FRISCO, Texas — Brian Schottenheimer hated his first play call of the season. The Dallas Cowboys coach said Wednesday at The Star that he thought it was a terrible call, and that defensive coordinator Christian Parker had a couple of calls he would like back from the 28-20 loss to the New York Giants.
Schottenheimer does not think the Giants’ offensive staff was more prepared for Parker’s defense than Dallas expected.
“No, I don’t think so. I think, again, when you have two different potential offensive attacks, which the Giants have, and you don’t know, I think week five, week six, week seven, teams will have a better idea of what they’re doing,” Schottenheimer said. “I don’t think so. I think at the end of the day, we didn’t do a great job on first down. We talked a lot about the pass rush and why was there not more rush on the quarterback? Well, when they’re rushing for six yards a carry on first down and they’re living in second-and-4s and things like that, you’re not going to get many ops. And when you do, you’ve got an athletic quarterback that was getting the ball out of his hand fast.”
“But all in all, I think the plan was fine. We just didn’t execute the way that we needed to,” Schottenheimer continued. “And I know CP and I talked. I mean, shoot, first play of the game, the first play call, yeah, I hated it. I thought it was a terrible call by me. And they shoved it up our butt. That’s the first time I haven’t sworn in the last three days. But CP had a couple calls he’d like to have back. But we’re in this thing together. Offense, defense, coaches, players, special teams. And we just didn’t play to our standard.”
Dallas opened the game with a three-and-out. New York ran 68 offensive plays to 52 for Dallas and outgained the Cowboys 394-244. The Giants ran for 165 yards on 37 carries, and Jaxson Dart completed 23-of-29 passes for 230 yards, 3 touchdowns, and no interceptions. Dallas sacked Dart twice.
Brian Schottenheimer Says Dallas Cowboys’ Mistakes Are Fixable
Sunday was Parker’s first game calling the Dallas defense. On offense, Dak Prescott completed 22-of-34 passes for 175 yards, 2 touchdowns, and 1 interception and was not sacked.
Schottenheimer grouped his own play-calling with communication, pad level, and contain as things Dallas can fix.
“They’re all fixable. I mean, they’re all fixable,” Schottenheimer explained. “I mean, communication’s fixable. Pad level’s fixable. Contain’s fixable. Better play call’s fixable. Talked about … not turning the ball over. That’s fixable. They’re all fixable. And that’s why, again, it’s one game we played poorly, but excited, really excited to get back out there and play another championship opportunity.”
Dallas Cowboys Had Answers For New York Giants They Didn’t Use
The Giants took over at their own 28 with 5:21 left and ran out the clock. Dallas had some good answers for what New York showed, Schottenheimer said, and did not get the ball enough to use many of them.
“I think most teams have enough flexibility in their system that they can get to certain things. But at the end of the day, I do think that the Giants had all year to study, certainly us offensively, and they had some nice things,” Schottenheimer said. “And we actually had some really good answers for it. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to use a lot of them because we didn’t have the ball enough. So you’re always adjusting.”
“But, again, I think Daronte Jones, Dan Quinn, they’re excellent coaches. They’re going to have a good plan,” Schottenheimer added. “They’re going to have their plan of how they want to attack us, just like we have our plan of how we want to attack them. And then at the end of the day, it’s going to come down to execution.”
Schottenheimer did not expect Dallas to go three-and-out on its first drive. His call sheet carries a lot of plays for George Pickens and CeeDee Lamb.
“You never know how the game’s going to unfold. I didn’t anticipate us going three-and-out the first drive. But any time I get a ball to George and CeeDee, I’d like to do that. It’s a big sheet with a lot of their numbers on there,” Schottenheimer said. “It would be great if we could maybe push the game to five quarters and we could have a few more ops to get them the ball, but at the end of the day, you never know. You just got to adjust, and so that’s what we did. We adjusted in the second half, and like I said, I really, really, really would have loved to have seen if we would have got the ball back, what would have transpired.”
Lamb caught 5 passes for 44 yards and a touchdown on 8 targets. Pickens caught 3 of 6 targets for 28 yards. The Washington Commanders visit AT&T Stadium on Sunday, with kickoff at 3:25 p.m. CT on FOX.
