It's a fascinating soap opera with regards to the progression to the point of Garrett being fired and Stephen Jones now making all football decisions with Jerry just retaining veto power.
I think the original hiring of Garrett as HC helped the progression of Stephen Jones to his current status.
The mistake was giving Garrett a new contract after the 2014 season; however, they had let Garrett's contract expire and they had success in 2014 (12-4 and a playoff win).
- It would be rare for any team to not retain the HC after the 2014 season.
With Garrett as HC Jerry was able to back off because he didn't feel challenged and Garrett knew how to deal with Jerry.
That allowed Stephen Jones to gradually take over the reins without Jerry feeling usurped.
If a Parcells type that got a lot of media attention had been the HC then Jerry would have needed to make big moves in order to get more attention for himself.
Stephen Jones likely wouldn't have taken the reins if Jerry was still in the mode of competing for media attention with a head coach.
- I'm curious (we'll never know) to what extent Stephen Jones helped Garrett to fail.
- I'm certain that SJ was setting it up in conversions with Jerry that they had to put an expectation on Garrett.
- SJ wanted to make certain that they had a quality roster to keep that from being an excuse for Garrett.
- At the same time I think SJ would have pushed for better assistant coaches if he really wanted Garrett to succeed.
- Kiffin then Marinelli.
- Allowing Garrett to alienate their best assistant coach (Bill Callahan).
- The 2019 LB and ST coaching debacles.
- The co-defensive coordinator debacle of 2019.
- Keeping the kicker in 2019 well past when any other team would have kept him.
I'm NOT saying that Stephen Jones deliberately set up Garrett to fail.
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I'm saying that he set it up such that if they failed that Jerry would be forced to blame Garrett.
- This includes the way SJ handled media questions about Garrett and the team in Garrett's last 2 or 3 seasons.
- There needed to be overwhelming fan sentiment publicly calling for Garrett to be fired.
- SJ helped fuel that fan sentiment with comments such as "Garrett has not been good enough".