First-year Dallas Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer spent his first Father’s Day without his late father since taking the new job this year.
Schottenheimer has much to live up to besides coaching America’s Team. His father, Marty, was an NFL coaching legend for many years in the 1980s through the early 2000s, but the new Cowboys head coach believes his father would already be happy with this new opportunity after nearly three decades as an assistant.
“I know he’s proud,” Schottenheimer told reporters on June 12. “I miss him. I would tell him that I used all the life lessons that he taught me, not just about football, but about life and being a good man and a good husband and a good father, and that I think I’m doing OK for myself. But I know he’s proud; I miss him like crazy.”
Marty Schottenheimer coached in the NFL from 1975 to 2006, which included a decade as an assistant before his first head coaching job in 1984. Schottenheimer coached the Cleveland Browns, Kansas City Chiefs, then-Washington Redskins, and then-San Diego Chargers over two decades before retirement.
Brian Schottenheimer served as an assistant with the Chiefs in 1998 under his father. The two worked together in 2001 with the Redskins and then 2002 to 2005 with the Chargers.
Since, Brian Schottenheimer has moved around the league amid various roles before his time with the Cowboys. Dallas hired him as a coaching analyst in 2022 and then offensive coordinator from 2023 to 2024.
Brian Schottenheimer: ‘It Starts With People’
GettyMarty Schottenheimer won 200 games as an NFL head coach between 1984 and 2006.
Marty Schottenheimer had a 200-126-1 regular season record in the NFL plus a 5-13 playoff record. He coached the likes of Joe Montana, Bernie Kosar, Drew Brees, and Philip Rivers along the way.
“Legacy to me, you know I think it starts with people,” Brian Schottenheimer said. “To this day I go out on the field for a game, and I will have two or three different individuals come up to me and say, ‘Excuse me, Coach, you have a second?’ And I know exactly where they’re going, and I of course drop what I’m doing because I want to hear it.”
“And they say, ‘Your father changed my life,’ and it’s former players. And so, he never won a Super Bowl, he won over 200 games in the NFL, but I would put his legacy up against anybody who’s ever coached in the National Football League,” Schottenheimer added.
Marty Schottenheimer died at age 77 in 2021 after living with dementia.
Brian Schottenheimer Turns to Father’s Coaching Tree
Part of NFL coaching legacies is who worked under a coach and who those assistants became afterward. Marty Schottenheimer developed numerous NFL head coaches during his career: Art Shell, Bill Cowher, Bruce Arians, Herm Edwards, Mike McCarthy, and Tony Dungy.
Brian Schottenheimer acknowledged that he learned a lot from his father and continues to from others who coached with the late NFL coach. That included working on McCarthy for three seasons in Dallas before the Cowboys and McCarthy parted ways this offseason.
“I actually lean on some of his friends now, you know guys like Bill Cowher that he coached with,” Brian Schottenheimer said.
Now, Schottenheimer gets to mold his own legacy with his first season at the helm around the corner.
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