Blogging The Boys
This has been a long offseason for the Cowboys and it has barely started.
The Dallas Cowboys introduced their newest head coach, Brian Schottenheimer, on Monday, and ever since then have been busy building the staff that will work underneath the first-time head coach promoted from the offensive coordinator role. The hires will be just one piece of the puzzle to seeing how the 2025 Cowboys differ from the team that just suffered through a 7-10 season, with the next being the full player acquisition phase to reinfuse the roster with talent. A major step in this process is already underway with the two college All-Star bowls, and the Cowboys have done well to move just quickly enough to have something of a staff direction in place while evaluating draft prospects.
Brian Schottenheimer’s introductory press conference was technically the first chance to gather info on the new direction of the franchise, with the new head ball coach seated between both Jerry and Stephen Jones. As silly as it seemingly is, there is such a perceived thing as “winning a press conference” in today’s NFL. Whether or not the Cowboys did this when introducing Schottenheimer is almost entirely dependent on any given fan’s opinion on the hire before ever hearing a word from either the front office of Schotty himself. There was not all that much from Monday’s proceedings that turned those against the hire from the start into Schottenheimer’s biggest fans and believers in the whole process, and those in favor of the hire shouldn’t have heard anything that completely swayed them the other way either.
Two themes were persistent throughout the press conference, and they weaved their way in between long stretches of Jerry speak and cringeworthy air quotes from Stephen throughout the hour-plus session.
One theme was how the hiring of Schottenheimer represents both risk and necessary change for the sake of improvement. The risk in taking a lifelong assistant coach who did not interview for any other head coaching openings this cycle and promoting him after three seasons with the Cowboys. The changes that would come with it both in Schottenheimer’s leadership abilities and coaching style, as well as more tangibly on the field.
Schottenheimer did not get an extraordinary amount of time to discuss any scheme or philosophy changes he plans on implementing, but when he did it took no time at all to start with emphasizing the run game - surely music to the Jones’ ears after already interviewing Schottenheimer twice - as well as more play-action and the types of throws Dak Prescott thrived on much earlier in his career.
The second theme was much more consistent, and did its best to contradict both some of the good and bad from the first. This was the theme of familiarity, of the importance of family, and the overall sense of doing things the “right way” and winning with the “right guys”. It didn’t take long for all of these things to create[ a comparison between...
