Blogging The Boys
Your Sunday morning Cowboys news.
Despite the frustration with the hiring of Brian Schottenheimer, it’s still unknown what could come from his tenure as head coach.
The hope that typically follows a new coaching hire was absent from this transaction. Schottenheimer had a rather spotty record as an offensive coordinator and despite being a lifelong coach, he’d never elevated to the position of head coach before. But it’s that level of unknown that inspires just the smallest nugget of optimism. The idea Schottenheimer has never had full control of the team before offers up a “superposition” of sorts.
Given all the unknown, Schottenheimer is both a success and failure at the moment. He’s a mystery much like Schrodinger’s Cat in the famous thought experiment of an observer’s paradox.
In a nutshell, Schrodinger’s Cat is a hypothetical situation in which a cat is locked in a box while being exposed to possibly deadly radiation. A person can assume the cat is dead given the circumstances, but until someone opens the box to confirm the status of the cat, the cat is both alive and dead.
Schottenheimer’s inexperience as a head coach and years of working in the background make him an unknown, much like that cat. There’s plenty of reason to think he’ll be underwhelming but until someone actually observes him coach in 2025, he’s also a potential success.
Among many other things in this well-researched article, Epstein explains what a colleague from his play-calling days expects Schotty’s scheme to look like.
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’ 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.”
