With the Dallas Cowboys in the middle of first-year HC Brian Schottenheimer’s first OTA sessions, the talk around The Star as football things ramp up remains focused on the new culture around the team. It’s been an underlying theme in the acclimation of rookies and other new players alike, and the game being fun again for a team coming off a drama-filled offseason and very tumultuous ending of Mike McCarthy’s tenure in 2024. Schottenheimer will move into his first minicamp with the Cowboys in the second week of June. Minicamp has become the absolute mini-est look at anything resembling real football, but rest assured, that time is still rapidly approaching as the team will be on the field against the defending champion Eagles for a real game in less than 100 days now.
When that time comes, keeping in mind all of these things about culture and a new beginning will still be important, but so too will be the black and white nature of wins and losses. Above all of the things that are still being pieced together about how the Cowboys new staff actually plans on winning games, the most obvious and indisputable one is expecting better availability from starting QB Dak Prescott.
With Schottenheimer also stepping into the role of offensive play-caller, the Cowboys are counting on the all-important HC/QB combo to go a long way in yielding better results with Schotty and Prescott compared to McCarthy and mostly Cooper Rush at the end of last year. In order to do so, Schottenheimer has talked a lot about installing plays that may help “turn back the clock” for Prescott. This is a team very much looking to rebuild in the image of Prescott’s early years, where high percentage throws, moving the pocket, and of course, running the ball, were all staples.
There is one other thing this team should be striving for in accomplishing this, although it is much less tangible. When it comes to the start of the Prescott era in Dallas, the 2016 season is not only his rookie season, but still the highwater mark for wins with 13 and the only time a Prescott led team has been the top seed in the NFC playoffs. Prescott had a clear running mate in leading the team to those heights as a fourth-round rookie that started as a third-string quarterback in the offseason. Running back Ezekiel Elliott was also a rookie, and went on to lead the league in rushing yards.
Dallas Cowboys v San Francisco 49ers Photo by Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images
This duo took the league by storm and did things that were hard to explain for long stretches of time, mainly rattling off 11 straight wins following a week one loss to the Giants by one point. As players that simply didn’t know any better yet about what anything past year one in professional football looked like, Prescott and Elliott helped that entire Cowboys team adopt an attitude of not truly knowing how good they were.
A similar type of vibe should be something to look for within this new culture that Schottenheimer has been very bold about his aspirations for, claiming he wants one of the best in all of professional sports at his opening press conference.
The curiosity around the Cowboys hiring Schottenheimer, a coach that was here for part of the McCarthy era as offensive coordinator, still exists thanks to how many things went wrong for last year’s team. So many things, that the very fact McCarthy and Prescott ever produced dominant offenses is seemingly forgotten, even with Prescott having an MVP-caliber season the most recent time he played a full 17 games. To have a coach that can still pull from the good things that came from McCarthy’s tenure, but also progress it with the freedom to do new things, can be a good thing. The Cowboys have also already supported Schottenheimer with free agency and trade market activity that was far less common during most of McCarthy’s years.
Dallas Cowboys Introduce Brian Schottenheimer as New Head Coach Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images
Specifically for Schottenheimer’s offense, new faces that can help the team embrace a mentality of “not knowing how good they really are” in an effort to play loose, create way more big plays in the passing game, and find a much more dynamic run game, are WRs George Pickens and Paris Campbell, and RBs Javonte Williams and Miles Sanders. Dallas also spent the 12th overall pick on Alabama guard Tyler Booker, looking to make him the missing piece to have a dominant offensive line again like they did in 2016.
Prescott will go into the 2025 season as the highest-paid player at his position, taking the field off another injury in a league where fans, coaches, and even teammates all ask what any given player has done for them lately. The 2023 near-MVP season, the surprise success of 2016, or any previous playoff appearance under McCarthy, all won’t mean a whole lot in determining how far this team goes - or if the playoffs is even a realistic goal at all.
If or when the time comes for Schottenheimer to coach a playoff game, the opportunities for this core of Cowboys players around Prescott to squander the many opportunities they had under Garrett and McCarthy must be met with an newfound sense of urgency that Dallas has sorely lacked. The way the Cowboys have at least tried to put the building blocks in place to rejuvenate a roster plagued by so many injuries and turnover a year ago to have a younger club with a new outlook, hoping for a few more shots in the playoffs over the next four years of Prescott and Schottenheimer’s contracts running parallel, has been impressive.
The results coming this season could very well be surprisingly impressive too, and if that playoff opportunity does come in just year one, for Schottenheimer to fully rewrite the script from any previous postseason teams with Prescott, it just might go down as one of the biggest recent surprises in franchise history. Now eight full seasons removed from what can still be considered Prescott’s best chance to lead the Cowboys past the Divisional Round, and the best example of a team that had this edge of “not knowing how good they were”, might it finally be time for this idea to come back around? If so, will the Cowboys be in better position to embrace it fully under Brian Schottenheimer?