The Dallas Cowboys will introduce their tenth head coach in franchise history on Monday, and the fact it will be a promotion for offensive coordinator and lifelong assistant Brian Schottenheimer still feels surreal. So much about how the Cowboys arrived at the decision to make Schottenheimer a first-time head coach has been used as fodder by fans to confirm their worst suspicions about what exactly is holding this team back from competing at the highest level.

Most of this discussion happened before the Eagles and Commanders and Chiefs and Bills played on Sunday to decide which teams will go to New Orleans for Super Bowl LIX, which only added more obvious points of comparison from the winning teams looking so much more dynamic than the Cowboys at any point in their 7-10 season. “Dynamic” and “Brian Schottenheimer’ don’t exactly feel like words that will be put together much moving forward either, meaning the Cowboys already-maligned front office will face one of their toughest sell jobs yet convincing followers the team is going in the right direction under his new guidance.

Schottenheimer will begin in 2025 in the first year of a four-year deal, knowing both of his past successors were able to play out their full contracts as head coach of America’s Team. This contract also aligns perfectly with the remaining years on franchise quarterback Dak Prescott’s deal. Dallas fell hours short of keeping a full reset within the plausible consequences of a poor 2024 season by having both HC Mike McCarthy and Prescott on expiring deals, but extended Prescott while letting McCarthy coach out his deal. In an unfortunately very limited sample size, the Cowboys did not get to see McCarthy call plays for Prescott past week nine. Winning three of his eight starts before being lost for the season in a road game at the Atlanta Falcons, Prescott threw eight interceptions, just one off the pace of his nine interceptions in 17 starts from 2023.

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Turnovers remained a constant breaking point that zapped any remote chances this poorly constructed team had of repeating as NFC East champions. McCarthy made it a near weekly point to stress the importance of getting this cleaned up, no longer having the Dan Quinn defense on the other side of things to rack up turnovers of their own, but neither his nor OC Schottenheimer’s coaching could achieve this.

Even so, there were strong indications in this coaching cycle that the Cowboys actually wanted McCarthy back on a new deal. Hiring Schottenheimer to be one of the few carryovers from McCarthy’s staff, in the biggest possible chair, seemingly in the name of keeping continuity for Prescott on offense can plausibly be seen as further evidence the Cowboys did, in fact, want to continue on with McCarthy.

In some way, this is also an admittance that an offense which made a living out of forcing their QB to play hero ball and overcome unimaginative route concepts plus the lack of a secondary receiver beyond CeeDee Lamb is acceptable. Of all the areas the Jones’ are accused of overstepping their reach on the actual football operations side of things, the design of the offense is the most common thing brought up, and the concern level that this can escalate even further under Schottenheimer has been expressed loudly by fans.

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The Cowboys also took more time to interview Schottenheimer, by a wide margin, than any other candidate on their woefully short list – most notably including their homegrown prodigy Kellen Moore. Somewhere along the way, let’s assume for just a second that Schottenheimer actually did sell the Jones’ on being not just a McCarthy replacement for the sake of continuity, but that there is something, anything at all that he feels he can actually improve on from previous leadership to get this team back to a winning record. Let’s be crazy enough to assume winning games is of high enough priority still.

If limiting turnovers and reinvigorating the run game were two of these things, the Cowboys already dabbled in both and have nobody to blame but themselves for falling short on these goals in 2024. The absolute main story of the NFL playoffs that have forged on without the Cowboys even being a thought for the first time in three years has been turnovers, with every winning team except the Chiefs in the AFC Championship winning the margin here.

The rival Commanders, with former DC Quinn as their head coach, scored the upset of the entire playoffs so far by beating the Lions in Detroit thanks to four turnovers, two of which they scored touchdowns off of to win by 14. Instead of actually backing up their talk on the field, the Cowboys are appearing content with merely talking a big game about how turnovers plagued them, while wasting yet another season (albeit a partial one) of Prescott setting him up to fail with an inexperienced offensive line, inadequate receivers, and regressed play-calling. Doing so in just the first season where Prescott was the highest paid QB in the league, and now aligning the rest of his contract with the OC that was a part of the last two seasons, makes it an understandably hard sell that this team is going to be in real contention anytime soon.

The other element that may potentially make Schottenheimer a perceived upgrade to McCarthy is his desire to establish a strong running game. Just like turnovers though, this was yet another area the Cowboys already talked a big game but did so after digging their own hole. Dallas notoriously passed on even courting Derick Henry to join a backfield that was barren after Tony Pollard left, and went into the season with only Ezekiel Elliott as a fresh face alongside Rico Dowdle.

McCarthy played the cards he was dealt and tried to establish both Elliott and Dowdle at times early in the season, hardly finding any creative ways to get either the ball. Things only improved once Dowdle was named the lead back and allowed to do what he does best running between the tackles consistently. If the Cowboys want to sell that Schottenheimer will help move the run game forward, with the team in tantalizing position to potentially use another top pick on Boise State running back phenom Ashton Jeanty, they will first have to admit to all the ways they passed on doing this very thing in year one of the “all in” approach after Prescott was paid.

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The Philadelphia Eagles, the team that will represent the division in the Super Bowl after blowing out the Commanders 55-23 in the NFC Championship game, tied the NFL record for rushing touchdowns in a playoff game with seven. Prized free agent addition Saquon Barkley accounted for three of them.

At every turn, the rest of the league is proving with painful obviousness how behind the Cowboys are and how their ongoing decisions are not conducive to winning. They are either a step behind or too far ahead of themselves constantly, something also highlighted by the way quarterbacks making plays with their legs this postseason has been a revelation that feels very much like a thing of the past for Prescott.

Any true Cowboys fans rooting against Brian Schottenheimer to, at this moment early in his first offseason, not defy the odds and help this team win games can hardly call themselves a fan. As unpopular as the decision has been, the Cowboys still have a core of talented players, many of which being easy personalities to root for, that deserve support in their best efforts to decide games on the field regardless of how the coaching staff or front office has prepared them. There is still a long offseason full of important decisions to be made though, and each of them offers an opportunity for the Cowboys to admit that going 7-10 and missing the playoffs this past season was a failure they plan to learn from. The most popular notion for now is that they’ve already started 0-1 in this column by choosing Brian Schottenheimer to lead the team for potentially the remainder of the Dak Prescott era.