About a week after parting ways with Kellen Moore, the Dallas Cowboys have a new offensive coordinator. The team announced on Saturday afternoon that it has named Brian Schottenheimer to the position.
The Cowboys had one of the NFL's most efficient and explosive offenses in the league during Moore's tenure, ranking second in both total yards and total points, and leading the league in scoring in each of Dak Prescott's healthy seasons. However, the offense struggled badly in consecutive playoff losses to the San Francisco 49ers these past two seasons, so the team decided to go in another direction. That direction is now clear.
"I am thrilled and thankful for this exciting opportunity and embrace the high standards and expectations that come with this role and the Dallas Cowboys organization," Schottenheimer said in a statement. "Having long-standing, great respect and appreciation for Mike McCarthy as a person, a leader and a head coach makes this a very rewarding and compelling moment for me. The ability to win with great teammates that share the same goals, and alignment with how to teach them, makes this special for me and I am very grateful for it."
Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy said the following regarding Schottenheimer: "I am very happy to have Brian take on this key role with our team. He has been an important part of our staff already and has a great grasp of where we are and where we want to go. Brian also has an exceptionally strong foundation, history and relationships beyond his time here that translate very well into understanding what our approach to operating and executing will be in the future. This will be an exciting and efficient transition for us that I am confident will help yield he growth and results that we all expect."
McCarthy will be the play-caller now that Moore has moved onto Los Angeles, but Schottenheimer will presumably be responsible for installing and implementing the offense in his role as the coordinator. If Schottenheimer's name sounds familiar, it should. He is the son of longtime NFL head coach Marty Schottenheimer, and he has been in the league for a long time as well. Schottenheimer spent last season as a consultant in Dallas, and has 12 years of offensive coordinator experience at the NFL level.
However, those years of experience should inspire relatively little confidence. In In 12 seasons in the role, Schottenheimer coordinated an offense that ranked top-10 in points only four times, top-10 in yards just once, top-10 in Football Outsiders' DVOA just three times, and top-10 in Tru Media's version of EPA per play only twice. On average, his offenses have been consistently below-average. But the Cowboys apparently think that he and McCarthy are the tandem that will elevate was has been one of the league's
