FRISCO, Texas (AP) — New Dallas defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus never really stopped to consider a year away from coaching after getting fired by the Chicago Bears.
Not that his wife, Kelly, would have let him.
“She said she wanted me to go to work now,” Eberflus said Tuesday in his first meeting with reporters since getting hired by the Cowboys. “And I did, too.”
The 57-year-old Eberflus is back where his career took off. He had a seven-year stint on the Dallas defensive staff — from 2011-17 — that led to the defensive coordinator's job with Indianapolis.
Four years later, Eberflus took over the Bears, getting fired 12 games into his third season, the day after his poor clock management in the final seconds cost Chicago in a sixth consecutive loss. He was 14-32 with Chicago.
“I was excited after a couple of days, a couple of weeks, taking that break,” Eberflus said. “I was excited about looking at different opportunities, and this was the best opportunity, that I felt was really cool for me to come back to Dallas. I have a lot of familiar faces here, starting from the top all the way to everybody in the building.”
A first-time NFL head coach with the Bears, Eberflus is now under someone in the same situation, with longtime assistant Brian Schottenheimer taking over for Mike McCarthy.
The Cowboys and McCarthy parted ways after five more seasons of Dallas not getting as far as an NFC championship game. The drought goes all the way back to the 1995 season, when the storied franchise won its fifth Super Bowl.
Eberflus lived it. The Dallas defense couldn't get a stop late in a divisional playoff loss at Green Bay during the 2014 season, and gave up an improbable — and decisive — third-down completion to Aaron Rodgers in the final seconds of another divisional loss to the Packers, this time at home, when the Cowboys were the NFC's top seed in 2016.
Now he'll try to help Schottenheimer end it.
“The first couple meetings I had with him, I said, ‘I’m here for you,’” Eberflus said. “I want to really just do a good job of bouncing ideas off of (him), experiences that I had and just working together to be able to utilize me. Because I do have the experience of being a head coach for him and to make his job easier.”
Eberflus has four assistants from last season's Chicago staff in defensive passing game coordinator Andre Curtis, linebackers coach Dave Borgonzi, secondary/cornerbacks coach David Overstreet II and defensive line assistant Bryan Bing.
Darian Thompson, a former Dallas player, is the only holdover on the defensive staff. He is helping Overstreet in the secondary after working with linebackers his first two seasons. The other newcomers are defensive line coach Aaron Whitecotton and young assistants J.J. Clark and Tanzel Smart.
The only returning member of the offensive staff is Lunda Wells, who will coach tight ends after having that role for all five of McCarthy's seasons.
“It's good,” Wells said. “Just make sure you get the names right.”
Schottenheimer was the offensive coordinator the past two seasons with McCarthy calling plays, and the arrangement will be the same with Schottenheimer's replacement, Klayton Adams.
The offensive line coach for the Arizona Cardinals the past two seasons, Adams was on the Colts' staff with Eberflus. His first priority in his first year as a coordinator is helping improve one of the league's worst rushing offenses. The question of whether he'd eventually like to be a play-caller can come later.
“At the end of the day, our job when we’re putting things on the call sheet is to be problem-solvers,” Adams said. “That’s the part that I’m really looking forward to focusing on. It's also a leadership position within a great organization.”
Wells and pass game specialist Ken Dorsey are the most experienced coaches on the offensive staff. Dorsey has had a rough couple of years, getting fired midseason as offensive coordinator in Buffalo in 2023 and again after this past season from the same job in Cleveland.
“We've got to be able to win football games, and when you don't then there's always those possibilities of things happening,” Dorsey said. “In life, you're going to get knocked down. You're going to get punched in the gut. It's how you get back up and keep swinging, keep fighting.”
Eberflus can relate, and now they're on a staff together.
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Schuyler Dixon, The Associated Press
