Brian Schottenheimer seems to have no clue when he became a father (Patreon)

Whenever sports figures recount old stories, it’s not uncommon that I track down whatever play, game, series, etc. is being discussed. Oftentimes the reason for doing so is simply a curiosity to learn more details. Other times it’s to confirm the veracity of an outrageous or fascinating claim, or perhaps seeing how fast and loose facts might be altered or embellished. Because I’ve indeed found that sometimes folks just … say stuff about their very confirmable sports past that appears to be totally unmoored from reality. Like former Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers seemingly completely making up a story about president Danny Ainge once telling him to get intentionally kicked out of a game so they could watch golf together.

It turns out most of the time their batting average in getting the key elements right is well under 1.000. But I don’t think I’ve ever before seen a story relayed with details that are quite as easy a slam dunk to get right, that indeed turned out to be quite wrong … as the one told by Dallas Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer during a February 2026 interview at the NFL scouting combine.

Talking to Rich Eisen about Drew Brees, his pupil from 2002-05 as the Chargers’ quarterbacks coach, Schottenheimer takes a detour (1:40-3:07 here) to tell a deeply personal, “quick, cute” story that involves Brees. To start it off, he begins by attempting to identify the year in which the story occurred. It’s from a couple decades ago, and he clearly takes 2-3 seconds to look up and internally deliberate about which year he’s talking about, before arriving on the year 2005. He still clearly said it in a manner that lacked any conviction, even hedging by throwing in the word “maybe.”

That obviously seems extremely normal, something that couldn’t be more understandable to dismiss. Who among us hasn’t ever taken a sec to recall exactly when an old story took place and been uncertain, right? Then you go on to listen for the next minute-and-change, and it becomes a story about the day he became a father. The day his first child was born. My first thought after listening was “hey that is a cute story!” Then my second thought was “waitwaitwaitwaitwait, at the beginning you were flagrantly waffling to recall the year of WHAT now?!”

In retrospect, that conspicuous, multi-second hesitation regarding the year he’s talking about doesn’t seem quite as understandable to dismiss. That got me to laugh. But then it gets even funnier: he still was wrong! And then after I realized he was wrong, I made subsequent discoveries that made his wrongness even funnier. First let’s start with how I know that Schotty was wrong, that his son was not born in 2005.

He talks about how he had to get off the plane just as the Chargers were about to depart to play a road game because he got a call that his wife was going into labor. He then offered the following details about said game, for which he was absent:

• it was a Saturday game against the Chiefs

• Brees “throws like 400 yards, 5 touchdown passes”

• the Chargers won “like 38-34”

• the game ended with Brees kneeldowns (which meant he was able to preserve the ball to give to Schotty)

Well, here’s all four Drew Brees road games in Kansas City throughout his Chargers tenure. And while that ‘05 game was indeed on a Saturday, Brees played poorly in a loss that ended with Trent Green kneeldowns. Completely impossible to be the game Schotty’s referring to.

Meanwhile, even though the ‘04 game was on a Sunday, it was also the lone game Brees won in KC during this time, which was indeed by a score not too far off from 38-34. Yardage-wise, Drew indeed made it 95% of the way to 400, even if Schotty misremembered two touchdowns as five (Brees never tossed more than three TDs in any road game as a Charger). And that game indeed ended with Brees kneeldowns.

Despite conflating the day of the week, it is very, very clearly the game Schotty was alluding to, the one that he missed due to the birth of his son. And if you wanna remove all doubt, here’s a newspaper article from the day after that November 28th contest that mentions Brian having become a father the day before the game.

So that officially places the day his son was born as November 27, 2004. And yet, with zero equivocation, he emphasizes that the birth occurred "during the game, right as the game was starting.” It kinda makes me wonder: did … did Schotty just completely make up that the birth occurred during the game because he thought it’d make for a cooler story or something? Maybe I’m being cynical, but it seems awfully hard to believe an NFL coach could’ve had his first child be born the day before a game and at any point later in life come to believe it was during the game – that he apparently doesn’t have any memories of, say, being with his already-born child when that game approached and was played.

And if he at least even knew his son’s age and birthday, it wouldn’t take a PhD in math to quickly figure out his birth year. You’d think an NFL head coach would have a basic enough mathematical proficiency that if he knew in February 2026 that someone was both 21 years old and born in November, then the year of their birth was 2004.

In just about all circumstances, one could easily be forgiven if they're unsure of the exact year in which an old story occurred or if they're off by a year or so in telling when it took place. But if ever there's a scenario where you gotta bat 1.000 with recounting the year, it’s one where the story revolves around the day you became a parent.

That leads into my subsequent discoveries which make it even funnier that the man making those erroneous proclamations is Brian Schottenheimer. I’ve only listened to Schotty speak a handful of times, and even I know that he constantly waxes poetic about family and how he’s the ultimate family guy. But then I found this article about his tattoos; he even has “family” inked on his arm!

Now, believe it or not, it turns out it’s possible that some people who don’t have “family” tattooed on their bodies are still devoted to their families and remember which year they became parents, but this is basically satire masquerading as a real-life bit: the guy with a “family” tattoo has no clue when he became a father.

But wait, there’s more! The article also reveals he has a “27” tattoo because “the 27th is [his] son’s birthday.” Granted it doesn’t include the year, but just the mere fact that a father could be that palpably indecisive about the birth year of his son after turning his body into a canvas to commemorate his birthday is hysterical as hell … even if he would’ve ultimately been correct … let alone still being wrong, as Schotty was.

So the tale of the tape for Schotty is:

• he has a tattoo that says “family”

• he has a tattoo of his son’s birthday

• at different points he placed the date of his son’s birth – which was definitively November 27, 2004 – both in “2005” and “right as the game [on November 28, 2004] was starting.”

• barring the same typo both in the newspaper and on Schotty’s body, the birth wasn’t even the day of the game, let alone during the game

To any parents who might be reading this, it seems like a suboptimal look to display that level of uncertainty (and being wrong) if you ever recount the story of the year your first kid was born, so here’s hoping you’d be more prepared than Schotty was.