It wasn’t until over the weekend that Brian Schottenheimer was reported as a candidate for the Dallas Cowboys’ head coaching vacancy. Given the lack of buzz behind Schottenheimer, it felt like nothing more than Jerry Jones doing due diligence on the team’s top in-house candidate.

Well, whatever transpired inside The Star over the last 48 hours must have been significant because the Cowboys have officially hired Schottenheimer as their next head coach. The announcement was made Friday night. It was your classic late-night news dump, signifying the team knows how uninspiring the hire is.

While Schottenheimer has almost two decades of NFL experience as a high-ranking assistant, including a whopping 14 years as an offensive coordinator, he’s never been given serious head coach consideration. His experience as a play-caller leaves something to be desired as well.

The Cowboys would have been hard-pressed to make a more uninspiring hire. Even Kellen Moore would have moved the needle more given his success with Dak Prescott.

That begs the question of what led Jerry Jones to this decision? After some thinking, it has become painfully obvious.

It was just a couple days ago that Moore was considered the favorite for the job. The ever-reliable Jon Machota of The Athletic declared Moore the front-runner. It seemed the Cowboys were delaying the inevitable with their former offensive coordinator.

Well, it’s possible Dallas was planning for the Eagles to lose last Sunday. Since they won, Jones can’t hire or Moore again for at least another week. Philadelphia is the current favorite to win the Super Bowl because they have the easier matchup relative to the AFC Championship Game.

The Super Bowl is set to be played on Feb. 9. If the Eagles get past Washington, Moore won’t be available to hire for three weeks.

The Cowboys can’t afford to wait that long, especially not with the East/West Shrine Bowl coming to AT&T Stadium next Thursday. Jones clearly wants Schottenheimer to dominate headlines while everyone in the league is scouting the practices in Jerry World.

The upcoming college All-Star games are another potential reason Jones moved quick to hire Schottenheimer. The 51-year-old needs to assemble a coaching staff and an ensamble of scouts for those events. Once that phase is complete, they need to get on the same page about what kind of players this team needs.

This is one of the many consequences from the Cowboys waiting a week after their season ended to reveal McCarthy’s fate. As a result, they missed out on interviewing Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn, who were comfortably the most coveted candidates this hiring cycle.

Our best guess is that Jones was caught with his pants down regarding Moore and pivoted to Schotty in a state of panic.

That is the only explanation as to why Schottenheimer picked up steam out of nowhere and ultimately won the sweepstakes. This franchise loves to drag out prominent decisions in the name of dominating headlines and media coverage.

The Schottenheimer buzz came together suspiciously quick.