This fits the narrative.
If you're not expecting your team to be that competitive in the next season, professional sports teams in general hire unproven guys desperate for a chance, and so, willing to take whatever they can get wherever they can get it.
Rare that it ever works out to be anything but a bridge to the next head coach.
I have to agree that there's never been a point in all my years going back to 1970 that I perceived less enthusiasm for a coaching hire.
Granted hiring Jimmy Johnson was similar. It truly was for those who don't remember. Until Jimmy, there had really never been any college coach who came into the league and became highly regarded.
But of course, that's just it. As bad as it seemed to hire an NFL head coach with only some college level success... Schottenheimer doesn't even have that. There is not one thing really that screams even just a "maybe" about this hire. There is a whisper that says "maybe" about this hire, and that's just among some diehard optimists.
I like the guy. I hope he turns out to be one of the NFL's great success stories... rags to riches... a story Horatio Alger would have written.
But that's just it... he is starting from rags... from the proverbial boostraps... there is little evidence to substantiate he's going to surprise and succeed. He's going to have to create his own momentum.
And yes... I'm stunned that Kellen Moore will not be the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. I was persuaded that all of this was just misdirection, and eventually the early assumption would prove true.
Stunned isn't even the right word, because stunned is what would have applied if Joneses had hired Saleh or Frazier... this is someone who has never seriously distinguished himself as a head coach candidate. Ever in 20+ years of being in the NFL.
Dumbfounded. That's the better word.