It’s hard not to feel bad for new Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer.
A 51-year-old career assistant, he finally has gotten a chance to lead a team of his own. But few if any fans of that team like it.
Which explains the timing of the announcement of the news.
It landed late on a Friday night, via a leak to Cowboys-partially-owned-and-heavily-influenced NFL Media posted at 9:43 p.m. ET. The team announced it only two minutes later.
Owner Jerry Jones wants his team to be compelling. In the Sunday Ticket antitrust trial, Jones explained the importance of generating interest.
“What is so important is that you are substantive, that you are interesting,” Jones said from the witness stand. “The facts are that probably well over half the fans of the NFL don’t like the Cowboys and want to kick our ‘you know what’ every time we get out there. And I say that in respect to everybody here. But that’s the way it is because they don’t like me, and they probably don’t like me to some degree if they pay that much attention to it. But it makes us interesting, that the — it’s so much more than a score or so much more than a tackle. It is a manifestation of an interest, something to support.”
There’s not much to support in the Cowboys’ latest coaching hire, and the timing of the news confirms the Cowboys’ awareness of that fact.
If the Cowboys knew that the promotion of Schottenheimer from offensive coordinator to head coach would have prompted a positive reaction, it would have been leaked and announced on Sunday morning, sucking the oxygen from the buildup to the conference championship games. (Case in point — news of Dak Prescott’s new deal landed on the morning of the first Sunday of the 2024 regular season.) Or maybe the Cowboys would have tried to bigfoot the NFC Championship, between two of their division rivals. (Cases in point — news that Jason Garrett would not return as coach was leaked during a Seahawks-Eagles playoff game five years ago, and news of talks between Jones and Colorado coach Deion Sanders emerged during the Vikings-Rams playoff game 12 days ago.)
Jones knows when and how to detonate an M-80. Based on Friday night’s development, he also knows when and how to light the fuse on a lady finger and run.
That’s what happened on Friday night. In making perhaps the most uninspired head-coaching hire in team history (Dave Campo might have a case otherwise), Jerry knew to not pound on the front door but to slip through a basement window.
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