Blogging The Boys
Brian Schottenheimer’s coaching staff is objectively impressive.
The Dallas Cowboys have finalized their first coaching staff under Brian Schottenheimer, and it’s a group that’s received plenty of praise. Schottenheimer plans to call offensive plays, but he filled out his offensive staff with coaches that come with strong track records for player development and also bring unique schematic backgrounds to the table.
Elsewhere, Schottenheimer went with experience. Matt Eberflus didn’t work out as a head coach, but his run as the Colts defensive coordinator was really strong, and his Bears defenses were always stout. At special teams, Nick Sorensen has experience in addition to having also been a defensive coordinator. Both coaches will allow Schottenheimer to focus more directly on coaching the offense, similar to the structure Mike McCarthy had with Dan Quinn (and later Mike Zimmer) and John Fassel.
What’s lost in all of these staffing decisions, though, is one key factor, and it’s something that separates Schottenheimer’s staff from the rest of the crowd: he chose quality over connections.
The NFL is known to be a good ol’ boys league, where coaches get jobs more so because of their connections than whether or not they’re actually good. We saw this most recently with the Sean McVay effect after the Rams saw success under McVay, and some could argue it’s why Schottenheimer has stuck around in the league as long as he has.
Whether or not that’s true, Schottenheimer did not take that same approach to building his coaching staff. With his staff completed at 18 total coaches, there are just five coaches who have previously worked with Schottenheimer. Two of those coaches are holdovers from the McCarthy staff: Steve Shimko, who was promoted to quarterbacks coach and had worked with Schottenheimer at both Georgia and Seattle, and tight ends coach Lunda Wells.
The other three coaches are Sorensen, his assistant Carlos Polk, and defensive pass game coordinator Andre Curtis. Polk only has one year of crossover with Schottenheimer - the 2021 season in Jacksonville - but that also saw him assisting Sorensen, making that more of a Sorensen hire than Schottenheimer simply bringing in someone he knows well. That’s similar to Curtis, who was there for all three years of Schottenheimer’s years with the Seahawks but also served on Eberflus’ Bears staff, making that more of a reunion with the new defensive coordinator.
Speaking of Eberflus, the decision to bring him in as defensive coordinator felt obvious to some because of his ties to the organization. That said, Schottenheimer and Eberflus have never been part of the same staff and have no obvious connections. It would be naïve to suggest Jerry Jones didn’t play any part in bringing Eberflus back to Dallas, but Schottenheimer’s willingness to embrace it - despite knowing a ton of other coordinator candidates from his various experiences - speaks volumes about what he was looking for.
This is even more apparent on the offensive side of the ball. Klayton Adams offers plenty of reasons to...
