Tag: Brian Schottenheimer

Thomas Brown is 2023’s 2nd-highest rated OC in NFLPA survey

Even in an extremely bumpy season, it’s clear that Panthers OC Thomas Brown captured the admiration of his players.

If it wasn’t already clear that Carolina Panthers offensive coordinator Thomas Brown has the respect of his peers, it certainly is now.

With the regular season coming to a close, the NFL Players Association asked over 1,700 players to rate the coordinators they’ve worked under in 2023. The results, or at least the very top portions of them, were made public on Thursday—and Brown comes all the way in at No. 2 on offense:

Brown has faced quite a bit of adversity in his first season as an NFL offensive coordinator. From playing hot potato for the play-calling duties with former head coach Frank Reich to having to make lemonade out of a myriad of personnel issues throughout his unit, the 37-year-old has rolled with numerous punches this year.

Unfortunately, his highly-rated efforts haven’t resulted in a highly-rated offense. With one week to go, the 2-14 Panthers rank last in total yards per game.

Nonetheless, there’s nothing lowly about the admiration Brown’s players have for him.

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How Dak Prescott and the Cowboys built the NFL’s best passing game

Dak Prescott and the Dallas Cowboys have the NFL’s most dynamic passing game since their Week 7 bye. Here’s how it happened.

Before the Dallas Cowboys’ Week 7 bye, Dak Prescott had completed 132 of 190 passes for 1,333 yards, six touchdowns, four interceptions, and a passer rating of 91.0.

Since the Dallas Cowboys’ Week 7 bye, Dak Prescott has completed 127 of 180 passes for 1,602 yards, 17 touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 124.8. Prescott’s completion rate has risen from 69.5% to 70.6%, and that’s especially impressive because he’s been throwing completing so many deep balls of late — before the bye, he attempted 19 passes of 20 or more air yards, completing eight for 194 yards, two touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 92.9. Since the bye, Prescott has completed 20 of his 33 deep throws for 565 yards, six touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 144.3. When you’re just about perfect on the game’s toughest throws, you are indeed playing with house money.

So, what’s changed for America’s Team in the last few weeks? Why have the Cowboys gone from a 4-2 team led by their defense before the bye, and 100% Dak since?

After a 45-10 Thanksgiving Day win over the Washington Commanders in which Prescott completed 22 of 32 passes for 331 yards, four touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 142.1 (and got Washington defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio fired along the way), head coach Mike McCarthy talked about why it’s working so well on that side of the ball.

“We’re rolling through our menus. We’re not a ‘create the wheel’ system approach. I don’t believe in that. I mean, we don’t chase new ideas and concepts. If there’s a wrinkle that we feel helps us, it’s a variation of what we’ve already done. We have so many invested reps in the spring and training camp and that’s the foundation of who we are. Because it takes time to get the timing and efficiency where you want it each and every year and the fact of the matter is you have less time together. That’s why I give all these NFL players in today’s game an incredible amount of respect for what they do away from the building and that five weeks off a summer. That’s a critical time now in development of an offensive passing game. Which you were able to get that done in the past in the spring and training camp.

“There’s a lot that goes on and I just think that those types of adjustments and I think we looked like a first year offense a little bit the first four weeks. But we played the way we needed to play to win and won some games decisively too. We played to our defense, and it served us well. We want to complement each other. When they give us an opportunity, we need to go put it in the endzone. We need to get out in front, when we’re out in front our pass rush is lethal.”

Well, now the passing game is just as lethal, if not more so.

In this week’s “Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” the guys went deep on all the improvements.

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You can watch this week’s “Xs and Os,” featuring all of Week 13’s biggest NFL matchups, right here:

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You can also listen and subscribe to the “Xs and Os” podcast on Spotify…

…and on Apple Podcasts.

Now, let’s dive into the tape to see why and how it’s all happened.

Cowboys OC heaps massive praise on Patriots rookie CB Christian Gonzalez

Cowboys OC Brian Schottenheimer believes Christian Gonzalez is a special player.

The New England Patriots are facing the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday, and Cowboys coaches are taking notice of some of the Patriots’ best defensive players.

Cowboys offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer especially gave props to rookie cornerback Christian Gonzalez.

Gonzalez has been impressing over his first few weeks in the NFL. He has guarded some of the league’s best receivers and managed to hold his own. He could be in for another strong challenge on Sunday as he presumably will guard CeeDee Lamb, another one of the top receivers in the league.

One thing is certain: Gonzalez is earning respect, despite being a rookie. Schottenheimer knows what he is game planning against, as transcribed by NESN.com’s Zack Cox.

“If there’s a better young corner in the league than Gonzalez, you’d be hard-pressed to find (him),” said Schottenheimer. “He’s playing at a really high level. They matched him on Tyreek a couple weeks ago, Garrett Wilson (on Sunday). Really playing at a high level.”

The predicted chess match between Gonzalez and Lamb will be an interesting subplot in Sunday’s game. Lamb already has 273 yards on the season. So the rookie corner will have his work cut out for him.

But so far, Gonzalez has shown the ability to be able to step up to any challenge in his way.

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Schottenheimer: Cowboys to safeguard against Elliott, Grier sharing offensive intel with Patriots

From @ToddBrock24f7: The RB and QB bring close knowledge of the Cowboys offense to New England; Dallas could implement strategies to keep their plans secret.

Bill Belichick and the Patriots are well-known throughout the league for being willing to go to any length necessary to gain even a slight advantage over an opponent.

As they prepare to visit AT&T Stadium in Week 4, the Cowboys are well aware of that. And coaches are confident that two Dallas veterans who are now wearing the red, white, and blue are being pumped for inside information by the New England staff on what Dak Prescott & Co. will be trying to do come Sunday.

Running back Ezekiel Elliott, a key cog of the Dallas offense for seven years, and Will Grier, who spent two seasons in the Cowboys quarterbacks room and running the practice squad scout team, are both Patriots now.

And Cowboys offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer knows they both have intel that could come in handy for the Patriots defense.

“We’re always aware of it,” Schottenheimer told reporters Monday. “Those are things that we monitor every week, but certainly we know that Will knows where a lot of the bones are buried. Zeke obviously does, as well.”

Facing former players happens almost every week, given the nature of free agency in today’s game. The Giants added wide receiver Cole Beasley to their practice squad prior to the season opener against Dallas. In Week 2, the Cowboys were reunited with kicker Greg Zuerlein and wide receiver Randall Cobb. And last Sunday, tight end Geoff Swaim counted as a familiar face on the Arizona sideline.

Any of them could have provided their new team with some piece of coded verbiage to listen for, some tendency to safeguard against, some little edge to capitalize on.

“Everybody does it,” Schottenheimer explained. “You get a player that’s been somewhere, you bring him in, and you talk to him about different things. And then you’re very selective about how much you put into it.”

But obviously, you also make some alterations, too.

After a breakup, you change the locks. You come up with a new Netflix password. You do things differently so you don’t get burned by that ex who knows you inside and out.

That’s exactly what Schottenheimer hinted that the Cowboys will be doing this week.

“Those are things you talk about and you think about, ‘Hey, let’s adjust this one,'” he said from The Star. “We certainly have more than one hand signal for most of our core concepts. And sometimes you can use it to your advantage. Because they think they know what’s coming, they hear something and think, ‘Hey, it’s this,’ and we’re smart enough to adjust those things.”

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It’s well-documented gamesmanship, and Schottenheimer knows that Belichick won’t rely too heavily on anything Elliott and Grier have to say about the way the Cowboys were doing things last year under Kellen Moore or even this summer in camp. The grumpy guy in the hoodie didn’t get to 300 career wins by using an outdated decoder ring; he no doubt has a solid game plan to deal with Dallas.

“His big thing is he wants to make you play left-handed,” according to Schottenheimer. “He’s going to try to take away your best player. So he’ll have a plan for trying to find our pieces- whether he wants to take CeeDee away, or how he wants to attack the run game.”

But that doesn’t mean he won’t listen if Elliott has a secret to share.

And if Grier just happens to recall some of the details from that Cowboys playbook he was holding just a few weeks ago…

“I’m sure he’s definitely being interrogated,” Schottenheimer smirked, “and probably spending a lot of late nights with their defensive coaching staff.”

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Schottenheimer: Cowboys held back on offense, happy to keep Jets guessing

From @ToddBrock24f7: The Cowboys OC says the team was “wise” about what they showed and what they didn’t in their 40-0 romp versus the Giants in Week 1.

Cowboys fans who may have been disappointed to not see more bells and whistles from the team’s offense on Sunday night will want to remain patient.

Offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer has confirmed that the team certainly held a few things back during the 40-0 throttling of the Giants to open the season.

Some of that restraint was based on the nasty weather that invaded MetLife Stadium, some was based simply on having a commanding lead, some may have been letting Dak Prescott, Tony Pollard, CeeDee Lamb, and other playmakers settle in and shake off the rust after sitting out the entire preseason.

But just because every play call was working, the Cowboys resisted the urge to call every play they had.

“We were wise about what we wanted to use and what we showed and didn’t show with some of our personnel packages and things like that,” Schottenheimer told reporters at The Star on Monday.

Though Prescott went just 13-of-24 on the night for under 150 yards- one of the lowest totals of his career- the offense was efficient overall, to the tune of 4.8 average yards gained per play. With that kind of pace and a big lead, Dallas simply didn’t need every club that was in their bag.

Some of those unused plays may make the call sheet in Week 2 when the Cowboys host the other New York team in the AT&T Stadium home opener.

“The cool thing is, you’ve practiced those for, really in this case, two weeks,” Schottenheimer said, “because, really, we started this prep two weeks ago. So those carry over nicely into the things that fit based on what the Jets do, so I think that’s definitely a benefit.”

For those who wanted to see Deuce Vaughn used more exotically, those who had hoped for an all-out air assault employing the team’s top speedsters on the field together, those who maybe had a hankering for some smash-mouth fullback action or schoolyard trickeration?

It’s all coming. Eventually.

“We want to be multiple. We want to make it hard for the defense. We want to roll personnel groupings. We want to use all of our pieces,” Schottenheimer explained. “They’re just chess pieces, is all they are. We want to be able to do that, so we’ll slide over the ones that fit this week, and there’ll probably be a number of those that do. The ones that don’t? You don’t remove them; you just put them on hold for another week to where they do fit.”

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The Jets defense should pose a stiffer challenge for the Dallas offense. Against the three-time-defending AFC East champion Bills, they forced four Josh Allen turnovers and recorded five sacks.

And as the Jets enter a short of week of prep, the Cowboys are happy to keep them guessing at what unscouted looks may be waiting for them when they get to Arlington.

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WATCH: CeeDee Lamb warns defenses Cowboys’ deep game is coming

Let Dak cook, they’ll say. If fans wonder how things are going to be different under McCarthy and Schottenheimer, the WR gave a huge clue. | From @KDDrummondNFL

Dak Prescott doesn’t have a problem throwing deep, but the Dallas Cowboys haven’t been doing as much of it over the last several years. In 2019, Prescott set a career high in average depth of target at 9.8 yards, but that’s regressed to 8.3, 8.3 and 8.6 respectively. aDOT is not completely a measure of how deep a QB throws; it is often the pulled down by dump offs and throws around the line of scrimmage that balance out bigger throws.

For instance, Prescott’s aDOT was up in 2022 compared to 2021, but he threw just 50 passes 20+ yards downfield last season compared to 78 the year prior. According to WR CeeDee Lamb in a conversation with the 105.3 The Fan morning show on Monday, that’s all about to change.

Lamb says, “He’s looking for the deep ball.. this is a warning to everybody. If you’re not going to back up, good luck.”

Lamb is certainly capable of threatening defenses, but speed isn’t his stand out trait. That belongs to newcomer Brandin Cooks, who appears to be seamlessly integrating into the Dallas offense. Along with second-year receiver Kavontae Turpin, who is in his first full offseason, Dallas is expected to threaten deep much more often despite moving to a more West Coast offense under head coach Mike McCarthy.

Offensive Coordinator Brian Schottenheimer was in charge of the Seattle offense during “Let Russ Cook” from 2018 through 2020. In 2019, Russell Wilson threw 20+ yards downfield a whopping 98 times, dwarfing Prescott’s career high.

Drew Brees reached out to Cowboys OC after Brandin Cooks trade

Drew Brees reached out to Cowboys OC Brian Schottenheimer after Dallas traded for Brandin Cooks, one of his most productive former receivers:

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Drew Brees and Brian Schottenheimer go way back — before Brees became the legendary New Orleans Saints quarterback and Schottenheimer was tabbed to become the Dallas Cowboys’ missing piece from Super Bowl contention, Schottenheimer was Brees’ quarterbacks coach on the then-San Diego Chargers.

Obviously a lot has changed over the decades since. Brees is happily retired and waiting on his well-earned selection for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and Schottenheimer is getting the Cowboys passing game up to speed as their new offensive coordinator. One major addition in Dallas he’s working with this summer is former Saints first-round draft pick Brandin Cooks.

Per the Dallas Morning News’ Michael Gehlken, Brees sent was the first person to respond to the news of Cooks’ arrival — he sent a text message to Schottenheimer saying, “You are going to love this guy.”

Brees certainly did. Cooks posted back-to-back 1,100-yard seasons with the Saints in 2015 and 2016, and averaged a smooth 5.1 receptions for 68.1 yards per game through his three-year career in New Orleans. He’s since moved around the NFL often after relations frayed with the highly-drafted receiver and the Saints coaching staff over his role on offense, and he’s arrived in Dallas after spending time with the New England Patriots, Los Angeles Rams, and Houston Texans. He’s put up at least 1,000 yards in six of his nine years in the league.

But the Saints won’t see Cooks again until 2024, barring a meeting in the playoffs. Dallas and New Orleans are not scheduled to play each other this season and it remains to be seen if Cooks will play out his Cowboys contract, which carries a $10 million salary cap hit in 2024. With that said, it’s really tough to see him not returning next year — if he meets expectations in the fall, that’s an easy price to pay for a playmaking wide receiver.

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Mike McCarthy on new Cowboys coaches around Dak Prescott: ‘It’s a continuation’

From @ToddBrock24f7: The Cowboys look to build off the past 2 seasons offensively, but with an entirely new staff of assistant coaches around Dak Prescott.

Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott finds himself surrounded by a lot of new faces as OTAs get going in Dallas. And not just guys in the offensive huddle, like Brandin Cooks or Luke Schoonmaker or Deuce Vaughn. Even when Prescott gets back to the sideline or the meeting room, he’ll notice there’s been a lot of turnover since last season.

Kellen Moore is gone. So is Doug Nussmeier. As offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach respectively, theirs were the voices Prescott heard most often under head coach Mike McCarthy’s tenure over the past three seasons.

Now McCarthy is also his play-caller. Brian Schottenheimer has the OC title and is working with him on installing the game plan. Scott Tolzein is his new quarterbacks coach.

It’s a lot of change, even if most of it is behind the scenes.

But McCarthy doesn’t see it that way.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a transition; I think it’s a continuation,” the coach told reporters Thursday from The Star.

The system, McCarthy stressed, is still designed around Prescott, right down to keeping familiar terminology as the 29-year-old (he’ll turn 30 in July) enters his eighth season under center for the Cowboys.

“We’re still in Dak’s language,” McCarthy confirmed.

And although the assistants speaking that language are new to their day-to-day roles this year, they both have plenty of experience operating within a coaching philosophy that McCarthy has built over three decades in the NFL.

One of McCarthy’s first gigs at the pro level was on the offensive side of the ball for the 1993 Chiefs, supporting none other than Joe Montana.

So McCarthy understands all too well the significance of putting Tolzein, who quarterbacked under him in Green Bay, in the same position now with the field general of the Cowboys’ offensive attack.

“The quarterback room is a critical room in your coaching operations, as far as the design of it, the responsibility,” McCarthy continued. “Really, it’s no different than it was back in the early ’90s: the way I view it, the way we define it, the job description, job responsibility. The quarterback coach is a very significant component of that, maybe one of the most important components. The quarterbacks coach does the heavy lifting. That’s the way I’ve always set it up. That’s the way I was fortunate to go through it when I was a quarterbacks coach. All the extra time on the phone that you spend communicating with your quarterbacks, the little things..”

On the field, Tolzein never exactly lit it up over just ten game appearances in four seasons, going 88-of-146 passing for 1,065 yards, two touchdowns, and nine interceptions as both a Packer and a Colt.

McCarthy brought him to Dallas for his mind, though, rather than his arm.

“Scott is built for this. He was the quarterback, as a player, that if everybody was averaging 150 minutes a week on his iPad, Scott was at 480. Just the way he’s wired. And he has the magnetic personality. Brian Schottenheimer has a great personality. The way that room’s structured is similar to the way I’ve always done it in my past experience. It was a little different with Kellen and Doug, but I just look at it as more of a continuation of what’s already been established.”

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What’s been established is that the Cowboys under Prescott are capable of being among the NFL’s elite. Dallas led the league in total yards, yards per game, total points, and points per game in 2021. Those numbers dipped slightly in 2022, but the team still went 12-5 in the regular season and scored 28 points or more in seven of their outings.

That’s a wheel that McCarthy isn’t looking to re-invent, either.

“If you just look at the history of our offense here, 2020 was really trying to figure out who we wanted to be, with all the pandemic and all the injuries and so forth. I think the evolution from ’21 to ’22 is really the direction we want to continue to build off of. If you look at the statistics of those three years of offense and the area of how we’re going, we’ll continue in that direction.”

It all starts with the quarterback and getting Prescott to make some adjustments to his game, particularly in the interception category. McCarthy is banking on the revamped coaching staff around him being the key.

And he made it perfectly clear- even while fulfilling his media obligations by addressing reporters- that’s where his real focus is.

“I’m here right now,” McCarthy complained. “I’m missing a damn quarterbacks meeting.”

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Cowboys will be hard-pressed to play faster than with Kellen Moore

Brian Schottenheimer’s version of fast requires a distinction from what the Cowboys’ offense was under Kellen Moore’s leadership. | From @ReidDHanson

When new Cowboys offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer was asked about the type of offense to expect in Dallas in 2023, he said “I want us to be able to play fast.”

Acknowledging Mike McCarthy will be the play-caller and his job will be to “prepare guys and prepare the staff,” Schottenheimer talked about speed and physicality on offense and how he just wants to stack wins.

His statements fell in line with much of what McCarthy has said throughout the offseason. A big reason McCarthy wanted to take over as play-caller was his focus on the big picture. He wanted to score points but also to help his defense. It was a criticism he had of former OC Kellen Moore and something he aims to fix in 2023.

“I’ve been where Kellen has been,” McCarthy famously said earlier in the offseason. “Kellen wants to light the scoreboard up but I want to run the damn ball so I can rest my defense.”

People have focused on the “run the damn ball” portion of that statement but the part following the word “so” may be the most important takeaway. If resting the defense is what McCarthy aims to do in 2023, then defining what Schottenheimer means by “fast” is important.

Over the last three seasons under Moore, the Cowboys offense has finished in the top-2 in plays per minute. Talk about fast. With a new coordinator coming in, along with a 30-35 percent churn of the playbook, chances are the offense will be slower than what Dallas fans are accustomed to.

So when Schottenheimer says “fast” he likely means the players themselves will be fast, not the way the offense operates. Swapping out Ezekiel Elliott for Deuce Vaughn and Noah Brown for Brandin Cooks certainly helps accomplish that goal.

Under Moore, the Cowboys offense was consistently one of the fastest paced in the NFL. Based on goals and strategies expressed from the head coach and coordinator this offseason, offensive tempo is likely to suffer (by design) in 2023.

When Schottenheimer says “fast” he probably means “slow, but with faster players.”

It’s an important distinction to make.

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CeeDee Lamb one PFF’s best NFL players under 25

CeeDee Lamb was named one of Pro Football Focus’ best players under 25 ahead of the 2023 season.

A legendary Oklahoma Sooner in his own right, CeeDee Lamb has become every bit the star anyone a fan of the Crimson & Cream imagined he would be when he declared for the NFL Draft.

He enters his fourth year in the NFL and has become a star for the Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys are trying to regroup from another playoff loss. They haven’t reached the NFC Championship in nearly 30 years.

For Lamb, last year was a major turning point in his NFL career.

Lamb was tasked with becoming the number-one receiver in the Cowboys’ receiving corps after a pre-draft trade sent former No.1 receiver Amari Cooper to the Cleveland Browns. The front office and his coaches put the onus on the Cowboys’ newest No. 88 to live up to the illustrious standards held by receivers who wear that number.

Early on, Lamb struggled with the task and lost his starting quarterback Dak Prescott to a thumb injury on his throwing hand for five games. Lamb had to adjust to backup QB Cooper Rush.

The season rumbled on, Prescott returned, and the duo unlocked a chemistry they hadn’t before.

The result?

Lamb finished 2022 with 107 catches for 1,359 yards and scored nine touchdowns. His 107 catches are the third-most in franchise history, while his 1,359 yards are fifth-most for a single season. Lamb also did this with defenses keyed in on him weekly. The remaining Cowboys receivers were ranked at or near the bottom of the league in separation. Meaning they struggled to get open, allowing opposing defenses to double CeeDee without fear of paying for it elsewhere in the passing attack.

Lamb answered the bell, and now, with a year under his belt as the alpha in the room, he will look to build on that and take his game to another level.

Pro Football Focus believes Lamb is the ninth-best player in the NFL under 25. His teammate and fellow All-Pro, Micah Parsons, is No.1. Trevor Sikkema of PFF also believes Lamb is the third-best wide receiver under 25 behind two former LSU Tigers in Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase.

Lamb has been an immediate impact player for the Cowboys since they drafted him in 2020. He recorded just under 1,000 receiving yards in his rookie years and has eclipsed the 1,000-yard mark in each of the past two seasons. His receiving grade has increased rapidly, from 72.6 in 2020 to 84.8 in 2021 and 87.0 in 2022. The only player with more explosive plays of 20 yards or more in the past two years is Justin Jefferson. – Sikkema, PFF

What’s next for CeeDee Lamb? Aside from the pursuit of a Super Bowl, an extension is looming for the talented wide receiver out of Richmond, Texas. The Cowboys picked up his fifth-year option, something only available to first-round picks. He’s coming off a career season in which he was a Pro Bowler and second-team All-Pro and is expected to count $17.99 million against the cap in 2024, assuming Dallas doesn’t get a long-term deal in place before that season. Lamb will count just $4.45 million against the cap in 2023, with a $2.52 million base salary.

Owner Jerry Jones has been a proponent of paying guys drafted by the team. With an ever-increasing salary cap, the Cowboys will pay the money necessary for CeeDee. It’s simply a matter of when.

In the interim, Lamb’s attention will be on 2023. He has a new offensive coordinator in Brian Schottenheimer and now a new play-caller in head coach Mike McCarthy.

As Oklahoma fans have learned, change doesn’t stop CeeDee Lamb. From a different quarterback every year in college to playing with multiple in the NFL, Lamb has delivered.

The 2023 season should be no different.

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