Cowboys Camp Preview, Offense: Can Schottenheimer Fix One Major Concern?
Despite high-octane scoring, Brian Schottenheimer must resolve a glaring second-half touchdown drought and stagnant red-zone efficiency to transform Dallas into a reliable, four-quarter offensive powerhouse this season.
Video Transcript
Execution isn't enough, and explosiveness isn't enough.
The Dallas Cowboys need them both.
Mike Fisher reporting on America's Team.
We do it from Frisco, Texas, home of the Dallas Cowboys, and we do it with your help.
Hell, 80,000 Fish Heads in Cowboy Nation can't be wrong.
Cowboys getting ready to go to Oxnard.
We'll be there with them, as has been the case for 36 years running.
Cowboys offense, if you look back at 2025, and you look back at the stats, it certainly looks, feels, smells like they were the best, or one, one of the best units in football.
30-point-plus games seemed like the regular, and in fact, early on that was kind of the case.
Seven of their first 13 games, Dallas did that.
Not all their games.
They weren't, they weren't that consistently explosive.
The execution and the explosiveness wasn't always there hand-in-hand, but okay, in seven of the first 13 games, Dallas gets 30 points, and the fireworks were alluring.
You can tell me if you agree with where we're going here, that you need both.
This is an explosive star-studded offense.
But y- you if you're just If you're doing it inconsistently, it doesn't work.
Nathan's Postal Fish, "Do you have anything on the field goal deal worth four points?"
I have Brandon Arbery saying, "No thanks.
Let's not cornball it up."
You can Google that or find it, that story, at cowboysroundtable.com.
So okay, seven of the first 13 games they get to 30.
Final five weeks of the season, wonk, wonk.
Big dropoff in the final five, and of course, while we all blame 7-9-1 on the defense, the fact is those final five games, they, they were, they were sitting there with a shot.
And the offense didn't get it done either.
Let's delve a little deeper into what really happened on offense, and let's work together and try to figure it out.
Fill-in-the-blank, Un- Uncle Fish Premium, "I just received my mug in the mail."
Your s- Super Bowl mug, just given to fill-in-the-blank, Uncle Fish Premium, thanks to Fish and Marsha, for no good reason except I'm just a sweet old man.
David Harmon, Uncle Fish Premium, "I'm hearing that slappies are winning gifts."
Yeah.
You're a slappy, I'm a softie.
That seems the way it works around here.
Ismail, "Can I come with you to Oxnard?"
I- in a way, virally.
Virally, we're gonna have 80,000 of us there.
So here's where Brian Schottenheimer's got his challenge, and we have discussed the defensive challenge, and he's the head coach so that's on him too, but that's, that's gonna be a Christian Parker thing.
He will run the defense and Schotty will run the offense, and that I was gonna say it's okay.
It better be okay.
And the Cowboys will arrive in Oxnard with a Schottenheimer task.
Now, there's no perfect offense, and this one was far from it, even though over the course of time, top five rated seems like something they do pretty consistently here.
And so there's other issues.
Penalties.
There's other stuff that, that's is on Schottenheimer's big to-do list.
But for part of the second half of last season, even though that big 30 number jumps out and the top five offense jumps out, they got allergic to the end zone on offense.
Remember?
Y- you, you probably put this out of your mind 'cause we, we've wanted to blame everything on Eberflus, or on Jerry, or on whatever.
Three consecutive games, the Cowboys failed to score a second-half touchdown in the late going, and only because Joe Milton got something done in week 18 against the Gints that, that ended that awful streak.
And it didn't matter.
Had he not done that, the Cowboys would've gone not scoring in the second half for four straight weeks touchdown-wise.
So this is a question that is aimed right at Schotty.
Fix it.
Well, I guess that's not in the form of a question.
What is this, Jeopardy!?
Are you gonna fix it?
How do you fix it?
In the end, this explosive but not consistent enough offense, when it comes to scoring in the red zone, Dallas finished 16th.
We talked about this morning about, hey, if the defense could just be average.
When it comes to scoring in the red zone, Dallas's offense is just average.
Dak, well, he's gonna be an MVP candidate.
CeeDee Lamb, he's one of the top five receivers in football.
George Pickens, he's better than CeeDee Lamb.
We got a Pro Bowl tight end.
Our running back is r- We got all these first-round picks in the offensive line.
But you're mediocre at scoring in the red zone?
56% of the time.
That's, that's not I mean, it's mediocre.
Dak, Lamb, Pickens, Ferguson, Javonte, Tommy Buster.
Wish my name was Tommy Buster.
Been hanging out here for 60 months in Uncle Fish Premium.
Rock out, Fish.
I get my information from Frisco, not from Bristol.
Ryan C. Checking in from way up north with a $5 pitch in with that Canadian money.
Nobody knows what that's worth anymore.
Guys, go to cowboysroundtable.com and mavsroundtable.com.
And again, if you're a college sports person or you just wanna win stuff because you're part of the Fish family, smuroundtable.com right now is a hot place.
It, I'm gonna get you fixed up along the line, but there is now a 24-hour deadline to win the CeeDee Lamb bobble- bobblehead and the SMU stuff.
So go to smuroundtable.com.
Scoring inside the 20 is supposed to be tough.
It's a condensed field, less room to work, but the Cowboys made it look impossible almost to score in the final month of last season.
It also matters who you play.
Maybe the Vikings defense was good, maybe the Chargers defense was good, but the Commanders weren't, and the Giants weren't.
Of course, that was skeleton crew for everybody.
So the big thing I say for Schottenheimer to address, of all the things on offense with, with Parker, Parker's got his things on defense, and takeaways is one of those, sacks is one of those, pressure is one of those.
But as we pinpointed this morning, of all the numbers, you can't give up 30 points a game and be good, 'cause you're not gonna win every game 34 to 30.
In the case of trying to get average on defense, we did the calculations earlier and we came up with it.
To be mediocre on defense, to be ranked 16th on defense, you gotta move that number from 30 points a game to 23.
That's hard.
But on offense, with all the things that Schottenheimer's gotta concern himself with, you can't be mediocre at Red Zone scoring, not with this bunch.
You You know, I'm not trying to kill Schottenheimer here.
We are not even in Oxnard yet.
Y- If, if you're mediocre with this offensive bunch, you're not doing a good job coaching.
So let's get work done in the Red Zone, and of course, that starts in Oxnard.
Let's examine and reexamine the philosophies and what tore 'em apart.
Don Wilson, how many false starts did they have in the Red Zone?
Right.
How about dropped passes?
How about poor decisions by the quarterback?
How about missed assignments in the offensive line?
All of that stuff.
Spiral, $10 pitch in in the Super Chat.
"Uh, Mr. Mac, did AT&T Stadium install natural grass for the World Cup?"
They did.
"And if so, why can't they keep it?"
And that's a good question.
Complete sidebar, but I'm, I'm happy to address it.
It's way more expensive to do grass, and that's why the owners are pretending that injuries don't happen more often on turf than they do on grass, when anybody who's ever played knows that's not true.
But there are plenty of systems where you can go grass indoors.
One of the systems is u- in Arizona, they m- they move the field outside to put it in the sun.
There's a system in Spain where it's a lighting sy- it's a greenhouse.
They take the field and they put it underneath the field, and underneath the field is a greenhouse.
Absolutely doable.
And the NFL players, so the NFL players, there's about five of 'em that are whining and begging, "Please give us grass."
You have a union.
You don't whine, you don't beg, you don't ask.
If you really think your safety is at risk on turf instead of grass, and it is, you demand.
You don't ask, "Well, this could be a negotiate point."
No, you just say, "Listen, we're not gonna We're not showing up.
Figure out how to put grass in the stadium or we won't show up for work."
That takes more than the raisins for brains, balls, and biceps that this NFLPA has, but that's what it takes.
You don't ask a billionaire, "Hey, w- will you, will you give us some grass?"
You tell him, "Let us know when you've got grass surfaces inside our stadiums, and we'll come to work."
I don't mean to make it sound simple that what we're talking about is the possibility of going on strike.
If you really think it's important But if you don't, don't.
It's up to you, union.
Philosophies.
How about here's one: I got Brandon Aubrey in my back pocket.
Do I need to take a risk in the Red Zone?
Do I need to push my luck at all?
'Cause I know I'm getting three.
In fact, I don't even have to get to the Red Zone and I know I'm getting three.
So I think that go- And that's okay that that plays into the coach's mindset.
We, we have an automatic three here.
So depending on the game situation, we can be conservative if we want to Bruce C., "Just wanted to say hi, Uncle Fish.
See you twice a day.
I enjoy the no BS programming.
Thank you, sir, for your service to your diehard fans."
that's gonna- that kind of thing is gonna be included in tomorrow night's, Friday night's, it's prize night.
You get a C.D.
Lamb bobblehead, just maybe, if you go to smuroundtable.com and hit the join button, and, it's gonna be a Q&A night.
So we're putting that together.
Maybe the Cowboys weren't good in the red zone because of miscues and missed calls.
The Tennessee Titans were better in the red zone than the Cowboys were.
Are you kidding me?
K Pikes, "Maybe we're just too predictable in the red zone."
There you go.
So we've got all these, we've got all these theories.
The head coach, who's supposed to be an offensive guru, gotta fix that one.
Alan Wright is receiving your emails, by the way.
Alan, put your email in the chat.
Alan's gonna organize our Q&A.
In the end, for all the good the Cowboys did, you can't just be explosive.
You can't just be electric.
You have to be consistently explosive.
Oh, Alan, I see what you're saying.
All right, we'll get that organized tomorrow morning.
I will, I will make sure we get that organized tomorrow morning, and we'll get, get 'Cause Alan's our ringleader here on the Q- on the Friday night Q&A.
Schottenheimer has to figure out how to punch it in for six and turn that weakness, 'cause it was, with these weapons, to turn that weakness into a strength.
That process is, in part, intellectual.
They gotta realize it's important, and then, of course, it's very much physical, about execution being married with explosiveness.
The process starts just in a few days in Oxnard, California, and we invite you to hang out with us there as we will chronicle every single thing.
When a blade of grass moves in Oxnard, that's right, real grass, we will cover it here on the Cowboys Fish Report.
Fish out.
