#OTANSWERS: COWBOYS QBS PART 1

If you’ve been watching or listening to our podcast, then you’ve likely heard Newbear say the same thing a couple of different ways:

In 20 years as an OC or relative equivalent, Brian Schottenheimer has had to work through some things.

Chad Pennington’s chicken wing.

Brett Favre’s biceps (that didn’t slow down his thumbs).

The Mark Sanchez Experience.

And if you don’t know, those three unique elements existed for Schotty in 2007, 2008, and 2009—back-to-back-to-back—and that was just with the New York Jets starting quarterbacks.

Schottenheimer was, perhaps mercifully, halfway across the country by the time Sanchez rammed his career into the internet Hall of Shame.

Far from the butt of any joke, the framing of his failures in St. Louis almost always focuses on Sam Bradford’s knee—and that devasting injury came in 2013. After earning AP OROY in a promising 2010 debut, the Rams opened 2011 0-6 and Bradford was ultimately credited with a 1-9 sophomore slump (in a 2-14 campaign) where any potential late-season development was further dumped by a severe ankle sprain. Under Schotty’s tutelage, Bradford bounced back with a 2012 that mirrored and even improved upon 2010 in some ways before tearing his ACL seven weeks into 2013. Bradford going down with the same injury in the 2014 preseason spelled doom A-U-S-T-I-N D-A-V-I-S (Cc: Shaun Hill). The Rams “best QB” in 2014 may have actually been All-Pro punter Johnny Hekker, who went 2-2 for 37 yards and a pair of first downs.  

Schottenheimer’s Saturday detour to Georgia saw him witness one of the most gruesome injuries of all-time with Nick Chubb in 2015—a video we won’t link to because simply typing dislocated knee with three torn ligaments and cartilage damage is enough to make the stomach churn. 

2016 saw Andrew Luck set then-career highs in completion percentage and QBR with Schotty as his QB coach, despite conflicting reports about the shoulder injury Luck suffered while snowboarding parallel to the ever-present AC joint and lingering labrum problems that forced him to miss the 2017 season (a 4-12 effort by his Colts helmed by Jacoby Brissett with Scott Tolzien’s final cameo). You may recall the emotional injury-pain-rehab impromptu press conference where Luck shocked the league by retiring after an age-29 2018 that saw him win Comeback Player of the Year.

Seattle was a gut punch from a different angle as a dynasty that just missed coming to fruition was ultimately undone by a culture shift. Beast Quakes and the Legion of Boom gave way to letting Russ cook, and while Wilson suited up for every game, a franchise that pummeled itself from the inside simply was never the same.

There is little that needs to be added to the Urban Meyer dumpster fire that was the 2021 Jacksonville Jaguars, except maybe that with Schotty serving as passing game coordinator (and de facto OC for the final four weeks), Trevor Lawrence started every game as a rookie and tied for league lead in interceptions (17) against just 12 touchdowns. Salt in the wound: Lawrence tied with Matthew Stafford, who also threw for 41 scores while completing 45 more passes for 1,245 more yards (on the same number of attempts) and picked up a Super Bowl ring.

(Dallas Morning News/Tom Fox)

There is also little that needs to be argued about how awesome Dak Prescott played in the 2023 regular season piloting the league’s highest-scoring offense. 410 completions, 36 touchdowns, and a 92-yard scoring strike all sat atop the league. Dak’s 105.9 rating and 69.5 completion percentage were new career highs while his 1.5 interception percentage tied the lowest since his rookie season (even more remarkable because it was more than twice as good as 2022’s 3.8 when Dak tied for the league lead by throwing 15 picks in just 12 games). The Pro Bowl was a given, and this side-by-side of coming in AP2 and MVP2 sure is interesting upon further review. Unless, of course, you’re still as embarrassed as the team should be by how the Wild Card went.

2024 fell apart on a play where Dak wasn’t even touched. Here’s a unique look at the injury. 

When Schotty was asked today if Will Grier (a 2019 3rd Rounder in Carolina) is in the developmental phase of a quarterback’s career—trailing Joe Milton (a 2024 6th Round selection by New England) after Dak on the depth chart, the pair of backups having thrown 81 passes across 3 regular season games between them—the answer was clear.

“The minute these quarterbacks think that they figured it all out, that’s probably when it’s time for them to think about doing something different,” Schottenheimer said.

In #OTANSWERS: COWBOYS QBS PART II, we’ll dig into how the injury history of Schotty’s star signal callers prepares him to manage Dak’s recovery from hamstring surgery and have Milton and Grier ready to be more than just the next man up because the player in front of them went down.