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Dallas Cowboys Fans And Reality
by Tom Ryle
I absolutely love being one of the writers for Blogging The Boys. I represent what I consider to be the best sports blog anywhere, I get to pretend like I know what I am talking about, people actually read what I say and respond to it, and I have a plush virtual office near Shay's workstation/wet bar. I mean, what else can a guy ask for?
Well, there is one little thing. We do try to maintain our standards here. As a matter of fact, our amateur operation is at least as professional as many of the "news" organizations out there. So when I got promoted up from fan to writer, I had to modify the old-fashioned, full-tilt, foaming at the mouth rant. I kind of miss that. And with all the anger and frustration flying around after the muddle that was the 2011 season, there are some things being said that really make me want to unload with both barrels.
Fortunately, one of the reasons that BTB is so good is that there are just some outstanding fans out there, and sometimes they get around to writing what I want to say before I get to it.
I don't want to step on rabble's toes here, but there are a couple of FanPosts I have to mention today, because they do such a good job of illustrating what I want to say, without me having to do it all myself.
The topic for today is the reality of the Dallas Cowboys. There are a lot of things that need to be changed about this team, but there are some things that are not going to change, no matter how good a case you care to build.
First and foremost: Jerry Jones is the General Manager of the Dallas Cowboys. It is like the sun coming up in the East, or politicians refusing to give a straight answer. It is a simple fact of life. This is one of the things that Coakey put in his post JUST STOP and MOVE ON ALREADY. Although he flirted with the Bigham threshold a bit, I had to give a couple of fist-pumps over the simple clarity of a couple of his points, like:
Jerry Jones WILL NOT HIRE A GENERAL MANAGER! And yes he has had some struggles in that role!
That is one of those things that go beyond beating a dead horse. Complaining about JJ keeping the GM title, or proposing possible hires to take over the role, is just wasted time and bandwidth. You can hate him all you want, but there is this one little detail, that livemontana pointed out in his post, rather daringly titled Jerry Jones - I'm your fan!
He's worth two billion dollars. He made that money himself. I'll give any billionaire who made his money on his own enough respect not to refer to him as an idiot even when I disagree.
Yeah. You know, he is the guy that owns the team. The most valuable franchise in the NFL. He's one of the most influential people in the league. And he managed to collect three Lombardi Trophies back in the nineties. So I can understand why he may have a hard time giving up control of things.
And don't expect him to change his ways. You don't need to take my word for it. Read what he has to say himself, as posted at the mothership:
"The facts are that I've spent 22 years doing this exactly the same way," Jones said. "I've made a lot of changes from year to year as time goes along, but frankly, I know that when we do not have the kind of success, when we don't have expectations lived up to, then the one that should get the most heat is the one that ultimately makes the decisions, period, with the Dallas Cowboys. And that's me."
There is no hint there that I can see that he is going to change his mind about that.
But it is not just the fans out here that seem to hope for something different. As the Dallas Morning News' Brandon George reports, even the "real" media wants to know if he might be interested in bringing in someone to help with the GM duties. I'm going to blockquote the entire piece, partly because it's not that long. And mostly because it is in Jerryspeak.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was asked Tuesday morning on 105.3 FM if he would be interested in bringing in Bill Polian, the recently fired vice chairman of the Indianapolis Colts, and bring him into the front office.
"The thing you got to realize is when you have an owner that is full time as the owner, then you create a situation where you have as much turnover at GM as you do at coaching level. I think that just deters from the mix," Jones said. "I'd call on the very same kinds of influences and people and the information that someone like Bill Polian, I've known him for years, served on the competition committee with him for 10 years. And so, the answer is I have a lot of respect for him."
Jones then went on about him being the general manager and owner.
"I'll answer it again for you. The way we're structured and the way it is our fans need to understand that I have the ability to go get anybody and any bit of information that there is, sports or football, and I do," Jones said. "And I go get it. And we get it from a lot of sources. And we get it from a lot of sources on evaluating football players, we get it from evaluating coaches. There won't be an offensive scheme, there won't be a defensive scheme in the National Football League that we don't totally evaluate during the off-season and make decisions relative to what other people are doing and relative to what we're doing."
Now I have been studying Jerryspeak for quite some time, intensely since I became a BTB writer, so allow me to carefully parse that and translate that into conventional English terms:
"No. I got it."
It's basic with Jerry. He lives by the Golden Rule, and he certainly has all the gold in this situation, so he's making the rules.
There is also another point kinda wrapped up in that quote, where he talks about turnover and continuity. Some people, both here and in the media at large, have been arguing that Jason Garrett's job was on the line this season and he should be shown the door because he did not deliver a Super Bowl after an entire season and a half on the job. But if you look at Jerry and his history, and actually try to figure out what he says (not, I admit, always the easiest thing), you will find again and again that he wants to have a stable organization built to win over the long haul. Right now, every indication is that he sees JG5000 as the way to accomplish that. He certainly isn't going to dump everything and start over this quickly. I figure it would take two more seasons for JJ to seriously rethink his approach.
Besides, look at this quote from Jason, also taken from the mothership's article above.
". . . I believe people believe in the direction we're going in. I think there is evidence of positive things, positive direction we've taken. Again, we've had to make some decisions to get on the path that we're on. Hopefully, we'll continue to work through some of those growing pains and keep getting better."
Classic Garrettspeak. How many other GM/HC pairs have their own dialects? I think Jerry and Jason make a good team, because I actually think they understand each other. Literally.
I can't stop anyone from hating on JJ or JG, anymore than I can get the Romophobic types to understand that he is a very good quarterback trying to deal with a team that has some basic weaknesses.
Now, past Jerry and Jason, I would say almost anything is liable to change. Rob Ryan is going to get a pass this year it seems, but if the defense continues to struggle in 2012, he better hope someone wants to hire him away. I suspect he is going to get the lion's share of the draft picks, and he will have a full off season to get his defense installed. Results will be expected. Everyone else, coaches and players alike, are going to be looked at long and hard. I expect to see several start to drop by the wayside with the contracts that are up this year, and I would not be surprised to see some more big changes similar to last year during training camp, if not before. But it is going to be Jerry as GM and Jason as HC calling the shots. You might as well get used to it.
by Tom Ryle
I absolutely love being one of the writers for Blogging The Boys. I represent what I consider to be the best sports blog anywhere, I get to pretend like I know what I am talking about, people actually read what I say and respond to it, and I have a plush virtual office near Shay's workstation/wet bar. I mean, what else can a guy ask for?
Well, there is one little thing. We do try to maintain our standards here. As a matter of fact, our amateur operation is at least as professional as many of the "news" organizations out there. So when I got promoted up from fan to writer, I had to modify the old-fashioned, full-tilt, foaming at the mouth rant. I kind of miss that. And with all the anger and frustration flying around after the muddle that was the 2011 season, there are some things being said that really make me want to unload with both barrels.
Fortunately, one of the reasons that BTB is so good is that there are just some outstanding fans out there, and sometimes they get around to writing what I want to say before I get to it.
I don't want to step on rabble's toes here, but there are a couple of FanPosts I have to mention today, because they do such a good job of illustrating what I want to say, without me having to do it all myself.
The topic for today is the reality of the Dallas Cowboys. There are a lot of things that need to be changed about this team, but there are some things that are not going to change, no matter how good a case you care to build.
First and foremost: Jerry Jones is the General Manager of the Dallas Cowboys. It is like the sun coming up in the East, or politicians refusing to give a straight answer. It is a simple fact of life. This is one of the things that Coakey put in his post JUST STOP and MOVE ON ALREADY. Although he flirted with the Bigham threshold a bit, I had to give a couple of fist-pumps over the simple clarity of a couple of his points, like:
Jerry Jones WILL NOT HIRE A GENERAL MANAGER! And yes he has had some struggles in that role!
That is one of those things that go beyond beating a dead horse. Complaining about JJ keeping the GM title, or proposing possible hires to take over the role, is just wasted time and bandwidth. You can hate him all you want, but there is this one little detail, that livemontana pointed out in his post, rather daringly titled Jerry Jones - I'm your fan!
He's worth two billion dollars. He made that money himself. I'll give any billionaire who made his money on his own enough respect not to refer to him as an idiot even when I disagree.
Yeah. You know, he is the guy that owns the team. The most valuable franchise in the NFL. He's one of the most influential people in the league. And he managed to collect three Lombardi Trophies back in the nineties. So I can understand why he may have a hard time giving up control of things.
And don't expect him to change his ways. You don't need to take my word for it. Read what he has to say himself, as posted at the mothership:
"The facts are that I've spent 22 years doing this exactly the same way," Jones said. "I've made a lot of changes from year to year as time goes along, but frankly, I know that when we do not have the kind of success, when we don't have expectations lived up to, then the one that should get the most heat is the one that ultimately makes the decisions, period, with the Dallas Cowboys. And that's me."
There is no hint there that I can see that he is going to change his mind about that.
But it is not just the fans out here that seem to hope for something different. As the Dallas Morning News' Brandon George reports, even the "real" media wants to know if he might be interested in bringing in someone to help with the GM duties. I'm going to blockquote the entire piece, partly because it's not that long. And mostly because it is in Jerryspeak.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was asked Tuesday morning on 105.3 FM if he would be interested in bringing in Bill Polian, the recently fired vice chairman of the Indianapolis Colts, and bring him into the front office.
"The thing you got to realize is when you have an owner that is full time as the owner, then you create a situation where you have as much turnover at GM as you do at coaching level. I think that just deters from the mix," Jones said. "I'd call on the very same kinds of influences and people and the information that someone like Bill Polian, I've known him for years, served on the competition committee with him for 10 years. And so, the answer is I have a lot of respect for him."
Jones then went on about him being the general manager and owner.
"I'll answer it again for you. The way we're structured and the way it is our fans need to understand that I have the ability to go get anybody and any bit of information that there is, sports or football, and I do," Jones said. "And I go get it. And we get it from a lot of sources. And we get it from a lot of sources on evaluating football players, we get it from evaluating coaches. There won't be an offensive scheme, there won't be a defensive scheme in the National Football League that we don't totally evaluate during the off-season and make decisions relative to what other people are doing and relative to what we're doing."
Now I have been studying Jerryspeak for quite some time, intensely since I became a BTB writer, so allow me to carefully parse that and translate that into conventional English terms:
"No. I got it."
It's basic with Jerry. He lives by the Golden Rule, and he certainly has all the gold in this situation, so he's making the rules.
There is also another point kinda wrapped up in that quote, where he talks about turnover and continuity. Some people, both here and in the media at large, have been arguing that Jason Garrett's job was on the line this season and he should be shown the door because he did not deliver a Super Bowl after an entire season and a half on the job. But if you look at Jerry and his history, and actually try to figure out what he says (not, I admit, always the easiest thing), you will find again and again that he wants to have a stable organization built to win over the long haul. Right now, every indication is that he sees JG5000 as the way to accomplish that. He certainly isn't going to dump everything and start over this quickly. I figure it would take two more seasons for JJ to seriously rethink his approach.
Besides, look at this quote from Jason, also taken from the mothership's article above.
". . . I believe people believe in the direction we're going in. I think there is evidence of positive things, positive direction we've taken. Again, we've had to make some decisions to get on the path that we're on. Hopefully, we'll continue to work through some of those growing pains and keep getting better."
Classic Garrettspeak. How many other GM/HC pairs have their own dialects? I think Jerry and Jason make a good team, because I actually think they understand each other. Literally.
I can't stop anyone from hating on JJ or JG, anymore than I can get the Romophobic types to understand that he is a very good quarterback trying to deal with a team that has some basic weaknesses.
Now, past Jerry and Jason, I would say almost anything is liable to change. Rob Ryan is going to get a pass this year it seems, but if the defense continues to struggle in 2012, he better hope someone wants to hire him away. I suspect he is going to get the lion's share of the draft picks, and he will have a full off season to get his defense installed. Results will be expected. Everyone else, coaches and players alike, are going to be looked at long and hard. I expect to see several start to drop by the wayside with the contracts that are up this year, and I would not be surprised to see some more big changes similar to last year during training camp, if not before. But it is going to be Jerry as GM and Jason as HC calling the shots. You might as well get used to it.