Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer and the proverbial hot seat

If a team starts off the season on the wrong foot and wants to reverse its fortunes, there aren’t too many options available for that front office. Can’t cut all the players on the roster, can’t draft new players, can’t even fire the GM if he happens to be the owner of the team, and certainly can’t swap out the existing fan base for a kinder, gentler one.

But you can fire the head coach.

If recent history is anything to go by, there will be a couple of mid-season coaching changes this season, just as there will be coaching changes after the season. And the sportsbooks are already getting jumpy. Betonline, for example, has running odds on which head coach will be fired first during the 2026 regular season, and Schottenheimer makes the top seven:

1. Dan Quinn (3/1)
2. Todd Bowles (7/2)
3. Aaron Glenn (8/1)
4. Zac Taylor (9/1)
5. Shane Steichen (9/1)
6. Nick Sirianni (12/1)
7. Brian Schottenheimer (16/1)

Expectations are always high in Dallas, and the basic reality is that being on the hot seat is pretty much par for the course for a Cowboys head coach because:

A. he’s not winning the Super Bowl every year, and

B. he works for Jerry Jones.

Last year, the defense provided a convenient excuse for a disappointing 7-9-1 performance, and Matt Eberflus turned out to be a super-convenient scapegoat for a defensive mess that the Cowboys created, in part, by their own personnel choices across the defense.

I’m always wary of using tired old clichés like “Jerry Jones has an itchy trigger finger”, but Jones is not getting any younger, and he may not have the patience to sit through another disappointing year, especially if the Cowboys get off to yet another slow start.

Yes, we know that Jones has never fired a head coach after less than two seasons, but trying to predict what Jones will do based on past behavior is almost always a fool’s errand.

Remember how Jones had never fired a coach mid-season – until he fired Wade Phillips after Week 10 in 2010. Or remember how “not even Jimmy Johnson lasted for more than four years” in Dallas – until Jason “8-8” Garrett more than doubled that in his nine-and-a-half-year tenure as head coach in Dallas.

What Schottenheimer needs to do to keep his job in 2026

A lot of the things that Schottenheimer has done so far “feel right”. Of course, they also felt right at this time last year, but that 7-9-1 record did not “feel right” at all, regardless of any extenuating circumstances. The fact is that success in the NFL is judged solely by the W/L column. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

On the plus side, the Cowboys have invested heavily in the team, as the graph below shows, so at least they are putting their money where their mouth is, even if that further increases the pressure on Schottenheimer to deliver.

The Cowboys aren’t behaving like a team that’s rebuilding. They’re spending like a team that expects to compete now. That doesn’t mean Schottenheimer needs to win the Super Bowl, but it does make another season of “we’re almost there” increasingly difficult to sell.

And there seems to be a palpable sense of urgency in Dallas.

“This is as urgent as I’ve ever felt Jerry,” Prescott told Jori Epstein of Yahoo Sports during a sit-down interview earlier this week. “Sure, there’s times he’s said it, and then we’ve looked up and he hadn’t done much in free agency. Or this, this and that. But starting from free agency, they started doing things they hadn’t done. And it’s kudos to Schotty and Will and the whole team, but it’s also Jerry making that decision of being aggressive and trying to go out and get what he wants.”

Some believe Schottenheimer must make the playoffs to keep Jones happy. Others believe the Cowboys must win at least one playoff game. Others believe that simply winning a lowly wild-card game won’t be enough, that it must be at least a divisional-round win, perhaps even a conference championship. The Cowboys themselves are openly talking about the Super Bowl, and frankly, I have no idea what to make of that coming from a 7-9-1 team.

My guess? Schottenheimer doesn’t need to reach the Super Bowl to keep his job. But after going 7-9-1 in his first season, another year without meaningful January football would make it very difficult for Jerry Jones to argue that the team is heading in the right direction.

A playoff appearance probably keeps him around – if only because of the organizational inertia the Cowboys tend to display. A playoff win should make his position considerably safer. Anything less, particularly if the Cowboys stumble out of the gate again, could put Jones in a very different frame of mind.

So where’s your line in the sand? What does Schottenheimer need to deliver in 2026 to keep his job?