FRISCO, Texas — To say Troy Aikman knows a thing or two about what a winning head coach looks like would be akin to saying the moon has a great view of the Earth. So when the Dallas Cowboys' legend and Hall of Fame quarterback was asked if Brian Schottenheimer is ready for what will be the biggest and most daunting job of his coaching career, Aikman was honest.
And, in that honesty, he made it clear this is a situation Schottenheimer, a first-time NFL head coach, will have to acclimate to quickly in order for success to arrive swiftly.
"I don't know if you ever are ready," Aikman said, speaking from an annual Children's Cancer Fund event in Dallas alongside co-chair Dak Prescott. "I hear it's one of those jobs that, until you get in that seat and really understand everything that goes into it, you're not quite prepared, but he's been coaching a long time; and he's obviously watched it with his dad.
"He's as prepared as anyone who's not yet been a head coach can be. I'm hopeful that he does a great job."
That job will, far and away, be scrutinized more heavily than that of other first-time head coaches, e.g., Ben Johnson for the Chicago Bears and Kellen Moore for the New Orleans Saints, and that simply comes with the weight of the Star.
After all, gravity isn't the same on every planet in the NFL's solar system.
That said, as Aikman went on to point out, the court of public opinion can and will change at the drop of a dime, in one direction or the other, once the win-loss record begins to fill up; and that's when time will reveal who made the best hire this cycle.
"It's one thing if you hire somebody that everyone's excited about, for instance, like they are in Chicago, but none of that matters now," Aikman explained. "Sure, over the next few months, as far as how people are talking about your team, but when the season rolls around Week 1 — whether it's Ben Johnson, Kellen Moore or Brian Schottenheimer — everybody's being judged on a level playing field, and it's all about winning.
"It doesn't matter who won the head coach [optics race], so we'll see. … They've got a lot of things to like, and hopefully [Dallas] can have a heck of a year."
Truer words have rarely been spoken, for there are plenty of instances of teams supposedly winning the offseason, or even winning the preseason, only to fall on their faces in the regular season or the postseason.
So if Schottenheimer and his redesigned staff can find and create ways to stack wins and to make a postseason push, the outcry of so many will eventually be no more than a pile of deleted social media posts and drafts.
But that work begins now — yesterday, even.
