The Dallas Cowboys are clearly in freefall right now, with both their supposedly vaunted offense and consistently victimized defense getting worked on Sunday night in Green Bay. The pressure is mounting all around head coach Brian Schottenheimer, to the point that there is legitimate speculation as to whether or not he'll finish the season.
No matter how hot a Cowboys coach's seat gets, the team's long record of how it handles them has always been a mitigating factor. If Schottenheimer were to be fired mid-season, he'd be only the second head coach in franchise history to suffer that fate.
Coincidentally, if it happens this week, it will come with eerily similar circumstances to the last time.
2010: The first and last time a Cowboys head coach was a mid-season firing
Jerry Jones is the only Dallas owner to ever fire a head coach. Tom Landry held the job from the Cowboys' first season in 1960 up until Jerry bought the team in 1989, and he was replaced by Jimmy Johnson during that offseason. Johnson left during the 1994 offseason, with him and Jerry waiting until after Dallas won another Super Bowl to make their divorce official.
Even as the coaches became less successful after Landry and Jimmy, Jones never threw the captain overboard during the voyage. Barry Switzer stepped down in early 1998 after the team started declining, Chan Gailey was fired after further decline over the next two years, and even Dave Campo was allowed to finish his awful run through 2002. Bill Parcells, who resigned when the Cowboys were back on the rise, did so following the 2006 season.
Wade Phillips became the head coach in 2007 and enjoyed immediate success using what Parcells had built, but an epic playoff collapse in 2009 had him on the ropes. It also didn't help that Jerry's handpicked successor, Jason Garrett, was waiting in the wings as offensive coordinator.
The Cowboys went 1-7 to start that year, dealing with injuries but also a clearly broken locker room. That seventh loss may sound familiar: an embarrassing blowout in Green Bay. That 45-7 joke of a game was the tipping point as Jerry immediately fired Phillips and made Garrett the interim coach.
Since then, even as the Jones family's frustration and desperation keeps growing, Garrett and Mike McCarthy have both been allowed to finish disappointing final seasons in 2019 and 2024. Phillips, even without being the least successful head coach in Cowboys history, remains the only one to lose his job before January.
Could Brian Schottenheimer soon join Wade Phillips in team history?
With Dallas dropping to 2-4 after Sunday's loss, and after two especially demoralizing losses, how close is Schottenheimer to becoming only the second mid-season firing in Cowboys history?
Yes, the team just got spanked again in Green Bay. But 2-4 is very different from 1-7, and Dallas is still just two games back in an unusually weak NFC East. If Jerry has any lingering faith in the current construct of the team, making the playoffs is still within realistic reach.
Perhaps most importantly, and what made Phillips' situation especially unique from all other coaches before him, is the absence of a Garrett-like assistant ready to take over. There's no writing on the wall with Klayton Adams, and Christian Parker seems overwhelmed in his current job. So dumping Schotty would likely create way more chaos than pulling the much-assumed trigger on Garrett's ascension did.
Once the team's truly out of it, maybe Jerry does it just to send a message. But for now, with the NFC East this wide open, it would probably do more to hurt that goal than push Dallas forward in 2026.
Schottenheimer could also end up in a different "special" group with Dave Campo
Even if he doesn't become Dallas' second mid-season firing, Schotty will need to finish strong to potentially avoid another unwanted distinction. As of now, Campo is the only Cowboys coach to finish this run with a losing record and zero playoff appearances.
After going 7-9-1 last year and with this season's 2-4 start, Schottenheimer is perilously close to joining him. The Cowboys would need to go 8-3 to finish the year and get him back above water, which admittedly sounds silly given how the first six games have gone.
With how bad the NFC East is right now, even an 8-9 final record might win it this year and at least get Dallas to the playoffs. But that still might not be enough to save Schotty, especially if the Cowboys gets bounced quickly and embarrassed again in the postseason.
As it stands, it will take a miraculous turnaround to save this season and Brian Schotteheimer's job. And so far, there's little indication that we're dealing with a miracle worker at head coach.
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