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Head coach Brian Schottenheimer of the Dallas Cowboys hired Robert Muschamp to join the staff.
The Dallas Cowboys certainly turned some heads when they opted to go in a very different direction when searching for their next defensive coordinator. Rather than bringing in a recently fired head coach who was looking to rebuild his reputation–that had been the Cowboys’ MO for years–the Cowboys instead opted for a young up-and-comer, plucking 34-year-old Eagles defensive backs coach Christian Parker from the Eagles to replace Matt Eberflus as the DC.
Well, the Cowboys are at it again. This weekend, it was reported that Dallas has hired 29-year-old Chargers assistant coach Robert Muschamp, the nephew of former collegiate head coach Will Muschamp, who left a post as the defensive coordinator at Georgia to take the same job at Texas.
Robert Muschamp had been the defensive quality control coach for L.A.
As Matt Zenitz of CBS Sports wrote on Twitter/X: “The #Cowboys are hiring #Chargers defensive quality control coach Robert Muschamp, sources tell @CBSSports. Before the Chargers, worked at the college level at Georgia and Tennessee.”
And if you want a sense of whether Muschamp was well-liked with the Chargers, consider the reaction of star safety Tony Jefferson, an 11-year veteran who is five years older than Muschamp. Jefferson wrote on Twitter/X: “Nooooooo.”
Robert Muschamp Adds to Cowboys’ Georgia Connections
It is not yet clear what role Muschamp will have on Dallas’s defense, but it is another young coach joining a team whose staff has traditionally been older. It’s also another coach with ties to the University of Georgia, where head coach Brian Schottenheimer was the offensive coordinator in 2015.
Last week, the Cowboys also added the Bulldogs’ former outside linebackers coach Chidera Uzo-Diribe to the staff, and he will take over the same role in Dallas.
As the Cowboys’ website noted of Uzo-Diribe, “The 33-year-old former defensive lineman is a fast-riser in the coaching ranks, by any metric, having already coached at Kansas and TCU, for a short spell, before helping to lead the Bulldogs to a national championship in 2022, by all but obliterating TCU, ironically. The list of names that have excelled at Georgia under Uzo-Diribe is long and recognizable, e.g., 2025 first-round pick (11th-overall) Mykel Williams, amongst others.”
Emmitt Smith: ‘Be Quiet and Let Things Happen’
The Cowboys have earned praise for changing their ways in terms of hiring practices this winter, and that’s been well-deserved. But hiring a staff is only the beginning–the Cowboys need to rebuild the team’s personnel on the defensive side, top to bottom.
Franchise legend Emmitt Smith, who has not been afraid to criticize the team, said he would like to see the Cowboys continue to proceed and quietly have a productive offseason. Quiet, though, is not always easy in Dallas.
“I want to see how we manage the next six months,” Smith said on ESPN’s “First Take.” “The best way to describe the Cowboys this year, I would say, if we a boring offseason. A boring offseason. And that means we selected the right people and letting everybody else talk but somebody says, ‘I ain’t saying nothing.’
“Because 30 years of saying something has not worked. Sometimes you just need to be quiet and let thing happen the way they need to happen.”
Sean Deveney is a veteran sports reporter covering the NBA, NFL and MLB for Heavy.com. He has written for Heavy since 2019 and has more than two decades of experience covering the NBA, including 17 years as the lead NBA reporter for the Sporting News. Deveney is the author of 7 nonfiction books, including “Fun City,” “Before Wrigley became Wrigley,” and “Facing Michael Jordan.” More about Sean Deveney
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