Football
Abandon all hope, ye who enter, for this is a discussion about the 2025 Dallas Cowboys.
The latest loss, coming on Sunday Night Football to the Vikings, has brought us as close to the Cowboys being eliminated from postseason contention as we can get without it actually happening. In order to make the playoffs now, the Cowboys have to win out and the Eagles have to lose out.
For once, we’re not here to discuss the odds. Dak Prescott even seemed to admit the season was over, at least as far as playoff hopes go. But the reasons for it being over this early are plentiful, and there is enough blame to go around for months. Our own Tom Ryle and David Howman take a crack at dishing out some of it.
Tom: The SNF broadcast gave us a pretty clear indication of one place to look in placing blame. If I recall correctly, the stat they gave was that this year’s Cowboys were poised to become only the fourth team in league history to average scoring 29 points or more a game and miss the playoffs. Earlier I saw they might average giving up an average of 29 points a game as well, which makes sense in light of how they have hovered around .500 all year.
It ain’t the offense we should be hammering. I’m not saying that was perfect. But in 2024, the average winning score across the league was 22.9. Dallas failed to reach that only three times in 2025.
This, for the most part, has been a repeated inability of the defense to stop anyone. In a bit of symmetry, the Cowboys held opponents under 23 points just three times this season.
David: To further your point, the Cowboys beat the Saints 13-10 back in the 2018 season, snapping a pretty significant win streak for New Orleans. Since then, Dallas is 0-29 in games where they score less than 20 points.
The defense is obviously the reason this season isn’t going well, and after defending him somewhat for most of the season, I can’t think of a reason to keep Matt Eberflus into next year. But Eberflus also wasn’t around for all 29 of those losses; defense has been an issue for the Cowboys for quite some time, even when they had Micah Parsons.
So why is that? And who picked Eberflus, who ended up being a terrible fit for this defensive roster? The company line will always be that the head coach makes the pick, and Schottenheimer very well may have signed off on it, but considering he and Eberflus had never worked together before this season, who do we think suggested it? Could it be the same people responsible for putting together the roster that keeps giving up chunk plays on Sundays?
Tom: Oh, you read my mind. The building of the roster is the primary job of the general manager. And we all know who the stubborn, self-absorbed, attention-seeking GM and owner of the Cowboys is.
And while we can never be sure how much of a say Schottenheimer had in the hiring of Eberflus, it has all the hallmarks of a classic Jerry Jones move. Veteran (read old and well-traveled) coach with some past success, emphasis on the past. Someone Jerry knows personally.
Someone who makes Jerry comfortable. Who won’t tell him he’s not stocking the roster correctly. A company manager in the worst sense of the word.
I came into this season with low expectations and have pretty much seen them fulfilled. In other words, just another in the long string of frustrations of being a Cowboys fan.
David: I feel a tad bit of vindication. This time last year, everyone was ready to move on from Mike McCarthy, and I told anyone who would listen that it won’t change a thing. That Jerry Jones still runs this team and will do what he wants when he wants.
I like Brian Schottenheimer, I really do. And I think we’ve seen a lot of promising things from him, especially on offense. I would say his biggest strength – hyping the team up for game day – was arguably McCarthy’s biggest weakness, and that can help make up for a lot when the talent is there.
But Schottenheimer controls the talent part as much as McCarthy did, which is to say none at all. Both coaches are/were completely at the whim of a past-his-prime owner and a nepo baby whose only reference point for running a team is doing what his dad has done, which hasn’t worked in two decades.
Until something fundamentally changes in the way this organization operates, it won’t matter how many coaches they cycle through. Perhaps Schottenheimer, and his gregarious personality, can be the one to get that message through to Jerry. It may be our only hope.
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