Shannon Sharpe comes up in the frame here, but the hard news belongs to Brian Schottenheimer and the Cowboys. After Sunday night’s 28-20 loss to the Giants, Schottenheimer said, "As a football team, we were pretty poor," and tried to keep the reaction from running away from one game.
28-20 was the final score in Week 1, and Schottenheimer’s own line sharpened the judgment. "This is a humbling business and we got humbled tonight. That’s what I told the guys. We lost mile one of a 17-mile marathon, and we have to be better, and we will be better."
Week 1 on Sunday night
Week 1 gave the Cowboys an opener that their head coach described in plain terms. "This one feels pretty bad just because at the end of the day, we just didn’t perform the way we’re capable of playing," Schottenheimer said, adding, "We didn’t play defense the way we’re capable of playing."
Sunday night also exposed a split inside the same message: the performance fell short, but the response is supposed to stay controlled. Schottenheimer said, "We’re not going to panic," and added, "This is a long season, and we know we’re not going to go undefeated."
Mile one, 17-mile marathon
17-mile marathon was Schottenheimer’s way of placing the loss in a larger season instead of turning it into a verdict. He paired that with a second criticism, saying, "We didn’t play offense in the first half the way we’re capable of playing," which points to a start that left the Cowboys chasing from the first quarter of the season.
Whether Schottenheimer’s critique changes how the Cowboys play next is the part that matters now. He has already set the standard in public: the opener was below it, the tone is blunt, and the next step is not a speech about disaster but cleaner football in the next game.
