Cowboys Back Schottenheimer, Charbonnet a Possibility for Seahawks, Patriots and Rams Hit IR
Dallas spent Monday answering a question nobody had asked in public yet.
Stephen Jones went on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas and said Brian Schottenheimer has the full support of Cowboys ownership. On its face that's a vote of confidence. My read is closer to the reverse: nobody books a radio hit to say the head coach is fine unless the noise got loud enough that ownership felt it had to say something. Public backing in October is a pressure valve, not a contract extension. It changes nothing about who calls the offense this week. What it changes is the ledger. The next loss now gets measured against a statement ownership volunteered, and that is a leash with a date on it even if nobody wrote the date down. I'd rather own a coach quietly than defend him on the radio.
Seattle's version of the same dynamic is cheerier. Mike Macdonald called Zach Charbonnet's return this week "a possibility," and Charbonnet could make his 2026 debut in Week 7 on Sunday Night Football. Read the word choice. "Possibility" is what a coach says when he's protecting himself against a setback, not what he says when he's announcing a plan. I expect Charbonnet to play, and I expect the number that matters to be snaps, not carries. A back making his regular-season debut gets a package, not a workload, and the Seahawks would be foolish to hand him a full plate on a national broadcast. What would make me wrong is a clean week of practice turning "possibility" into something firmer by kickoff.
New England has no ambiguity to work with. The Patriots placed Romeo Doubs on injured reserve with a shoulder injury. That's the bad flavor of roster news: no timeline attached, no optimism folded in, just a receiver off the active roster and a passing game that has to absorb it with who's already in the building. Doubs was supposed to be part of the answer for the Patriots, and IR takes him out of the conversation for a stretch they now have to survive without him. My read is that the targets flow inward, to tight ends and slot work, more than to any one outside replacement, and whoever takes those reps is auditioning for a job that might not be open when Doubs returns.
Then the least glamorous move of the day: the Rams placed kicker Blake Grupe on injured reserve. Kicker is the one position a front office can patch in a week, and the patch is invisible until it isn't. Los Angeles has to sign a leg now, and the available market usually forces a choice between accuracy and range rather than offering both. My read is that the Rams prioritize reliability from a manageable distance over a big leg, because a coordinator can scheme around shorter kickoffs and cannot scheme around a miss.
The thread through the day is that clubs are managing information as much as rosters. Dallas is managing a narrative. Seattle is managing expectations. New England is managing a depth chart, and the Rams are managing a phone call. My verdict: the Dallas item has the shortest shelf life of the bunch. If the Cowboys drop the next couple, that Monday radio quote becomes the first line of every story written about Schottenheimer's job, and the endorsement turns into the evidence against him. I'll take that bet.