The Dallas Cowboys escaped with a narrow win over the Indianapolis Colts in Week 9, but they were far from impressive. Dallas made an unreal amount of mistakes with two turnovers while committing 14 penalties.

That's why, despite the Colts being a team that was selling at the deadline, this contest went down to the final seconds. While the win means Dallas is still technically alive in the NFC East, they should have no confidence going into Week 10 against the 7-1 San Francisco 49ers.

San Francisco is currently the No. 1 seed in the NFC and they're among the best coached teams in the sport. That's why Colin Cowherd believes Kyle Shanahan will make it look easy when going against Brian Schottenheimer, even coming up with a brutal comparison between the two coaches.

"Niners take on the Cowboys in Dallas. That sounds big. It is also a big coaching mismatch. Kyle Shanahan may very well be the best coach in this league. He gives Sean McVay fits and Schotty and the Cowboys staff, let's just say this is like a U.S. Warship against your dad's fishing boat. Live on Fox. I can't find a way Dallas wins," Cowherd said on The Herd.

Dallas Cowboys show all signs of a poorly coached team

Cowherd went on to say how important coaching is in the NFL, and broke down what poorly coached teams do.

"Coaching matters in this sport, more than any other sport. There's three things that poorly coached teams, not all on Schotty, it's on his staff too, that poorly coached teams do. Number one, a lot of mistakes and penalties. Dallas leads the NFL in penalty yards. Number two, is uneven. They can't put anything together week after week. Schotty's got one, once since he's been in Dallas, back-to-back wins."

As for his last point, Cowherd discussed how Dak Prescott and Brandon Aubrey are just two of the players who are regressing under Schottenheimer and his staff.

"The other thing is, even really good players, on poorly coached teams have regression. Dak Prescott, everything's down. Completion percentage down. Passer rating down. Yards are down. And by the way, it's getting worse. Last five weeks, Dak Prescott with CeeDee Lamb and Pickens is completing 61% of his throws. So it's a classically poorly coached team where a lot of mistakes, really uneven half-to-half, week-to-week, even good players, even their kicker now, their great kickers having a bad year."

None of this is fun to hear, but it's also impossible to argue against Cowherd. Sure, Jerry Jones made the absolutely ridiculous claim that highly-paid coaches don't always lead to success, but Cowherd's points are valid.

He even discussed how Shanhan runs one of the most complex offenses in the NFL, yet gets no penalties. As for Schottenheimer, Cowherd said he has a stripped-down, "Jurrassic" offense, yet the team can't do anything right and continues to get flags.

This week, Schottenheimer and the Cowboys can make a huge statement against the best team in the conference. Unfortunately, the work they've done since Schotty took over ahead of the 2025 season suggests this could go about as well as Cowherd expects it to.