Every week, we gather to discuss the latest news about the Dallas Cowboys and seek our writer’s perspective on each headline. Welcome back to the roundtable. This week we have Sean Martin and David Howman.
With the season finally over let’s have grades for this team. What grade would you give the Cowboy’s offense this season and who were the standout players, and biggest surprise?
Mike: Let’s give the offense a B+. The ceiling showed up in flashes, but the floor was too low, and toward the end of the season the floor was too often. Early-down inconsistency, red-zone stalls, and breakdowns in obvious pass situations made the unit feel week-to-week instead of identity-to-identity. The standout is easy here, it’s Dak Prescott. He was the stabilizer, and the fact he finished third among this year’s leading passers in yards tells you how much of the offense run through him this season.
The biggest surprise is Malik Davis giving them functional snaps when the room was thin, but that’s also the point, it was a pleasant patch, not a long-term solution.
Howman: A- for the offense. I was really impressed with the job Schotty did calling plays, and Klayton Adams was a huge addition for the run game. Dak Prescott had the best year of his career in my opinion, and he’d be the frontrunner for the MVP if this team had made the playoffs. Javonte Williams was a pleasant surprise, finally capitalizing on the potential he flashed as a rookie in Denver. The only thing that kept this offense from being an A+ for me was the issues they had with slow starts and occasionally going quiet in the second half. Consistency should be the goal for 2026.
Sean: I’ll go with an A for the offense. Call the reasoning for being two marks away from perfect whatever you want, but one of them certainly has to be a little fatigue singing the praises of a high-powered Cowboys offense that didn’t even reach the playoffs. There were times they went into a shell, had too many penalties, and couldn’t finish in the red zone to raise their grade as well. The direction under Schottenheimer is an overall positive though, as is the depth on this side of the ball to remain a strength, so the expectation for a higher grade plus better results on defense will be there in 2026.
Let’s grade the defense. What grade would you give the defense and any standout players, and biggest surprise?
Mike: It’s an F-minus-minus, and there’s really no polite way around it. This unit gave up a franchise-record 511 points, the first time in team history the Cowboys has ever allowed more then 500 points in a season, and it showed up weekly in busted coverages, third-down hemorrhaging, and long, demoralizing drives.
The standout was Jadeveon Clowney, who actually produced real edge disruption in the middle of the mess. The biggest surprise wasn’t one player, it was the scale of the collapse. A defense that finished at or near the bottom across major categories made Matt Eberflus’ firing feel inevitable.
Howman: D- only because the loss of Micah Parsons can’t be understated. Still, everything else was really bad. Jadeveon Clowney and James Houston were both better than expected, and I really like the defensive tackle room after the Quinnen Williams trade. Aside from that, everything else is a question mark. I think the front office needs to completely start over in the secondary, with the exception of Shavon Revel and perhaps Caelen Carson.
Sean: This is an F for me. In all my years of watching NFL football I’ve never seen a defense you could put as little faith in before in my entire life. 17 games worth of every single time an opposing offense stepped on the field, you were expecting to give up a touchdown, and most of the time they did.
What grade would you give the special teams from field goal unit, punting, returns, and kick coverage?
Mike: I’d give the special teams a C-grade overall. The field goal unit has been the clear strength, Brandon Aubrey is a weekly points-and-field-position cheat code, and that reliability has mattered in close games this season. Punting has been serviceable rather than a weapon, and the return game has flashed but hasn’t consistently flipped the field the way you’d like. Kick coverage has mostly held together, but the handful of missed field goals, penalties on a few KaVontae Turpin returns and on coverage showed up at bad times that keeps the grade from pushing into the B-grade range.
Howman: F. Too harsh? I don’t think so. I’ve been railing on the special teams unit all year long. They struggle to block for Turpin on returns, they give up big returns the other way, and they drew so many penalties. Even their two best players regressed, with Turpin costing them yards with his befuddling fake fair catches while Aubrey hit a rash of misses down the stretch.
Sean: I’ll go with a C- I guess. Howman is right, as usual, about a lot of the special teams evaluation, but the overall fact that Brandon Aubrey is still a serious weapon can’t be ignored and not considered in the grade. The Cowboys got bullied in the battle of field position on a near weekly basis, which is scary to think about when considering what the offense could have done with even a few more short fields. The defense will have the biggest say in flipping the field moving forward, but the issues with Turpin in the return game must be addressed as well.
Finally, how would you grade the coaching this season from Brian Schottenheimer to Matt Eberflus?
Mike: Overall, the Cowboys’ coaching staff get a grade of C-. Brian Schottenheimer deserves real credit for steering the ship through a messy year off the field after losing Micah Parsons before Week 1, navigating the Trevon Diggs situation, and handling the tragic Marshawn Kneeland news with the kind of composure and leadership you hope for from a head coach. But on Sundays, the results never matched the resilience. The week-to-week identity wobbled, situational football was inconsistent, and the margin for error stayed thin.
Matt Eberflus’ side pulls the overall grade down, way way down. Whatever the intent, the defense didn’t do really, anything. Too many explosives plays allowed, too many breakdowns in coverage, and too many games where adjustments never arrived at all. In a league where coaching is supposed to raise the floor, Dallas too often looked unprepared for what offenses were trying to do. Credit for leadership through adversity, but the on-field product didn’t earn more than a C-range grade.
Howman: I’ll give it a C, firmly in the middle. Schotty and the entire offense get A’s from me. Eberflus is gone, and rightfully so. I think the Cowboys need a new special teams coordinator too.
Sean: The coaching staff gets a B from me. There were new ideas that actually made it into the gameplans, personnel specific gameplans to adapt to opponents on a weekly basis, a never-say-die attitude from the team until nearly the bitter end, and positional coaches like Aaron Whitecotton who elevated themselves in just year one. It’s hard to know how much to include Eberflus in this grade, obviously doing so could bring it down unfairly, and feels like harping on something that’s already been rightfully addressed. It can’t be forgotten how Schotty navigated the team through the Marshawn Kneeland situation. The B grade at the end of year one with room to get into the As is a good place to be.