EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ – With a 34-17 loss to the New York Giants on Sunday, the Cowboys' 2025 season ends with a 7-9-1 record in the first year of the Brian Schottenheimer era.
Starting tomorrow, the Cowboys will begin their after-season review process, including after action reports and other types of self-evaluations. At the forefront of that will be an review of the defense, which has been one of the worst in the NFL this season and allowed 380 yards of total offense to New York, along with their ninth game allowing 30 or more points.
That's generated a lot of chatter about defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus' future, but Cowboys owner/GM Jerry Jones said pregame that all the blame for Dallas' defensive shortcomings shouldn't fall on his shoulders.
"Don't blame this all on [Matt Eberflus]," Jones said. "This took five or six years to get here. This is a product of several years of combinations of philosophies. A lot of people in that sense, and you can broaden who has influenced where we are the most. But I can make a case for you that we haven't had satisfactory defense for five or six years."
Eberflus is the third defensive coordinator the Cowboys have had in as many years. When it comes to the root of why he believes Dallas' defense hasn't been satisfactory in his eyes for the last few seasons, Jones said it had to do with both the team's choices of coordinators and scheme.
"I don't think you can really address one without the other in our case," Jones said. "But I think you can look back and look at decisions we made to the defense three years ago, five years ago, and look at… Why did we make some of the decisions we made on the coaches at that time? What did we expect relative to what we're doing with our personnel?"
"So that's why that is just inaccurate to put this on an evaluation of Eberflus. It really is… I don't want it to sound like it's as simple as evaluating Eberflus. It's broader, much broader than that."
Does that mean Eberflus could be back as the defensive coordinator in 2026?
"I'm not saying anything along those lines," Jones said. "But I don't want to not answer you and sound like one way or the other. I'm just saying that we can really get down to business as it should be and really start first thing in the morning."
The last coordinator that the Cowboys had for more than one season was Dan Quinn, who had the Cowboys as the 12th and fifth best defenses in yards allowed per game in his final two seasons as the defensive coordinator before leaving to become the head coach of the Washington Commanders. Those defenses were significantly better than the 2025 unit, but Jones pointed towards their play in the postseason being an issue.
"We were porous when we had to buckle up and stop the run," Jones said. "Again, Dan did a great job. We really wanted to keep Dan. But the point is that what we're a product of, if you go through why is it that you've had that much turnover during that period of time, and then you offset that with the results during that time, and so that's why I'm saying, you can't blame where we are on defense, just like you can't blame the personnel on Flus, he wasn't within miles of this place when a lot of that personnel that we have this year on the field."
"And he wasn't within miles of this place when some of the principles that we use relative to not only personnel, but to scheme or how personnel adapts or how personnel compliments what we're trying to do as a scheme. So this should take a complete, timewise, long-term look at how we've been approaching defense. "
As for how long that look could take, Jones wasn't sure.
"I don't know, probably be dictated more by our time constraints than how long we out to be studying to look at it," Jones said. "But we can do this, it's very much in keeping, it'll blend in with how we're evaluating for the draft."
Does that evaluation of themselves defensively extend by looking at other teams around the league and seeing which dominoes fall?
"You can, but that's not as much that we can do a better job of defining and dictating what we want to be defensively," Jones said. "We can do that. And that's what I'm going to lead us into."
Jones will also lead the Cowboys into what could be one of the more important offseasons in recent history, and one he believes can have a massive impact.
"I think we can do some things in this offseason that are stacking up relative to our players, our personnel, availability, that type of thing. I think we can do some things to maybe make as dramatic a difference as we have could in a long time." Jones said.
