If Cowboys Don't Make Playoffs? Fire Schottenheimer - And Dak Prescott

FRISCO - Forget the Dallas Cowboys’ 30-year Super Bowl drought. Given the open invitation being extended to them within the NFC East, their 2026 mantra is now:

Division Or Bust.

Given their decided advantage with a healthy Dak Prescott at quarterback, it will be an unpardonable sin if the Cowboys don’t win this year’s NFC East. Head coach Brian Schottenheimer should be fired, and whatever the current “plan” is should be scrapped. ...

And yes, that includes a continuing trust in Dak.

Good news: Through five games, the Cowboys are only one game back in the win column.

Bad news: Their division - the NFC Least - is so pathetic that if this was the Premier Soccer League in England the entire quartet of teams would be relegated to the second tier.

As we head into Week 7, two of the teams have already lost their starting quarterbacks to season-ending injuries and another’s suffered a serious injury that has limited him to only 50% of the snaps. Gone for the season are Jaxson Dart of the New York Giants and Jalen Hurts of the Philadelphia Eagles, while the Washington Commanders’ Jayden Daniels is wearing a bulky brace after enduring a dislocated elbow in Week 2. Worse for Washington, leading receiver Terry McLaurin is gone for the season after suffering a torn patellar tendon in Monday night’s loss at the San Francisco 49ers.

Bottom line: Dak has played every snap, and the Cowboys should be ashamed that they are only 2-4 instead of mopping up its dunce-cap division.

The division’s quarterbacks: the Cowboys’ 4-time Pro Bowler Prescott, Washington’s 1-armed Daniels, a platoon of 12-year journeyman Jameis Winston/unproved J.J. McCarthy for the Giants, and for the Eagles’ sans Hurts it is someone named Tanner McKee.

The Eagles - who host the Cowboys Monday night - were so desperate even before Hurts’ injury that they recently poached Joe Milton off of Dallas’ practice squad.

Grade out poorly against the Packers and QB Jordan Love (as discussed in the above Mike Fisher video)? That's one thing.

Dak grading out poorly against this bunch of divisional QBs?

Unacceptable.

Welcome to the NFC Least … The Three Four Stooges.

The division formerly known as the NFC East - long heralded as the NFL’s best division - once boasted immortal coaches such as the Cowboys’ Tom Landry, the New York Giants’ Bill Parcells and the Washington Commanders’ Redskins’ Joe Gibbs. It has the most Super Bowl appearances (22) and wins (14).

But this feels like a replay of 2020, when the Washington Redskins Commanders Football Team sheepishly won the division with a record of 7-9.

Combined, the NFC Least is 8-14-1 and all four teams have a negative point differential. Together they are minus-83. How gruesome is that? The NFC North is plus+94.

Few divisions in the history of the NFL have begged this hard to be won. The Cowboys are relatively healthy, but they’ve been horrendous.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is paying Prescott an NFL-record $60 million a season to be one of the best quarterbacks in the entire NFL. He’d better outplay the likes of Daniels, Winston and McKee … 

Or else the Cowboys should be just about done with this coach and with this quarterback.