Brian Schottenheimer doesn’t have to win the Super Bowl to quiet the noise in Dallas. But after the Cowboys’ 7-9-1 finish, anything short of real January football is going to leave his job security hanging in the balance.
That’s the reality with the Cowboys. When a season starts sliding the wrong way, there aren’t many levers a front office can pull.
You can’t overhaul the roster overnight, you can’t reset the draft, and in Dallas you can’t exactly fire the GM when the owner is the GM. The one move that always remains on the table is the coach.
That’s why Schottenheimer has already shown up in the early betting chatter. Betonline has running odds for the first head coach to be fired during the 2026 regular season, and Schottenheimer is in the mix at 16/1. The list is topped by Dan Quinn at 3/1, followed by Todd Bowles at 7/2, Aaron Glenn at 8/1, Zac Taylor and Shane Steichen at 9/1, and Nick Sirianni at 12/1.
In Dallas, the pressure never really leaves. Expectations are baked into the job, and being on the hot seat comes with the territory for any Cowboys coach.
The standard is obvious: win the Super Bowl. The second standard is just as obvious: work for Jerry Jones.
Last season, the Cowboys had a convenient place to point after the disappointing finish. The defense took plenty of blame, and Matt Eberflus became the easy scapegoat for a unit that was messy in part because of the team’s own personnel decisions. That excuse is gone now, and Jones may not have much patience for another slow start if the team stumbles again.
Jones has never fired a head coach after fewer than two seasons, but history in Dallas has a way of bending when you least expect it. He had never dismissed a coach in the middle of a season until Wade Phillips was let go after Week 10 in 2010. And the old line about no coach lasting longer than four years before Jimmy Johnson was also upended by Jason “8-8” Garrett, who lasted nine-and-a-half years.
Schottenheimer, for his part, has plenty going on that “feel right,” as the saying goes. But the NFL doesn’t hand out points for vibes. The standings decide everything, and the 7-9-1 record from last year is the reminder that matters most.
The Cowboys are also spending like a team that expects to contend now, not later. That kind of investment sends a message, and it raises the stakes for the coach charged with turning it into wins.
Dallas is not acting like a rebuilding club. It’s acting like a team that wants results immediately, even if that makes another season of near-misses harder to excuse.
Dak Prescott put it plainly in his interview with Jori Epstein of Yahoo Sports: “This is as urgent as I’ve ever felt Jerry,” Prescott told Jori Epstein of Yahoo Sports during a sit-down interview earlier this week. “Sure, there’s times he’s said it, and then we’ve looked up and he hadn’t done much in free agency.
Or this, this and that. But starting from free agency, they started doing things they hadn’t done.
And it’s kudos to Schotty and Will and the whole team, but it’s also Jerry making that decision of being aggressive and trying to go out and get what he wants.”
That urgency is what makes the next step so important. Some around the team think Schottenheimer needs a playoff berth to satisfy Jones.
Others think a playoff win is the real bar. Some would only be impressed by a divisional-round victory or better.
The Cowboys are talking about the Super Bowl, though that sounds ambitious coming off a 7-9-1 season.
The safest read is this: Schottenheimer probably doesn’t need to reach the Super Bowl to keep his job. But if the Cowboys spend another year without meaningful football in January, it gets a lot harder for Jones to sell the idea that the program is moving forward.
A playoff appearance should help. A playoff win would make things look much safer. Anything less, especially if the Cowboys again come out flat, could leave Jones thinking very differently about his coach.
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For now, the matter is headed toward court, with Romo scheduled to appear on September 21. In the meantime, CBS is keeping its options open, even as former analyst Boomer Esiason has suggested Romos run at the network could be finished, leaving a familiar name from Cowboys history in the middle of an uncertain stretch. [Read more 🡒]