Help is on the way for Dallas’ beleaguered defense.
Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer announced in his Thursday press conference that safety Malik Hooker is returning to practice.
Hooker is currently on injured reserve, sidelined by a toe injury suffered during the team’s Week 4 tie with the Packers.
Dallas will have 21 days to activate Hooker to the 53-man roster.
In four games this year, Hooker has recorded 20 total tackles. Last year, he finished with 81 total tackles, five passes defensed, and two interceptions, starting all 17 games.
The Cowboys will be in Las Vegas on Monday night to face the Raiders.
Starting in 2006, when Sunday Night Football moved from cable to broadcast, the NFL began utilizing the ability to slide bad games away from the big platform, replacing them with more compelling matchups. The flex scheduling concept has more recently spread to other prime-time windows, with Thursday night and Monday nights now in the mix.
Setting aside the fact that flexing games not by hours but by days creates logistical issues and potential expenses for fans traveling to games, if the league is going to prioritize harvesting large audiences over in-stadium fan convenience, there’s more work to be done.
Specifically, the Thursday/Monday flexing needs to begin earlier.
For Monday games, flexing is available from Weeks 12 through 17 (with 12 days notice). For Thursday games, it’s available from Weeks 13 through 17 (with 21 days notice).
It’s now Week 11. And the Monday night game has the Raiders hosting the Cowboys. In contrast, the Week 11 Sunday slate has MANY better games that could have been moved to Monday night. (The same concept applies to the Thursday night game, which puts the 2-7 Jets in a standalone window.)
The mid-season, non-flex donut hole raises another important point. When the league is putting the schedule together, it’s critical to get the Thursday and Monday games right from, say, late October until the flex window opens. The potentially “bad” teams should have any prime-time games early in the year, before their records fully expose their flaws. The Raiders — a team anyone paying even casual attention to the NFL knew or should have known would struggle this year — nevertheless had a Thursday night game in Week 10 and a Monday night game in Week 11.
The best candidate to move to Week 11 Monday night would have been Seahawks-Rams, which is currently hidden in a 4:05 p.m. ET regional window. (Chiefs-Broncos is the big-platform 4:25 p.m. ET game.) Under current rules, however, Seahawks-Rams couldn’t have gone to Monday night because the rematch is set for a future Thursday night. And one of the two games in the annual rivalry must be available to Fox.
If the goal is to put the best games in prime time, that rule needs to go away. And, yes, it’s important not to rob Peter blind in order to provide Paul with compelling prime-time games, but there are enough “good” games to go around in most weeks (and especially in this week).
It should never happen that, in November, the Monday night game is one of the objectively least desirable games of a weekend that has Sunday afternoon games like Seahawks-Rams, Broncos-Chiefs, Buccaneers-Bills, Charges-Jaguars, Bears-Vikings, and Bengals-Steelers.
The Cowboys returned to The Star this week with heavy hearts after the death of defensive end Marshawn Kneeland during the team’s off week.
The team held a private candlelight vigil inside the Ford Center on Tuesday night. Owner Jerry Jones, coach Brian Schottenheimer and Kneeland’s girlfriend, Catalina Mancera, were among those who shared eulogies. Schottenheimer met with the media for the first time since Kneeland’s death on Wednesday and revealed that Mancera is pregnant.
“My heart is heavy. Our team’s heart is heavy. We don’t move on, but we do move forward.” Schottenheimer said, via Todd Archer of ESPN.
Kneeland died last Thursday from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after a police chase and a wreck with another car, according to authorities.
The Cowboys held a virtual team meeting on Friday, with many players, coaches and staff out of town on the off week. After their return to The Star on Monday, the Cowboys met again as a team. Grief specialists have been available all week, with a “brotherhood breakfast” held Tuesday morning.
The Cowboys will practice for the first time without their teammate on Thursday as they begin preparations for their Monday night game against the Raiders.
“It was hard to hear the pain that some of these guys are dealing with, but it was also very uplifting to hear the strength from other guys,” Schottenheimer said. “That’s the beauty of a team. One side of the ball is [not] playing good, the other side of the ball has to pick them up. When one guy is hurting, someone else has to pick them up. If the head coach is hurting, someone’s got to pick me up. And I’m hurting. I’m hurting. And these guys have picked me up, and I’ve picked them up.
“That’s what we’re going to continue to do because we love one another. It’s what a family does.”
The Cowboys will honor Kneeland’s memory in several ways, including with a helmet decal. They have also started a Marshawn Kneeland Memorial Fund for Mancera and the couple’s baby.
“We want to make sure she’s taken care of, and the baby’s taken care of for the rest of their lives. Our guys are very — it’s very important to them and to us.” Schottenheimer said.
In more than 17 seasons as coach of the Packers and Cowboys, Mike McCarthy has a record of 185-123-2. Since 2012, the Giants have a record of 83-147-1.
It’s no surprise, then, that McCarthy is the early betting favorite to become the next head coach of the Giants, at 7-1.
Interim Giants coach Mike Kafka is just behind McCarthy at 8-1, along with Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak.
Those three candidates crystallize the primary challenge the Giants will face in picking a new coach. They’ve failed with three first-time head coaches who had been coordinators. Along the way, they also failed with a former head coach, in Pat Shurmur.
Do they try to find a rising star? Or will they want an established head coach?
The other question is whether to hire someone with an offensive background, or someone with a defensive background. Given the presence of a potential franchise quarterback in Jackson Dart, it’s important to develop consistency in his coaching. If the Giants hire a defensive coach (Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo is the favorite from that side of the ball, at 9-1) and if the offensive coordinator does well with Dart, the offensive coordinator likely will get a chance to become a head coach elsewhere. And then the Giants will need another tutor for Dart.
Whoever it is, the next hire will be critical to getting the most out of Dart — and to reversing a trend of chronic failure since they won Super Bowl XLVI to cap the 2011 season. Since then, the Giants have been to the playoffs twice in 14 seasons, with only one postseason victory.
They’ve got a young nucleus of talent. They need to get the most out of it. They need a coach who can do it, and who otherwise can navigate the realities of leading one of the two teams in the NFL’s biggest and most scrutinized market.
The Broncos signed offensive tackle Geron Christian off the Cowboys’ practice squad to their 53-player roster, the team announced Tuesday.
Denver waived wide receiver Michael Bandy and placed inside linebacker Karene Reid on injured reserve in corresponding moves. The Broncos also released tackle Marques Cox from the practice squad.
Christian, a 2018 third-round pick, has appeared in 63 games, starting 25, in his NFL career. He played five games in 2024 across stints with the Rams and Browns. Christian signed with the Cowboys’ practice squad in August but has not appeared in a game this year.
Bandy has played seven offensive snaps and 16 special teams snaps across two games this season, while Reid played 59 percent of Denver’s special teams snaps over the first 10 games.
