Consistency in coaching: Daryl Johnston on the Dan Patrick Show

[pancakeman]

Thanks for posting Idgit. I love Moose - great player and great analyst.

[visionary]

Originally Posted by Idgit

This is one of those '100% accurate, probably didn't really need to be mentioned' things. But, yeah, I agree that we should avoid being consistently bad. Or even inconsistently bad, if we can pull it off.

Bad is never a good thing, and I think we can believe that fairly consistently.

when blindness and excuse-making are the norm and cliche-riddled speeches are lauded while results are largely set aside

then sometimes the obvious needs to be stated

[Idgit]

Originally Posted by visionary

when blindness and excuse-making are the norm and cliche-riddled speeches are lauded while results are largely set aside

then sometimes the obvious needs to be stated

I'll be eagerly awaiting your 'interceptions should be frowned upon' thread.

[arglebargle]

Originally Posted by rickjameschinaclub

To outsmart somebody, you have to be smarter than them. Going to Princeton doesn't mean your smarter than your opponent.

Of course, it is always easier to outcoach someone when they are the TV....

[Idgit]

Originally Posted by arglebargle

Of course, it is always easier to outcoach someone when they are the TV....

I don't think that poster is going to reply to you.

[Picksix]

Originally Posted by CowboysPhan

Wow, that's a fascinating stat. One would expect the teams with the lowest 3 and out percentage to be among the league's best teams, and vice-versa, but when you look at that list, there seems to be very little correlation. Dallas was number three, while Baltimore and Houston, for example, were terrible about getting 3 and outs, but look where they ended up.
Our problem on offense was not that we had a lot of 3 and outs, it was that we had a HUGE number of long drives where we would stall and come away with 3 or zero points.

Originally Posted by DanteEXT

I do not have that stat in front of me, but in thinking back on the season it feels like the team had to try and drive the length of the field more often than not. Again, that may be revisionist without credible data to back it up.

If you look at "total drives", you'll notice that we also had fewer drives than all but 5-6 teams. That will contribute to lack of scoring.

[Super_Kazuya]

Originally Posted by pancakeman

Thanks for posting Idgit. I love Moose - great player and great analyst.

I couldn't agree more... he represents the Cowboys, NFL and Fox well with his intelligent analysis. And he's always been great in the community as well.

[BHendri5]

Originally Posted by LatinMind

i agree with what he says. Except that it wasnt just the OL. Its clear that JG tried to outsmart opposing coaches but ended up outsmarting his offense into alot of 3 and outs.

no, his offense did not execute, period. Now if you had said this about Rob ryan I agree 100%

[BHendri5]

Originally Posted by rickjameschinaclub

Funny how nobody was talking about consistency in coaching when Wade was here...

yeah, they did, you just conveniently forgot about it. Wade is a bum as a HC but as a DC he is very very good.

[BHendri5]

Originally Posted by Hoofbite

I'm not sure I would consider an OL swap the biggest move that Baltimore made.

They fired their OC which kind of flies in the face of his point about consistency.

Consistency is great when things are working. When they aren't it's not called "consistency". I was with the idea of consistency when Wade was around and Dallas had just made the playoffs. However, 2010 is a perfect example where consistency doesn't count for squat because being consistently bad is not something to strive for.

The idea of consistency in terms of Garrett is interesting given the moves that have been made.

[View Full Quote]First and foremost if we attribute the moves he has made to only his decision making, Garrett doesn't have the slightest cluse as to what consistency is. He'll now have switched WR and DCs twice by the beginning of his 3rd full season as a coach. And we can throw in Skip Peete as well because he was recently just offered a new contract, wasn't he? How is that consistent? One year the guy gets the okay from the HC and the next he's out the door?

The reality is, we know better than that to just assume that Garrett is the guy who's calling all of those shots.

No matter what, Dallas will not get consistency because Jason is going to make some moves he wants to make and Jerry will get his in there as well.

no, you and others think you know better

[Hoofbite]

Originally Posted by BHendri5

no, you and others think you know better

Oh is that right? Tells us about it.

[Shiloht88]

Originally Posted by Idgit

Listen to what DJ has to say here, starting at around the 8 minute mark. Apart from being a vote of confidence in our current staff (and by that, I mostly mean the position coaches, but I think his argument probably applies to who the play caller is), it sounds like he's of the opinion that even our OL personnel is closer than we might think. (That's reading between the lines, a bit, but not all *that* much).

[View Full Quote]I also happen to agree with him about Andy Reid in KC. Good stuff, to go along with the Michael Irvin interview if you haven't checked in on that thread yet already.

DJ? Never heard him referred to that way, Moose yes, but maybe I've been living under a rock. Cool video though.

[Idgit]

A couple other quotes from DJ from the interview today at dc.com:

“The turnovers became a big thing for Dallas this year,” Johnston said. “But in my opinion, everybody keeps talking about getting rid of Tony Romo. You get rid of Tony Romo, there’s a lot of teams out there that are going to scoop him up real quick.

“To me, the big thing is the head coach/quarterback relationship, and consistency is one of the hallmarks of teams that are having success. New England, New Orleans, Green Bay now, let’s see what happens with Colin Kaepernick and Jim Harbaugh. That relationship is critical to a team’s success. If you continue to disrupt it because we have this win right now attitude in the NFL, you never get the opportunity.”

Romo tied his career high with 19 interceptions last season, following an efficient 2011 season in which he threw 31 touchdowns and just 10 interceptions.

[View Full Quote]He was forced to throw nearly 100 more passes in 2012 than he had in any year prior behind an offensive line that struggled to open any room for running lanes. With Dez Bryant’s emergence at receiver and Jason Witten’s reliability at tight end, Romo was put into a situation where the team had to pass to move the ball.

“Everybody has an off year once in a while and you really have to look at the body of work, and why was it a struggle?” Johnston said. “What were the issues? Is it all on one person? And it’s not in this situation. There’s a lot of people that contributed to the tough year.”

Despite the high volume of interceptions, Romo still completed 65.6 percent of his passes and threw 28 touchdowns. He finished the year with a career-high 4,903 passing yards.

“I don’t know if he slid back,” Johnston said. “You have no offensive line. The first time they played together as a unit was Week 1. They were banged up all year long. They’re flipping tackles. It was a state of disarray on the offensive line. That’s going to impact your quarterback more than anybody. So did he slide back, or was it just a difficult season because of all the other circumstances going around? That’s why when you make a decision like that to fire a coach, to move on to another quarterback, you’ve really got to take a step back and see what were all the elements that led to this.”

http://www.dallascowboys.com/news/ar...4-ba6b6034da3f

As to Hoofbite's coaching consistency comment, while I think it's a good and fair point, there are a lot of mitigating factors. To begin with, consistency at HC and coordinator positions is one thing. Juggling position coaches is another, entirely. I think Skip Peete probably was a casualty of Callahan's zone blocking scheme, which is a reasonable move to make.

On changing the DC, that's a move to me that smacks of Jerry's influence. I say that based purely on my own supposition, but I don't think Jerry liked Rob, and I think that spending the money on the secondary and not seeing it be more opportunistic really hurt Ryan. I think JG really genuinely him and am guessing he was reluctant to see him go. And I think it was an unpopular move among the players pretty much universally. In fairness to Garrett, no matter how you look at it, this is only one DC switch after two seasons; it's not fair to criticize him for Pasqualoni's interim appearance mid-season.

As far as Robinson goes, I guess we'll wait to hear the full story on that one. I don't think we want to lose him, and I think he's the one who wants to take a lesser role with the club. And it might even be health-related. The fact that we're keeping him on in a consultative capacity suggests this is not a regular position coaching shuffle.