottenheimer offered above Moore, who also had Cowboys familiarity and has called plays each of the past six seasons. A team source said Moore impressed in his interviews as a coach who has matured since leaving Dallas two years ago in his philosophy and vision for running a team.
Schottenheimer warranted neither coordinator nor head coaching interviews from any other clubs this cycle. Moore, in comparison, interviewed virtually with the Cowboys, Saints and Jacksonville Jaguars during the league-allowed window between the Eagles’ wild-card and divisional-round wins.
Schottenheimer’s former colleague posited that “lifer” coaches like Schottenheimer sometimes are passed over for opportunities because they don’t offer the same level of intrigue that an “unknown commodity” like Moore would. Schottenheimer is more extroverted than Moore, which could resonate with a team that views presence traditionally. Schottenheimer’s Seattle offenses were his most successful, ranking top-10 in scoring all three years before head coach Pete Carroll fired him due to what one source called “philosophical differences” in the best offensive attack to balance a strong defense.
The Cowboys’ hire may be neither creative nor inspiring in league circles. That doesn’t mean it can’t work.
“I would not be surprised at all to see Schotty have success as a head coach,” the executive and former Schottenheimer colleague said. “He’s really organized. He’s a direct communicator. He’s got some fire. He’s got some edge.
“He did some really good things [here], things that I probably didn’t [appreciate then] full scale.”
