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Garrett Still The Best, Most Likely Choice For Coach
Josh Ellis
DallasCowboys.com Staff Writer
IRVING, Texas - Everybody, everybody, calm down. We all know what Jerry Jones said on the NFL Network pregame show the other day.
Yeah, the part about being a big believer in challenges and how he knows no coach who has won a Super Bowl has repeated with a different team. It sure seems to have gotten a lot of you guys all worked up about Bill Cowher and Jon Gruden once again.
These are waterfalls Jones shouldn't, and won't, be chasing this time.
He's done that before, remember, with Bill Parcells, and the challenge wasn't met. The team did come out ahead of where it was when Big Bill got here, but that was a rebuilding process, and there was no one in the game better at starting from scratch than Parcells. Did Gruden start from scratch to win his Super Bowl? No, he did it with Tony Dungy's team. Did Cowher? No, it took him 14 years in Pittsburgh.
Bad as this year's Cowboys have been, there's no sense in tearing the thing down, and Jones knows it. He acknowledged as much on the NFL Network set Saturday night, when weighing the cons of removing the interim tag from Jason Garrett's title.
"There is no doubt he has the skills to be a head coach in the National Football League," Jones said. "The question is when? The facts are that he's had five games where he's been a head coach. That includes junior high schools, high schools, all of them.
"We don't have time to have a bad time with the Dallas Cowboys. We need to hit the ground running next year; this has been too much of a disappointment this year."
Jones went on to say the "experience factor" would weigh in his decision, which some would say Garrett doesn't have enough of because he was never the head coach of even a Pop Warner team before taking over for Wade Phillips on Nov. 8.
To me, though, Garrett has more experience here and now, and is thus better suited to coach these Cowboys going forward than Cowher, Gruden, Brian Billick or Jimmy Johnson himself.
Jones said on Monday he sees this as a team capable of going back to the playoffs next year. Could a new coach come in and get a team into the postseason? Sure, it happens all the time.
But could one do so if he only has two weeks to implement his system, as is a possibility because of the league's unstable labor situation? A lockout could drag on into the fall. How could anyone expect a new coach to be competitive if he's only meeting his team just a matter of days before the first game.
"Those are the challenges, and real," Jones said. "And so you go in here with minimum days, really weeks, to prepare a team and talk about wholesale changes, that would be tough to do."
Jones said his doesn't expect any headway on a new CBA agreement for at least the first three weeks after the Cowboys' season ends on Sunday, and didn't have a timetable for when he wanted to make a hire. But he did say his optimism and faith in the owners' intent to get a deal done would allow him to operate on the premise there will not be a delayed labor stoppage.
That might not be wise. How can Jones be so certain about the will of the NFL Players Association to make a deal? NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith has been pounding the drums of war for nearly two years now.
So if Jones really wants and expects these Cowboys to immediately go back to competing for division titles and even Super Bowls, he should put the greatest emphasis on stability at the top of the staff.
Parts need changing on this team, no doubt. The stay of quite a few players and even some assistant coaches has probably run its course. But what has Garrett done in seven games as the head guy to make anyone think he's not perfectly suited for the job?
Everyone remembers where this team's mental state was toward the end of Phillips' run, when they would wilt at the slightest adversity and weren't even competitive in the last two games. Garrett is more of a hard-nosed, demanding guy than a lot of us, myself included, ever realized. He instilled mental toughness in this team right away, and, if you've noticed, his offense has still been chugging along pretty well, even with backups playing at just about every skill position.
There's not a smarter guy available, or a guy who comes from a better football family, or a guy who is as devoted to doing the job, or a guy who we know knows how to work with Jones.
Parcells left the Giants and Jets because of his health. Garrett is young and healthy.
Cowher left the Steelers to spend time with his kids. Garrett doesn't have kids.
Gruden was fired from the Buccaneers because of diminishing returns after winning a Super Bowl his first year. Garrett took over a pitiful 1-7 Cowboys team and made them worth watching.
See, the most well-prepared, best-suited guy for the job is already here. He already has his stuff in Landry's office. It makes the most sense to keep him.
So when Jones says things like he's interested in the challenge of doing something that's never been done before, like setting a Super Bowl-winning coach up to win another in Dallas, consider that he might just be trying to generate headlines for a team few are willing to talk about right now.
He won't want to upstage this Super Bowl, played in his stadium, so he might as well make waves through the media now, because a big splash shouldn't be in store.
Don't go chasing waterfalls, Jerry. Just stick to the coach you're used to.
Josh Ellis
DallasCowboys.com Staff Writer
IRVING, Texas - Everybody, everybody, calm down. We all know what Jerry Jones said on the NFL Network pregame show the other day.
Yeah, the part about being a big believer in challenges and how he knows no coach who has won a Super Bowl has repeated with a different team. It sure seems to have gotten a lot of you guys all worked up about Bill Cowher and Jon Gruden once again.
These are waterfalls Jones shouldn't, and won't, be chasing this time.
He's done that before, remember, with Bill Parcells, and the challenge wasn't met. The team did come out ahead of where it was when Big Bill got here, but that was a rebuilding process, and there was no one in the game better at starting from scratch than Parcells. Did Gruden start from scratch to win his Super Bowl? No, he did it with Tony Dungy's team. Did Cowher? No, it took him 14 years in Pittsburgh.
Bad as this year's Cowboys have been, there's no sense in tearing the thing down, and Jones knows it. He acknowledged as much on the NFL Network set Saturday night, when weighing the cons of removing the interim tag from Jason Garrett's title.
"There is no doubt he has the skills to be a head coach in the National Football League," Jones said. "The question is when? The facts are that he's had five games where he's been a head coach. That includes junior high schools, high schools, all of them.
"We don't have time to have a bad time with the Dallas Cowboys. We need to hit the ground running next year; this has been too much of a disappointment this year."
Jones went on to say the "experience factor" would weigh in his decision, which some would say Garrett doesn't have enough of because he was never the head coach of even a Pop Warner team before taking over for Wade Phillips on Nov. 8.
To me, though, Garrett has more experience here and now, and is thus better suited to coach these Cowboys going forward than Cowher, Gruden, Brian Billick or Jimmy Johnson himself.
Jones said on Monday he sees this as a team capable of going back to the playoffs next year. Could a new coach come in and get a team into the postseason? Sure, it happens all the time.
But could one do so if he only has two weeks to implement his system, as is a possibility because of the league's unstable labor situation? A lockout could drag on into the fall. How could anyone expect a new coach to be competitive if he's only meeting his team just a matter of days before the first game.
"Those are the challenges, and real," Jones said. "And so you go in here with minimum days, really weeks, to prepare a team and talk about wholesale changes, that would be tough to do."
Jones said his doesn't expect any headway on a new CBA agreement for at least the first three weeks after the Cowboys' season ends on Sunday, and didn't have a timetable for when he wanted to make a hire. But he did say his optimism and faith in the owners' intent to get a deal done would allow him to operate on the premise there will not be a delayed labor stoppage.
That might not be wise. How can Jones be so certain about the will of the NFL Players Association to make a deal? NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith has been pounding the drums of war for nearly two years now.
So if Jones really wants and expects these Cowboys to immediately go back to competing for division titles and even Super Bowls, he should put the greatest emphasis on stability at the top of the staff.
Parts need changing on this team, no doubt. The stay of quite a few players and even some assistant coaches has probably run its course. But what has Garrett done in seven games as the head guy to make anyone think he's not perfectly suited for the job?
Everyone remembers where this team's mental state was toward the end of Phillips' run, when they would wilt at the slightest adversity and weren't even competitive in the last two games. Garrett is more of a hard-nosed, demanding guy than a lot of us, myself included, ever realized. He instilled mental toughness in this team right away, and, if you've noticed, his offense has still been chugging along pretty well, even with backups playing at just about every skill position.
There's not a smarter guy available, or a guy who comes from a better football family, or a guy who is as devoted to doing the job, or a guy who we know knows how to work with Jones.
Parcells left the Giants and Jets because of his health. Garrett is young and healthy.
Cowher left the Steelers to spend time with his kids. Garrett doesn't have kids.
Gruden was fired from the Buccaneers because of diminishing returns after winning a Super Bowl his first year. Garrett took over a pitiful 1-7 Cowboys team and made them worth watching.
See, the most well-prepared, best-suited guy for the job is already here. He already has his stuff in Landry's office. It makes the most sense to keep him.
So when Jones says things like he's interested in the challenge of doing something that's never been done before, like setting a Super Bowl-winning coach up to win another in Dallas, consider that he might just be trying to generate headlines for a team few are willing to talk about right now.
He won't want to upstage this Super Bowl, played in his stadium, so he might as well make waves through the media now, because a big splash shouldn't be in store.
Don't go chasing waterfalls, Jerry. Just stick to the coach you're used to.
