A key trade deadline acquisition benched by mistake? Cowboys coaches admit a baffling rotation oversight led to a player seeing zero snaps.
FRISCO - Soon enough, Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus will go before his bosses in an attempt to save his job.
"Performance reviews'' are common in the NFL, just as they probably are in your office.
But this one is going to be different.
Eberflus, the veteran coach in his first year back in Dallas, has proven to be a disastrous hire by owner Jerry Jones. (And make no mistake, this was Jerry's decision.)
Dallas is 7-8-1 entering Sunday’s season finale in New York and one of central reasons for that mediocrity is the Cowboys' NFL-worst defense.
All the numbers point to Eberflus losing his job, and Jones himself has said there is a "target'' on the coach's back and that a decision will be made "pronto.''
And now there is this: Last Thursday’s 30-23 win at the Washington Commanders was supposed to include the participation of linebacker Logan Wilson, who was healthy and available ...
But who played zero snaps for the entire game.
So even though he was touted as a likely starter after he was acquired from the Bengals at the NFL trade deadline, and even though he'd averaged 28 snaps per game since the move ...
The Cowboys out-and-out benched him?
Nope. Not exactly.
“We kind of messed (up) the rotation,'' admits head coach Brian Schottenheimer. "It shouldn't happen.''
Wait. What?
The Cowboys coaching staff "forgot'' to play Logan Wilson?
“We only had 21 snaps (on defense) in the first half,” Schottenheimer said in an attempt to explain. “We kind of messed (up) the rotation in the second half.
"It’s not the first time it has happened. It won’t be the last time. It happens with receivers. It happens with defensive linemen. It shouldn’t happen. But we take that as a coaching staff.”
Sorry, but I'm not especially familiar with the "commoness'' of this. A rotational player was forgotten about?
Said Schottenheimer: "We do keep track of (snap counts). Occasionally, you look at the numbers and they don’t make sense, and this one certainly didn’t make sense. We have to do better as a coaching staff with that.”
No doubt about that last statement.
This is a bizarre turn for Schottenheimer, for Eberflus and for Wilson, a 29-year-old six-yeart veteran who somehow remained quiet all day on the sideline while his uniform remained clean.
What happened to "communication,'' a hallmark of Schottenheimer's push for "culture''?
In the aftermath of the weird decision, even Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was confounded.
“I don’t have an explanation for you for why Wilson wasn’t in there,” Jones said. “We planned to have him in there. He needs to be in there. ... That’s why we got him.”
None of this speaks well of Wilson's future here. He signed a four-year, $36 million extension in the summer of 2023, so he's under contract through 2027.
But despite his $9 million APY salary, his guarantees are now gone. Cutting him this spring will leave Dallas with no dead money and with $2.7 million in cap room.
So Wilson is likely gone, too.
Wilson, via the Dallas News, remarked on the situation.
“It’s up to them to figure out how they want to use us,” Wilson said. “I just worry about trying to execute when I’m out there.”
That's a difficult challenge, though, when he's not actually out there.
“Everything is going to be looked at,” Schottenheimer said as he tried to spin the situation toward normalcy. "Again, we make mistakes, players make mistakes. You communicate. That’s where the accountability just gets stronger.”