Blogging The Boys
Brian Schottenheimer will be coaching against some fellow first-year coaches in 2025.
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...
