Cowboys’ Narrow Win Shouldn’t Quiet the Conversation Around Jerry Jones and Brian Schottenheimer

If the Cowboys had lost to the mid-fire-sale Colts on Sunday, there would have been an endless and spirited conversation about the idea of an in-season coaching change in Dallas. This is especially true after team owner Jerry Jones spent the entire week defending his assembled staff—which experts comfortably place at least in the bottom 10 in total staff salary, if not bottom five—and insisting that he is consistently (and perhaps illegally) in conversations with the “top names” to come to Dallas.

So, do we simply pass on that conversation because the Cowboys barely beat the fire-sale Colts?

There’s some deserved nuance, of course. The Cowboys were without Joey Porter Jr. and George Pickens, and finally the defense looked close to adequate. Rookie first-round pick Caleb Downs sealed the game with a clutch interception and made a critical tackle earlier in the chaotic waning minutes. It was his best game as an NFL player, though Dallas also set a franchise record for the most consecutive weeks the defense has given up 20 or more points (16).

But the Colts have already traded away two of their best players and are actively fielding calls on both running back Jonathan Taylor and quarterback Daniel Jones. They are the NFL team equivalent of a corporation whose HR department accidentally sent the projected layoff totals to the entire workforce. Outside of a few contract players who need to log worthwhile film to make a fringe roster spot in 2027, it would literally behoove the entire Colts’ roster to lay down on a play-to-play basis and stave off a career-altering injury.

And yet, the Cowboys managed to rouse them with 14—fourteen—penalties for 153 yards. One of the penalties came after a critical turnover when DeMarvion Overshown ran out onto the field to celebrate with his teammates. The problem, of course, being that Overshown was not a dressed player on game day and was on the field of play in a sweatsuit. While it’s easy and cheap to couple that with CeeDee Lamb’s comical fumble, the Cowboys were absolutely a team teetering on success by a handful of extraordinary individual plays that were nearly counterweighted by the fact that second-year coach Brian Schottenheimer’s feel for play-calling seems to have vanished and that nearly every positive play was negated by a boneheaded penalty.

The only argument for keeping Schottenheimer at this point is that getting rid of him would probably be too destructive and the staff doesn’t seem to have a ready-made interim replacement. But if Dallas still had, say, Dan Quinn as defensive coordinator, would this even be a question at this point? (Putting aside Quinn having his own job security conversation in Washington at the moment.) If Schottenheimer wasn’t the play-caller on offense, would it even be a question at this point? Having a coach that is valuable enough not to be fired amid a disappointing season is only a humble brag if you have someone able to take the gig.

The bottom line: Dallas has by far the best quarterback in the NFC East. The team has top players at cornerback, defensive tackle and arguably the best offensive line remaining in the division. That has led to a point differential of plus-10 for the year and a 4–5 start, despite the division-leading Giants rotating Jameis Winston and J.J. McCarthy at quarterback in a majority of their games. The Commanders cannot function on a down-to-down basis and have found every way to create live teach tape for how not to handle an end-of-game situation. The Eagles are purposely starting Joe Milton at quarterback for a better draft pick.

Every year with Dak Prescott, playing in his age-33 season, is a finale of sorts, with the accumulated damage that the human body of an NFL quarterback takes on providing untold mysteries as time goes on. It’s immensely sad that Jones set up the chess pieces in such a way that he wanted to save about $6 million at the head coaching position but surrounded that coach with no obvious successor in the event that he performed commensurate with the fact that no other team has tried to seriously hire Schottenheimer in more than 15 years. We often talk about windows. This is the Cowboys’ window. It’s right here. Lamb will turn 28 next year. Pickens will be gone. Quinnen Williams will turn 30 during the 2027 season. Kenny Clark, who was also fantastic on Sunday, by the way, will be 32. A stable hand on the wheel would have this team sitting on a three-game lead coasting into Thanksgiving. But stability costs money.

As a society, we are largely susceptible to blowhards with a penchant for self-lionizing but we’re also pretty good at sniffing it out after a while. Jones’s commentary on coaching pay a week ago, and his subsequent attempt to brag about the success of his oil wells, painted the picture of a man so painfully out of touch with his own operation that it isn’t worth arguing about anymore. He is the ownership love child of Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith—and in hearing all of them talk about football, it’s clear they probably all watch about the same amount of what’s actually happening on the field.

Next week, the Cowboys will not play a team tumbling toward one of the worst records in the NFL. They will not play a team that has now lost 14 of its last 16 games. They will not play a team whose coach is very likely scanning Zillow in multiple locations for 2027 already. They will be playing a 49ers outfit that has maintained a steady competitiveness through injuries to its best offensive and defensive players year in and year out for half a decade. A team that didn’t skip a beat when its own head coach had to miss practice time with a concussion because there are still a handful of obvious head coaching candidates on the staff (this, despite the fact that a Kyle Shanahan assistant seems to get a head coaching job almost every year). And, I guess it’s important to mention, the Cowboys will be playing against a team that pays among the top 10 for its head coach … and looks like it.

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