Remembering Marty: Cowboys’ Brian Schottenheimer reflects on legacy of late dad on Father’s Day

Frisco, Texas – When people think of the word “inheritance” in the context of sports, most of them associate it with the championships and trophies.

Dallas’ cowboys are certainly not different: their five Super Bowl trophies are just after the front door of “The Star” in Frisco, Texas – their headquarters. We cannot cross the hall without spotting them just on the right side of the entrance.

However, the new coach Brian Schottenheimer feels differently. In his mind, the inheritance begins with people and the impact they have on others. His reasoning for this is because of his late father Marty Schottenheimer. Marty was coach of the NFL for 21 seasons with the Cleveland Browns (1984-1988), Kansas City Chiefs (1990-1998), Washington (2001) and San Diego Chargers (2002-2006). The elder Schottenheimer went 200-126-1 during his 21 seasons, good for the eighth victories as a coach in the history of the NFL. Of the seven people in front of him, five are at the temple of renown of professional football: Don Shula (328 victories), George Halas (318 victories), Tom Landry (250), Curly Lambeau (226) and Paul Brown (2013). The other two, the former six -time coach of the New England Patriots Super Bowl champion Bill Belichick (302) and the Triple Super Bowl champion, the Kansas City chiefs, the Super Bowl coach Andy Reid (273), will formerly be eligible.

Through the young Schottenheimer of 25 years of coach in the NFL as an assistant, including 14 as an offensive coordinator, he experienced a certain number of people around the league who come to him during the matches to talk about Marty. These conversations do not generally concern football, they are greater than the game and have an even more particular meaning for Schottenheimer on the day of Fathers.

“The inheritance is starting with people. To date, I go out on the field for a match and I will have two or three different people who come to me and say:” Excuse me, coach. Do you have a second? “And I know exactly where they are going.” They say: “Your father has changed my life.” And they are his former players.

Schottenheimer has always dreamed of being like his father and becoming a coach of the NFL, a trip that took him almost 30 years before the owner of the Cowboys Jerry Jones gave him his first job in the best job in 2025 at the age of 51. Despite a large part of the link with his father on football, if Schotenheimer could speak to him now, reflection on life was not facing football.

“I know he’s proud. I miss it. I would tell him that I used all the life lessons he taught me, not only on football but on life,” said Schottenheimer when his eyes were starting to water. “Being a good man, a good husband, a good father. I think I’m going well myself, but I know he’s proud. I miss it like crazy. I rely on some of his friends now, guys like Bill Cowher. The guys he trained with. The Father’s Day will be a special day. Obviously, I am a father of two incredible children.

The first story Brian would tell Marty since becoming the cowboys coach would come from his introductory press conference at the end of January. Schottenheimer thought that media availability would take place in the team’s press conference room which can contain about 50 people maximum. Instead, Dallas put it in place in the atrium of their team and much more than 100 people were in the crowds ranging from the media, employees of cowboys, family, friends and players. See the Dallas players present to support him puts him at ease, which his father would have been proud to hear.

“We are obviously an emotional family, and I was really nervous at the press conference. Big moment, you were waiting for your whole life,” said Schotenheimer. … “Jerry and Stephen [Jones] brought me down and I saw my family. But when I turned the corner, I saw the players, all the players there. He [Marty Schottenheimer] Would know the fact that all these players have shown that I do it in the right way. I do it via the connection. I do it by love and energy. It calmed me. It really did it. I was nervous and excited at the same time. When I saw all those players who awaited me at the corner of the street, it completely put me in peace. So it was cool. “”

The quarter-arre Dak Prescott was one of the players present that day, and the three-time Bowler’s pro claimed that he was at peace with Schottenheimer too, saying that their communication-among others, “excited him as hell” for the 2025 season.

“Communication with Schotty, with the quarters or the quarter hall. Just a lot of good things,” said Prescott on Thursday. “Many very good things that have me in a great place. I am in good health, excited like hell. … No [he doesn’t seem like a first-year coach]And I think that when you have been a assistant for 30 years, this is the reason why he does not seem like this. He does a hell of a job. “”

How paternity has changed Prescott

Prescott is new in paternity unlike his coach, who has a son at the university and his daughter who is about to go to university. He and his fiancée Sarah Jane had their first child together, his daughter, Margaret Jane (MJ), in February of last year, and they welcomed another daughter, Aurora Rayne, on May 22 of this year. Prescott was shaped by a number of events in his life, including the loss of his mother Peggy against colon cancer in 2013 and the loss of his brother, Jace, to commit suicide in 2020. However, being a father changed the quarter of Dallas in a way: making him better to feel the roses because it concerns the little things of life.

“I am blessed. I am fortunate to have the opportunity to raise two girls alongside my fiancée. To have a beautiful family, a healthy family, for me, it is simply a question of being grateful and not to take the time for granted when I am with them,” said Prescott. “But I have experienced things in my life that I don’t necessarily think that paternity shows me something new. I understand the love that my mother had for me, no, in a different way now that I have children. But I think that when you have a part of the adversity that I have, you are so grateful for everything you have given, good and bad and something between this paternity is not different.