PALM BEACH, Fla. — Brian Schottenheimer has been the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys for fewer than 100 days.
Hired officially on Jan. 24 as the 10th coach in Cowboys history, he has not had much time to relax.
He had to assemble a coaching staff. He had to get ready for free agency, making the final call on some of the additions. He went to pro days at Texas A&M, Ohio State and Ole Miss. He attended the NFL’s annual meeting at The Breakers Resort in Palm Beach, Florida, stirring up memories of when he would go as a teenager with his dad, Marty.
In the past week, there have been daily draft meetings that he did not have to attend when he was the offensive coordinator for two years under former head coach Mike McCarthy.
He has yet to get on the field with his new players. Phase 1 of the offseason program began Monday, and only the strength and conditioning coaches can be on the field with the players. In two weeks, when Phase 2 begins, Schottenheimer and the rest of the staff can finally begin on-field teaching.
But Schottenheimer is almost glad it took time to get on the field with the players. It has given him the opportunity to get to know the players on a personal basis.
“Half of my day is spent reaching out to our players and trying to talk to them on the phone and just check in about life,” Schottenheimer said. “And I don’t want to talk to these guys right now about football. The biggest mistake people make — and I’m guilty of it, looking back — is you think, ‘I got to get all the football in. I got to get those plays in. That’s a great route combination.’
“That’s overrated. It’s overrated. It’s a people business. We want to spend time getting to know one another and building this culture, which is going to be about competing every day to make these guys the best versions of themselves. Not just as football players, but as a husband, as a father, as a Christian — whatever it is — musician, if that’s what they want. It’s important to me.”
When Osa Odighizuwa signed his four-year, $80 million contract to remain with the Cowboys and skip the open market, Schottenheimer found out where the defensive tackle was having a celebratory dinner and sent over a bottle of champagne.
One morning, he bought Whataburger breakfast for every Cowboys employee, moving around the different departments, attempting to bridge a gap between the football side of the building and everybody else.
He believes it matters.
“Let’s be honest, there’s going to be some s—ty days,” Schottenheimer said. “This is the National Football League. It’s going to be tough. If you preach that you’re a family, and if you preach that ‘I love you, I care about you.’ Then why wouldn’t I take steps to get to know people?”
When free agent Miles Sanders was contacted by the Cowboys, Schottenheimer was the first person the running back heard from in the organization.
“He came off real genuine,” Sanders said. “We didn’t really talk about football. It was just relationships and stuff like that, what I can do, and just talk about the future and about the team. He’s excited for the opportunity too. I love his energy, he answered all the questions that I had.”
At his introductory news conference, Schottenheimer said he was “good with the X’s and O’s, but great with people.” Owner and general manager Jerry Jones has seen that in action.
“Being around him for three years let us have a good feel for how he works with players. The players’ input about what kind of coach and how much confidence they have in him; how he handles solving problems, both on and off the field; people skills; all of that, we had a real good read,” Jones said.
“I didn’t go into the process necessarily thinking that he would be the head coach. As a matter of fact, candidly, he was, in my mind, going to be our coordinator. And so as we got more involved, the more I looked at it, the more I felt, ‘Wait a minute here.'”
Eventually, Schottenheimer’s work will be about the on-field product when the games start. That’s how all coaches are graded, which he understands better than most, having seen his father as the head coach in Cleveland, Kansas City, San Diego and Washington.
As he walked down one of the halls at The Breakers late last month, he remembered doing the same with his dad at the NFL’s annual meeting when he was a teenager.
“You look back [and] it just kinda reminds you how fast the journey goes,” Schottenheimer said.
There are still times when the position he now holds hits him and his wife, Gemmi.
“To sit in this chair, with this incredible organization with this much of a history, it’s something I don’t take for granted at all and am excited about and look forward to. Not just the challenge of it, but building it with our coaches and our players,” he said. “That’s what this business is about: getting a group of people together with a common goal, working every day to do it. Every day is not going to go great, [but] that’s the way I’m wired. I love to work.”
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