The Dallas Cowboys are boring.

If America's most watched football team doesn't want to be good. Can they at least have the decency of being explosively bad?

I can’t believe the Dallas Cowboys did a Friday night news dump for their new head coach.

The Dallas Cowboys have operated for decades less as a competent football team and more as America’s premier unscripted entertainment franchise. (Apologies to The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills—you’re #2.) But they released the news that they had hired Brian Schottenheimer at 10 p.m. ET on a Friday night two days before the conference championship games. If the Cowboys hire a coach, and there aren’t any sports debate shows on TV the next day to yell about it, did it even happen?

I get it. If my franchise were stuck in such an organizational rut that Brian Schottenheimer was the best path forward, I wouldn’t really want people to talk about it either. In close to 20 years as an offensive coordinator, Schottenheimer’s offenses have broadly stunk. (I am a Jets fan. Think of all the people I could be mad at, and then think of what it must mean that Schottenheimer is close to the top of the list.) I think the last team to interview Schottenheimer for a head coaching job was 13 years ago, in 2012, when he interviewed with the Jaguars. (Schottenheimer also interviewed to be Vanderbilt’s head coach in 2014—are we counting that?)

Schottenheimer represents more of the same for a franchise that could use new ideas. Schottenheimer has been a member of the Cowboys’ staff since 2022 and the team’s offensive coordinator since 2023. Jerry Jones told press that Schottenheimer was a “risky” hire—a strange thing to say any time you’re hiring the most important position in a franchise, but even stranger when talking about an internal hire. “I’ve been closely vetting this guy for years, and I gotta say, really hit-or-miss. A true flake.”

I am not a Dallas Cowboys fan, and therefore, it does not bother me that the Dallas Cowboys are not good and have no interest in becoming good. Whether or not the Cowboys want to win games is between them and the state god of Texas, Buc-ee the Beaver, hallowed by thy nuggets.

I am, however, a member of the American media-consuming public. This means I must interact with the Cowboys all the time. The most watched regular season game this year was a showdown between Cooper Rush and Drew Lock, because it was the Cowboys on Thanksgiving and people watch the Cowboys on Thanksgiving. ESPN and Fox Sports will devote hours to discussing the Cowboys even in the middle of the offseason when the Cowboys aren’t doing anything at all. The nation’s obsession with the Cowboys has made them the most valuable franchise in sports by a wide margin.

And right now, they aren’t earning our fascination. We don’t need the Cowboys to be well-run, and they aren’t. But worse than being bad, they’re dull.

Jerry Jones famously relishes the spectacle of the Cowboys. It’s why he’s turned the team’s practice facility into a tourist attraction even as his players complain it makes them feel like zoo animals. He’s man who loves attention and big shiny things.

When Jones bought the Cowboys in 1989, he made headlines as easily as he won championships. Within his first seven years as owner, he fired the legendary Tom Landry, hired college football national champion Jimmy Johnson, won two Super Bowls, fired Johnson, hired another college football national champion in Barry Switzer, and won a third Super Bowl.

30 years after those Super Bowls, Jones’ managerial strategy is clearly intended to maintain the Cowboys’ organizational status quo. In the past 15 years, they’ve had just one general manager (Jones himself), changed quarterbacks just once, and changed head coaches twice… but only once by choice. (Jones apparently wanted to keep Mike McCarthy as head coach, but McCarthy left during contract negotiations.)

Dallas perennially ranks towards the top of the league in year-over-year roster retention. They basically do not do free agency: Without getting into the Derrick Henry thing, they have not signed an outside player to a multi-year contract since 2021, and that was a 2-year, $5 million deal for linebacker Tarrell Basham. Even their backup quarterback has been with the team for eight seasons, which seems like a minor thing until the starting quarterback gets injured and the guy you have is just there by default. (This year, their starting quarterback got injured.)

Their coaching staff is generally made up of internal promotions and people who have already been employed by the Cowboys. Jones promoted Jason Garrett from backup quarterback to offensive coordinator to head coach. Under Garrett, the team promoted backup quarterback Kellen Moore to offensive coordinator. Moore was succeeded at OC by Schottenheimer, who was then promoted to head coach like Garrett before him. (What odds can I get on Cooper Rush becoming the next OC?) The Cowboys need to replace defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer—a member of the Cowboys staff from 1994 to 2006 who returned in 2024—so they have turned to Matt Eberflus, a Cowboys linebackers coach from 2011 to 2017.

Commitment to continuity is OK when you’re the Brady-Belichick Patriots dynasty. The Cowboys are not. They’ve won just four playoff games in the 21st century. And yet they keep running it back. Jerry Jones seems to ask: If it ain’t fixed, why break it?

This year, the opportunity for change was thrust upon them when their head coach decided to leave over a contract dispute. Did they take it? No!

I basically assumed that Dallas going to hire Deion Sanders, the Cowboys legend who has proven to be both an effective coach and the only sports figure capable of generating Cowboys-esque media attention. It was too perfect. His time with the Buffs seemed to be coming to a close just as the Cowboys job opened up. Deion’s emotional speech about coaching his sons ahead of the Alamo Bowl actually matches up word-for-word with Jerry Jones’ speech about working with his children on Landman, like Pink Floyd and The Wizard of Oz. If they didn’t go with Deion, the Cowboys also surely could have gotten Bill Belichick, the coaching GOAT who has fallen so far out of favor in NFL circles that he felt compelled to take a college job… and not a particularly prestigious one at that. You’re telling me this man was willing to the transfer portal works, but wasn’t going to say yes to the Dallas Cowboys?

Hiring Sanders or Belichick would’ve been big, bold ideas that Jones would’ve once made come true. Instead, they managed to go with someone more boring and worse at coaching than Sanders and Belichick, and then Jones gave a press conference about how it was risky.

A generous reading is that at some point, Jerry Jones decided he only wanted to work with people he trusts. A less generous reading is that Jerry Jones only wants to work with people who will be subordinate to him, which rules out people like Belichick who would demand more control. An even less generous reading is that Jerry Jones only wants to work with people who will ensure the spotlight doesn’t wander from Jerry Jones, which rules out charismatic and captivating people like Sanders.

The result is medium tedium. The Cowboys are a firework that fizzles, claiming to be Texas-sized but all the measurements are coming up Delaware. Don’t hire Brian Schottenheimer and tell me it’s a bold risk! Come on! You’re the Cowboys! Make something explode!