The Dallas Cowboys will enter their Week 8 bout against the Denver Broncos with a 3-3-1 record under first-year head coach Brian Schottenheimer, and owner Jerry Jones might already have hope that his latest hire could blossom into a Dallas legend.
“There’s value in someone who’s never done it before,” Jones told Dianna Russini of The Athletic. “They have something to prove. He’d been around the best staffs — all that osmosis. It’s like having a coach who’s been a head coach five times, but never got the title. That gives him juice.”
Jones did not stop there. The longtime iconoclast compared Schottenheimer’s drive to that of former Cowboys head coach Jimmy Johnson.
“It’s glorious after the game when you’ve won and you’re having that beer,” he said, smiling. “But to get there, it’s hard. Competitive. Those big highs? You live off those forever.”
Johnson famously led the Cowboys to victories in Super Bowl XXVII and Super Bowl XXVIII, and was a key part of why the franchise was able to experience a renaissance in the 90s.
Like Schottenheimer, Johnson’s first NFL head coaching job was with the Cowboys, but he had already built significant experience at the helm of the University of Miami’s powerhouse program. Schottenheimer had not been responsible for an entire team or program prior to this season.
A win against Denver could place the Cowboys in the playoff conversation, but the team will have to continue to improve its defensive output if they have designs on making a legitimate run. Entering Sunday’s games, the Cowboys’ defense has surrendered the most yards in the NFL.
“To some degree, we didn’t have no way to go but up on defense,” Jones told Jon Machota of The Athletic after the team’s 44-22 Week 7 win over the Washington Commanders. “But I didn’t expect this kind of performance from our defense. So, kudos to (defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus) and certainly Brian Schottenheimer. He had a lot of fingerprints on this. … He’s the head coach, obviously he calls the (offensive) plays, and there he is spending a lot of (last) week working with the defensive coordinator. That’s a coach. That is a coach right there.
“This was a big day for Brian. A lot of people would say there’s not enough minutes to go around to cover all that ground. He’s so engaged and he’s so appreciative of his chance to be doing this that I believe he would spend 36 hours a day if he needed to, do a little work back in the equipment room (if needed). Give him a lot of credit here.”
