Brian Schottenheimer inherited a Cowboys problem that hasn’t gone away, and it’s the kind that can quietly wreck a season.
Dallas has spent the last few months being talked about like a team that could make noise in the NFC. The roster looks strong enough on paper to hang with the Seahawks and the Rams near the top of the conference, and the talent level has plenty of people buying in. But the Cowboys keep running into the same old issue: the stuff that doesn’t show up in highlight reels, but absolutely shows up on the scoreboard.
Penalties have been a killer.
Bradley Locker of Pro Football Focus dug into the league’s penalty data over the last five seasons and found Dallas sitting at the top of the pile with 756 penalties. That’s 79 more than the Titans, who rank second over that stretch.
It’s the kind of number that tells its own story. You can have a loaded roster, but if you keep handing opponents free yardage and fresh downs, you’re making the game harder than it needs to be.
Locker put it plainly:
"While teams aren’t the entities actually making the flag decisions themselves (barring a coach’s challenge), they do hold real power in their ability to avoid and/or generate flags. The sport’s savviest leaders enforce clean technique to avoid penalties, not to mention take advantage of opponent tendencies in getting whistled."
That’s where Dallas has fallen short. The Cowboys won 12 games three times under Mike McCarthy, but the penalty problem kept them from turning that talent into something bigger.
And it hasn’t been fixed. Last season, under Brian Schottenheimer, Dallas led the league with 133 penalties.
The numbers get even uglier on defense. Since 2021, no team has been flagged more on third and fourth down than the Cowboys, who have 272 defensive penalties in those situations.
That’s the kind of thing that can flip a drive in an instant, especially when the flags are the automatic-first-down variety - holding, pass interference, roughing the passer. One mistake, and the offense gets a second life.
So is this a penalty culture? Maybe.
Is it referee bias? Maybe, but that’s hard to prove.
The simpler answer is that the last two coaching staffs haven’t done enough to make penalties a priority.
Dallas also doesn’t really operate like a team that’s eager to punish mistake-prone players by benching or cutting them. Talent tends to win those arguments.
Tyler Smith and Tyler Booker, the starting guards, combined for 12 penalties last season, and there’s no real chance the Cowboys move on from either one. George Pickens is another example.
He led the team with seven penalties last year, including three offensive pass interference calls, but Dallas is clearly willing to live with some of that because of what he brings. No receiver in the NFL drew more defensive pass interference calls than Pickens in 2025.
That’s the balancing act. Coaches want players aggressive, not paralyzed.
But there’s a point where freewheeling turns into self-sabotage. If Schottenheimer wants Dallas to have a real shot at the playoffs in 2026, he has to get the flags under control - especially on defense, and especially on the downs where one mistake can change everything.
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