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• Todd ArcherSep 4, 2025, 06:00 AM ET

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  Todd Archer is an NFL reporter at ESPN and covers the Dallas Cowboys. Archer has covered the NFL since 1997 and Dallas since 2003. He joined ESPN in 2010.

FRISCO, Texas — Moments before Thursday’s kickoff between the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles, Brian Schottenheimer will place his right hand over his heart, close his eyes and bow his head.

He will talk to two people: God and his father, Marty.

“He’s my idol, the guy I looked up to from the time I was a little boy,” the Cowboys’ new head coach said.

He will ask his father for courage to lead his players. He will ask his father to be there with him and say, “I know you’re watching.” He will tell his father he hopes to make him proud.

“Just normal conversations that you would have if he was sitting here, like you and I are right now,” Schottenheimer said in an office overlooking the practice fields at The Star.

Just thinking about it 16 days before the season opener made him emotional. You can imagine what it will be like for him inside Lincoln Financial Field (8:20 p.m. ET, NBC).

It will be the first time in 6,808 days a Schottenheimer will be the head coach for a game in the NFL. The first since Jan. 14, 2007, to be exact.

“I’ve always wanted to make him proud,” Schottenheimer said. “I think that was always something when I got into the business, I knew that I had literally two things: It was my word, which I never will break for anybody because it’s too important, and my last name. That was something that he just always beat into my head like, ‘Hey, you know, you’re a Schottenheimer and what you say has to be truth and honor.’

“But, you know, sitting in this chair makes it a little bit different because I’m following truly in his footsteps. I mean I’ve been a coach for a long time, but if I was just a quality control coach right now, I’d still be trying to carry on his legacy.”

Brian and Marty Schottenheimer chatting before a game, when Brian was the New York Jets offensive coordinator. Al Pereira/Getty Images

MARTY SCHOTTENHEIMER, WHO was 77 when he passed away in 2021 after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2014, was an NFL head coach for 21 years. He won 200 regular-season games, eighth most all time. But he never made it to a Super Bowl.

By 2006, Brian was the offensive coordinator with the New York Jets, breaking away from his father, with whom he coached in Kansas City, Washington and San Diego.

Brian was 33 years old and viewed as one of the up-and-coming head coaching candidates. In 2007, he interviewed for the Miami Dolphins job. In 2009, with the New York Jets. In 2010, he declined a chance to interview with the Buffalo Bills.

In 2012, he interviewed for the Jacksonville Jaguars job.

He would not interview for another one until speaking with Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones in January.

Marty was 41 when he got his first head coaching job, taking over as the interim head coach of the Cleveland Browns in 1984.

In 1986 and ’87, the Browns suffered two of the most heartbreaking AFC Championship Game defeats to John Elway and the Denver Broncos. They are known as “The Drive” and “The Fumble.”

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In 1986, Brian was 13 when Elway drove the Broncos 98 yards for the game-tying touchdown before finishing off the Browns in overtime at Cleveland Stadium.

“Just devastating,” Brian remembered. “I remember after the game going down to the locker room, and the feeling, it was just like a funeral. And then when you get older and you get into the business, you’re like, ‘I get it.’ I mean the sacrifices that these young men make with their time, their body, their health, all those things. To commit to something — a dream, a vision, a goal — and to be so close and to have it come up short.

“The Drive wasn’t as bad as The Fumble. The Fumble was worse.”

Schottenheimer can recite everything about the 1987 AFC Championship Game at Mile High Stadium. The Browns trailed (28-10 at one point) but were driving for the tying touchdown in the fourth quarter when Earnest Byner lost the ball at the Broncos’ 3-yard line.

The silence in the locker room after the 38-33 loss stuck with Schottenheimer, but so did seeing Browns tackle Cody Risien pick up Byner after the play. That is the brotherhood he is trying to instill in his Cowboys.

“Without that, you have nothing,” Brian said. “You guys ask me all the time about the connection piece and stuff like that, these things that these young men try to do around the league, not just here, it’s different.

“I mean they commit to something, and they give it their all. Not for money. Not for fame or things like that. Yeah, that’s nice, but they do it because they love one another and those are the ones that stick with you.”

Marty Schottenheimer was the Cleveland Browns head coach from 1984, when he took over in an interim capacity, until 1988. George Gojkovich/Getty Images

BRIAN SCHOTTENHEIMER WAS at Qualcomm Stadium on Jan. 14, 2007, for what turned out to be his dad’s last game. A week earlier, Brian’s season as the Jets OC ended with a playoff loss to the Patriots.

Marty’s Chargers had the NFL’s best record at 14-2. They were the top seed in the AFC. They had 11 Pro Bowl players and five first-team All-Pro selections. Running back LaDainian Tomlinson, who finished with 2,323 scrimmage yards and 31 touchdowns, was named NFL MVP.

They were Super Bowl favorites.

With 8:35 left in the game, the Chargers had an 8-point lead on the New England Patriots and looked to be on their way to the AFC title game. With a little more than six minutes left, safety Marlon McCree intercepted Tom Brady, which should have helped seal the victory, but instead of going down, he ran with the ball and fumbled it back to the Patriots.

Brady delivered magic with the game-tying and game-winning drives, and the Chargers’ season ended when Nate Kaeding’s game-tying field goal attempt from 54 yards was off the mark.

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A month later, Marty Schottenheimer was the first coach in NFL history to be fired after a 14-win season.

He would coach the Virginia Destroyers of the United Football League in 2011, but his time on an NFL sideline was over.

The Lombardi Trophy would never be his.

“It impacted him. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t. You work your whole life, you win over 200 games,” Brian said. “And the Super Bowl was never going to be just for him. It was going to be for all the people that had worked and bled and sweat and tried to help him win one. He was such a selfless person that it wasn’t going to be for him. It was going to be for everybody else.”

During meetings with players and the media since becoming the Cowboys coach, Brian often mentions his father.

“The way we practice and the way I act at practice, my father is looking down from heaven going: ‘What are you doing? That’s not how you practice,'” Schottenheimer said. “But my father also coached a long time ago. And the type of athletes and type of young men that we are dealing with has changed.”

Most of the Cowboys players do not remember Marty as a coach. Cooper Beebe, who grew up in Kansas City, knows stories his father told him about when Marty coached the Chiefs. Jake Ferguson heard stories from his grandfather, former Wisconsin coach, Barry Alvarez.

“I think their coaching styles are pretty similar,” Ferguson said of Alvarez and Marty Schottenheimer. “I thought I knew how my grampa coached until he came back for that Rose Bowl [as interim coach in 2013]. I was in the locker room and I listened to him and was like, ‘OK, this is pretty awesome.'”

Dak Prescott heard Marty Schottenheimer stories from former Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy, who worked under Schottenheimer early in his career. One of Prescott’s marketing agents grew up in Cleveland, so he has shared some of the Browns’ stories, too.

“Hard-nosed ball coach that didn’t take any s—,” Prescott said. “Super excited for Schotty to get this opportunity now, making it real. I know how much of what his dad taught him, and how his dad was as a coach, he’s going to carry into this.”

Brian Schottenheimer begins his NFL head coaching career Thursday, when the Cowboys travel to Philadelphia to face the defending champion Eagles. Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

NOT LONG AFTER Schottenheimer was named Cowboys coach, a package arrived at The Star.

At first, he did not know who it was from, but after opening it, he saw two things: a “Martyball” shirt from his dad’s time with the Chiefs and a 3D-printed version of the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

On the back of the trophy were two words: The Gleam.

In 1986, NFL Films captured Schottenheimer’s pregame message to his Browns before a playoff game.

“There’s a gleam, men,” Schottenheimer told his players. “There’s a gleam. Let’s get the gleam.”

To Brian, the gleam represents the Super Bowl.

“He always envisioned holding up the trophy and, obviously, the beautiful Lombardi Trophy, the shine off the trophy, that’s the gleam,” Schottenheimer said. “It’s the gleam of you holding the trophy up in front of the whole team and all the different images that come back from players and coaches, everyone around the deal.

“He always talked about wanting to see the gleam, and the gleam was holding the trophy. So his message was, ‘Hey, imagine yourself holding that trophy. We’re this close.'”

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Schottenheimer’s sister, Kristen, sent him the package. He opened it just before he was about to make his first address to all of the staff in the Cowboys organization.

“Literally, I broke down,” Schottenheimer said. “Steve Shimko, our quarterbacks coach — it’s so funny — he goes, ‘Hey man, you doing good? Big meeting coming up.’ I’m like, ‘No! I’m not!’

Tears rolled down his face. Shimko left and told some other assistants that Schottenheimer might be late to the meeting.

“But I pulled it back together,” Schottenheimer said. “Had a good meeting. I had to man up and make it work.”

On Thursday, tears are likely to come again as he embarks on his first season as the coach of a storied franchise that has not won a Super Bowl since 1995. He has said when he wins a Super Bowl, his father will get a ring.

He once had the goal of being the youngest head coach in NFL history but had to wait years for his chance.

Now 51, it’s finally here. And his father, whom he called his best friend, will be with him.

“Obviously, I’ll be excited, I’ll be amped up. I’m sure I’ll be nervous, that’s part of the deal,” Schottenheimer said. “From the time I played, to coach, it doesn’t matter, there’s butterflies and there should be butterflies. And so I’m sure opening night, in front of the world, and having a chance to shut my eyes and talk to those two people will be pretty emotional.”

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