As the Dallas Cowboys enter their 66th season in 2025, they’ll welcome a new head coach for just the 10th time in franchise history.
Offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer was promoted from offensive coordinator to head coach on Friday, replacing Mike McCarthy after five seasons. Schottenheimer was elevated despite never serving as a head coach previously and not calling plays for the Cowboys in his three years as an assistant.
Owner Jerry Jones’ track record of picking head coaches has been mixed. Seven have winning records and two won Super Bowls, but the latter two are also the only Cowboys coaches to reach a conference championship game. Dallas’ title-game drought is now at 29 seasons, the longest in the NFC.
Will Schottenheimer get America’s Team over the hump? That remains to be seen. For now, let’s rank the nine coaches in Cowboys history.
9. Dave Campo (2000-02)
Record: 15-33
Campo oversaw one of the few bad eras that the Cowboys have had in their long, storied history. The club had been on a downward trajectory before Campo took over, but bottomed out in Campo’s first season. Troy Aikman was sidelined for multiple games with concussions, while standout wide receiver Joey Galloway suffered a season-ending knee injury in Week 1.
Dallas finished with a 5-11 record, its worst in more than a decade. Aikman then retired before the 2001 season, and Dallas again went 5-11.
Dave Campo is the only head coach in Cowboys history to have a losing record (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
Those struggles continued into Campo’s third season, when the Cowboys lost their 2002 season opener to the Houston Texans … who were playing their first game as a franchise.
Emmitt Smith set the NFL rushing record later that year in what would be his final season with the Cowboys, who lost their final four games to register their third straight 5-11 campaign. Campo was fired soon after, finishing as the only coach in Cowboys history to have a losing record and never post a winning season or reach the playoffs.
8. Chan Gailey (1998-99)
Record: 18-14
Gailey preceded Campo on the Cowboys’ downswing in the late 1990s. Though he coached the team to the postseason, that was all he was able to accomplish, losing in the first round both times.
In some regard, Gailey briefly revived the Cowboys following their Super Bowl seasons earlier in the decade. He led them to a 10-6 season and a division title in his first year on the job in 1998, which was a four-win improvement from the season prior.
But Gailey was part of an off-field decision that wound up haunting the Cowboys for years. He advised the team not to take Randy Moss with its first-round pick in the 1998 draft. Dallas instead selected defensive end Greg Ellis, who enjoyed a solid career with the Cowboys. Moss, of course, went on to become one of the greatest receivers of all time. Adding insult to injury, Moss caught three touchdowns against the Cowboys on Thanksgiving in his rookie season.
7. Jason Garrett (2010-19)
Record: 85-67
Garrett’s tenure as Dallas’ head coach technically started in 2010, when he became the interim coach upon Wade Phillips’ midseason ouster. After the Cowboys went 5-3 in the second half of the season, the former Cowboys backup quarterback had the interim tag removed ahead of the 2011 season.
What followed was three straight 8-8 campaigns, with Dallas losing a win-or-go-home game in Week 17 of each season.
Jason Garrett was the first former Cowboys player to become the team’s head coach. (Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)
The Cowboys finally made the postseason under Garrett in 2014, going 12-4 to win the division. They then won their first playoff game in five years, but their playoff run ended in controversy. Dallas fell to the Green Bay Packers in the divisional round when a long pass to Dez Bryant was ruled incomplete after a review late in the fourth quarter.
That season was enough to earn Garrett an extension, however. His best year came in 2016, with rookie duo Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott sparking the Cowboys to a 13-3 record and the top seed in the NFC. Garrett won Coach of the Year, only for Dallas to suffer another devastating postseason defeat at the hands of Green Bay. After rallying from an 18-point deficit, the Cowboys lost on a field goal at the buzzer.
Garrett won another division title and a playoff game two years later, but it was sandwiched between two seasons in which the Cowboys missed the playoffs. Dallas had just one losing season in nine years under Garrett, who was dismissed after going 8-8 again in 2019.
6. Wade Phillips (2007-10)
Record: 34-22
Phillips helped the Cowboys achieve their first (albeit, little) playoff success since the end of their dynasty days in the 1990s. It came after another painful playoff loss, though. In Phillips’ first season as head coach, the Cowboys had a strong regular season. They went 13-3 and earned the No. 1 seed in the NFC before the New York Giants upset the Cowboys in the divisional round in 2007. A year later, Dallas missed the postseason after dropping its regular-season finale to the Philadelphia Eagles.
The Cowboys returned to the playoffs in 2009, winning the NFC East in the final week of the regular season before thrashing the Eagles for a second straight week to pick up their first playoff win in 13 seasons. The Minnesota Vikings, however, gave the Cowboys a similar beatdown a week later.
Phillips never rebounded from that loss. Dallas opened the 2010 season 1-7, prompting Jones to fire him and ending a 3.5-year tenure that showed plenty of promise, but never lived up to it.
5. Mike McCarthy (2020-24)
Record: 49-35
The recently departed McCarthy arguably brought the most stability to the Cowboys in three decades, giving Dallas a pretty high floor when Dak Prescott was healthy. After a 6-10 season in which Prescott was sidelined with a compound fracture in his ankle, McCarthy coached the Cowboys to three straight 12-5 campaigns.
But McCarthy ran into the same problem that every Cowboys coach since the middle of the 1990s has faced: winning in the postseason. In the 2021 season, the Cowboys called a quarterback draw that ran out the final seconds in their 23-17 loss to the San Francisco 49ers in the opening round of the playoffs. A year later, they beat Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on the road, but they narrowly fell to the 49ers again in the divisional round.
The 2023 season might have been the Cowboys’ best chance to win a Super Bowl since the ‘90s. Prescott finished second in MVP voting after McCarthy took over offensive playcalling duties, and Dallas’ defense played at a high level to win the NFC East.
But in their postseason opener, the Cowboys fell into a huge early hole versus the Packers and were decisively defeated. Dallas is the only No. 2 seed to lose to a No. 7 seed since the playoffs were expanded in the 2020 season.
Like Phillips 14 years prior, McCarthy wasn’t able to bounce back from that defeat. The Cowboys made him a lame-duck head coach in 2024, and they got off to a slow start before Prescott suffered another midseason injury that knocked him out for the year. Following a 7-10 campaign, the Cowboys opted not to give McCarthy a new contract.
4. Bill Parcells (2003-06)
Record: 34-30
Affectionately known as the Big Tuna, Parcells made his reputation on turning struggling franchises into winners. He didn’t achieve quite the same level of success in Dallas as he did at previous stops, but he did help reset the standard for a team that had devolved into a last-place outfit.
Parcells initially made the Cowboys competitive by bringing in a slew of players he’d coached previously (e.g. Vinny Testaverde, Keyshawn Johnson, Drew Bledsoe, Terry Glenn, Aaron Glenn). Drafting the likes of Hall of Famer DeMarcus Ware and Jason Witten and signing Tony Romo as an undrafted free agent ultimately brought sustained success to the Cowboys.
Bill Parcells helped turn the Cowboys back into a playoff team after a few losing seasons. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
In his final season with the team, Parcells had Romo take over for Bledsoe. The QB change sparked a run to the postseason, where Romo infamously botched a snap in the Cowboys’ 21-20 wild-card loss to the Seattle Seahawks.
That marked Parcells’ last game ever as a head coach. Even though he never won a playoff game with the Cowboys, he left the franchise much better than he found it.
3. Barry Switzer (1994-97)
Record: 40-24
Switzer was hired to provide a steady hand for the Cowboys after Jimmy Johnson’s sudden resignation in the 1994 offseason. He did that, for a couple of seasons at least.
Dallas wasn’t able to complete the three-peat in Switzer’s first season as head coach, losing to San Francisco in a battle of titans in the 1994 NFC Championship Game. A year later, though, Switzer led the Cowboys back to a Super Bowl title. They had a dominant 12-4 season before winning each of their playoff games decisively to capture their third Super Bowl title in four seasons.
Barry Switzer became the second head coach to ever win a national championship and a Super Bowl title when he led the Cowboys to a victory in Super Bowl XXX. (Photo by Al Tielemans /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
But Switzer’s time in Dallas began to crumble in 1996. Some of Dallas’ top stars either missed time due to suspension or injury or had their worst production over the course of their careers that year. The Cowboys still made the playoffs at 10-6 and even won a playoff game, but their upset loss at the hands of the second-year Carolina Panthers marked the beginning of the end for Switzer in Dallas. Switzer notably feuded with Aikman during the 1997 season and the team never fully recovered from its playoff loss a year prior, going 6-10 that year.
While Switzer’s time in Dallas was brief and ended poorly, he still delivered the team a title.
2. Jimmy Johnson (1989-93)
Record: 44-36
When Jerry Jones bought the Cowboys in 1989, he tabbed Johnson as the coach to replace a franchise legend. Adding to the pressure, Johnson said he’d have the Cowboys winning the Super Bowl in five years. Instead, he did it in four.
Amid a miserable 1-15 debut season in 1989, Johnson brilliantly flipped star running back Herschel Walker for numerous assets that would build Dallas’ dynasty. Johnson led the Cowboys to 11 victories and a playoff win in his third season before guiding the franchise to back-to-back Super Bowls. That matched the number of titles won by his Hall of Fame predecessor and made Johnson the first head coach to ever win a national title and Super Bowl.
Johnson’s time in Dallas came to an abrupt end immediately following the second Super Bowl as he and Jones could no longer co-exist, but the foundation Johnson helped build kept the Cowboys in title contention for the next few years. The two finally settled their differences decades later, with Johnson being inducted into the Cowboys’ Ring of Honor in 2023.
Jimmy Johnson quickly lifted the Cowboys from being one of the league’s bottom teams to one of the best stretches of football in the NFL’s history. (Photo by Focus on Sport/Getty Images)
1. Tom Landry (1960-88)
Record: 250-162-6
Landry and his iconic fedora patrolled the Cowboys’ sideline for the first 29 years of their existence, leading the franchise to a remarkable stretch of sustained consistency while winning titles.
The Cowboys became known as “America’s Team” under Landry’s watch, appearing in five Super Bowls during the 1970s and winning two of them. They played in 10 of 13 NFC Championship Games from 1970 to 1982 and reached the postseason in all but one year from 1966 to 1983.
Cowboys players memorably lifted Tom Landry after their win in Super Bowl XII. (Photo by Focus on Sport via Getty Images)
Alas, Landry’s time in Dallas didn’t end on a high note, as the team missed the playoffs in each of his final three seasons. But his legacy as one of the greatest head coaches in NFL history was already etched by that point, making him the clear choice for No. 1 on this list.
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