JERRY JONES IS WORTH $17.3 BILLION AND HIRES BRIAN SCHOTTENHEIMER AS COACH
Whatever the owner is doing with the Dallas Cowboys, he has minimized them into an apathetic mind-numbness, upgrading an offensive coordinator who didn’t call plays and saying “he ain’t Brian no more”
Seems we need a game show. The longest surname in the coaching marketplace has been hired by the world’s highest-valued sports franchise. Sadly for Jerry Jones, the 14 letters within Schottenheimer — Brian, first name — continue to diminish whatever he’s trying to accomplish in Dallas.
He has not won a Super Bowl in three decades. He will not come close to winning another. He doesn’t care about such trivialities. “Brian Schottenheimer is known as a career assistant. He ain’t Brian no more,” said Jones, 82, letting the name roll off his tongue. “He is now known as the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys.”
What happened to Deion Sanders? Was that a token conversation? If nothing else, Coach Prime would have brought verve to a team that no longer has nerve. He stays at Colorado and might remain in college football forever, which won’t soothe his miss-the-playoffs ego. Assuming Cowboys fans aren’t already physically ill, they might be gagged and tied by their possible next defensive coordinator … Matt Eberflus, who couldn’t call a timeout and allowed a Hail Scary in Chicago and wrecked the Bears’ season.
Only Jones can get rid of Jimmy Johnson and say bye to Barry Switzer and watch the following nest of head coaches fail: Chan Gailey, Dave Campo, Bill Parcells (Bill Parcells!), Wade Phillips, Jason Garrett and Mike McCarthy — the last two over the past 15 seasons. None had a name nearly as long as Schottenheimer, the offensive coordinator, who was hired inexpensively in a four-year deal. Jones hopes he turns loose an offense with Dak Prescott, a quarterback who likes Schottenheimer and — with a $231 million guaranteed contract — can laugh every time he sees the 14-letter boss.
It’s startling that Schottenheimer didn’t even call offensive plays under McCarthy, who was relieved of duties this month. He has no head coaching experience at 51. His father, Marty, reached the playoffs 18 times in 21 years and won 200 regular-season games. At least Jones hired the son of a big name. His net worth is $17.3 billion. The Cowboys are worth $10.1 billion. He often has stated he’ll spend any amount to win another title.
“It would be embarrassing, it would be shocking, if you knew the size of the check I would write if you guaranteed me a Super Bowl,” Jones has said. “It would be obscene. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do financially to get a Super Bowl.”
Yet, he wouldn’t even spend $13 million a year for Ben Johnson or Liam Coen. Kellen Moore remains with the Eagles in the NFC championship game. Bill Belichick is his good friend and couldn’t be wooed from the University of North Carolina. Pete Carroll went to Las Vegas. Why not keep McCarthy? “Somebody is getting sabotaged,” wrote Dez Bryant, the former Dallas receiver.
Hiring Brian Schottenheimer’s headline-crashing name and, perhaps, Matt Eberflus only rebuffs any attempt to create NFL sizzle and fuss. The Cowboys are boring and gray and mind-numbing, not worth watching if Fox Sports keeps them off the air and realizes they lost their “America’s Team” designation 20 years ago. Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs, gunning for a fourth Super Bowl championship in six years, have been the team to monitor. America is rooting for Buffalo to win Sunday, and how nice if Washington and Jayden Daniels beat Philadelphia.
Jerry Jones, at some point, will look to his son, Stephen, and hand over the franchise. He might be 90. Until then, the Cowboys will play the Bears next season at Soldier Field, where fans could be watching Eberflus against Johnson and Caleb Williams. Until then, we’ll wait for a Netflix documentary about Jones — “America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys” with the subhead, “A man who bet it all. A series of calculated risks. A team meticulously designed for greatness. … What began as a daring purchase led to the assembly of the iconic ’90s football team.”
It’s 2025.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.