Getty Jason Garrett
It’s a question so redundant in Cowboys Nation that it doesn’t warrant utterance. Alas …
Addressing the media Wednesday, as his squad attempts to shake off its heartbreaker against Minnesota, embattled lame-duck Dallas head coach Jason Garrett was queried on whether he considers himself to be a good “game manager,” a term normally reserved for quarterbacks; in this case, let’s presume it means a coach capable of managing all aspects of his team, for all sixty minutes, free of detriment.
Like a middling QB would do, he offered his sharpest non-answer.
“That’s something we strive to, as players and coaches, and certainly my role, absolutely you always try to learn from your experiences and do it really at a high level,” said (per The Athletic) Garrett, now in his tenth year at the helm, commander of a ship that was just blindsided by Vikings. “Have we been perfect every time? No. Are we constantly trying to get better at it? Absolutely.”
The Week 10 loss is a small sample size and not necessarily indicative of the entire picture. Their opponent gets paid, too, and they happen to be a very strong club. But it was earmarked by everything holding the Cowboys back — the reason why they’re 5-4 rather than 7-2: coaching.
Such as having only 10 defensive players on the field during Dalvin Cook’s 30-yard screen pass, on a drive which resulted in a touchdown, the difference in a 28-24 game.
“Yeah, didn’t do a good enough job getting our communication right to have 11 out there. Obviously, you want to have 11,” Garrett said Wednesday, via the Dallas Morning News. “We didn’t handle that situation well enough.”
Or failing to override your young, impressionable offensive coordinator who quite literally ran Ezekiel Elliott into the ground.
Or forcing punt returner Tavon Austin to call a fair catch in the waning seconds despite seeing nothing but green in front of him. (Then, as the capper, in his post-game press conference, incorrectly blaming Austin for the mixup.)
“It’s my responsibility, my fault, my job to make sure we do it better,” Garrett said Wednesday, via Maven Sports’ Mike Fisher.
Know better, do better? Believe it when you see it. Garrett’s had a decade to master that concept, yet the Cowboys are wasting a Super Bowl-caliber roster and blowing similar expectations, and doing so with the most maddening of self-inflicted mistakes.
Maybe Dallas will play with the required amount of players on defense Sunday against the Detroit Lions. Maybe, by then, they’ll have learned to trust their franchise field general, who’s spearheading the NFL’s best offense in total yards per game (437.4) and the league’s third-best passing attack (299.2 YPG). Maybe they’ll better communicate to Austin what he should do, and perhaps grant him the freedom to audible.
The sad part is, it can’t be assumed that these things — Football 101 — are properly executed on any given Sunday.
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Garrett (Seemingly) Blamed Kellen Moore for Week 10 Struggles
Garrett, being the former quarterback that he is, passed the buck to his fresh-faced subordinate. Garrett, being the head coach that he is, declined to accept responsibility for the Cowboys‘ loss to the Vikings on Sunday night. The team’s penultimate drive in which Dallas snatched defeat from the jaws of victory? Ask Kellen Moore.
“Kellen’s calling the game,” Garrett said about his offensive coordinator on Monday, via The Athletic. “In that situation, it’s 2nd and 2. He felt like he had a good opportunity against a favorable box to run the ball in those situations. On each of those plays we had options beyond just the run.”
Second-and-2 from Minnesota’s 11-yard line. One minute and 33 seconds left. Down four. The rest of the series: Two stuffed Elliott runs, then a pass to Elliott — Elliott, and not, say, star wide receiver Amari Cooper, who tallied a game-high 147 yards on 11 receptions, one of which went for a gorgeous 25-yard, toe-tapping, end zone-scraping touchdown.
The sequence of events defies logic. It’s unexplainable and inexplicable to take the ball away from Prescott, who threw for nearly 400 yards and three TDs. It’s unjustifiable, really. But for someone with self-proclaimed clean hands, free of blood from the pivotal NFC blunder, Garrett went out of his way to rationalize the irrational.
“You want to attack [in] different ways. It’s important for us to try to continue to run the ball,” he told reporters after the game, per NFL.com. “In normal circumstances, you’d think if we give it to Zeke a couple of times second inside of two yards, we’re going to make that. We’re going to make that first down. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen in this game. We got to that fourth down situation and we couldn’t convert.”
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