For Jerry Jones, Cowboys' 2026 season starts Monday -- but what will change?

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- The Dallas Cowboys' 2025 season officially ended at 4:02 p.m. ET with a 34-17 loss to the New York Giants.

To owner and general manager Jerry Jones, the 2026 season starts Monday.

"We can really get down to business," Jones said before Sunday's kickoff, "as it should be, and we'll start first thing in the morning."

The Cowboys had consecutive losing seasons for the first time since 2000-02, finishing 7-9-1 in coach Brian Schottenheimer's first year after going 7-10 in Mike McCarthy's final season.

With Sunday's loss, it was the first time since the 2020 season that the Cowboys lost to the Giants. For Prescott, who sat out the second half, it was his first loss to their NFC East rival since he was a rookie in 2016.

"Disappointed, yeah, of course. Absolutely," Schottenheimer said of the season. "Again, the question is why? We need to look at and figure out why. Did not think that we would be 7-9-1 and I didn't think we wouldn't be in the playoffs. I expected to be in the playoffs and competing for a Super Bowl.

"We did not do that. That starts with me. I understand that. But I can promise you this -- we're going to get to the bottom of it. We're going to work our asses off to figure it out and we're going to adjust and make changes that we need to do to help us get there."

Whatever decisions are made, however, might not come as quickly as some might think. Jones and Schottenheimer did not offer a timeline for when they want to get things done.

Schottenheimer will conduct exit interviews with the players on Monday and Tuesday. He said he expects to do the same with the coaches on Wednesday and Thursday.

"Things that we have to address, we'll prioritize those, and we'll focus on getting better," Schottenheimer said.

Schottenheimer did not get into the exact priorities, but the defense has to be at the top of the list. The Cowboys finished the season allowing the most points in franchise history (511) with a season-long struggle defensively under coordinator Matt Eberflus.

Special teams had its struggles, especially with penalties. And the offense, despite leading the league in yards per game entering Sunday, had its issues, especially in the second halves of games. Dallas totaled one touchdown over the final two quarters of the last five games.

Jones has been critical of the defense, but he also said the fault is not Eberflus' alone. The Cowboys were 28th in the league in defense last season and gave up 468 points with Mike Zimmer as coordinator. From 2021 to 2023 under Dan Quinn, the Cowboys ranked 19th, 12th and fifth, while also leading the league in takeaways, but Jones said they were "porous" when it came to the run defense in the playoffs.

"This took five or six years to get here," Jones said. "This is a product of several years of combinations of philosophies."

When asked if there was a chance for Eberflus to return, he did not answer directly, and said what matters more is "how" the Cowboys play defense as much as who is calling the defense.

This season marked the seventh time since Jones bought the team that a Cowboys defense allowed 400 or more points. In the previous six times, there has been a coordinator change or major scheme overhaul.

Asked if the decisions could be impacted by what happens across the league, Jones said, "It can, but that's not as much as we can do a better job of defining and dictating what we want to be defensively. We can do that. And that's what I'm going to lead us into."

The Cowboys' Super Bowl drought has reached 30 seasons. They have missed the playoffs as many times as they have made the playoffs (four) since 2018. They closed this season with four losses in their last five games.

But they will have two first-round picks in the draft -- thanks to the Micah Parsons trade -- and can be more of a factor in free agency than in recent years after reworking a number of contracts.

Said Jones, "I think we can do some things in this offseason that are stacking up relative to our players, our personnel, availability, to maybe make as dramatic a difference as we could in a long time."