Garrett is a great coach waiting to happen

[Jipper]

Build a strong offense line and use a run heavy ball control offense to hide a weak defense when the league was trending towards hurry up and passing.

Pretty solid point

 

[Sydla]

That fairly good team he took over was 1-7 And for the most part over the hill....agaim. I think the comparison the poster was trying to make was during the early years of both careers respectively...no one would be dumb enough to say Garrett compares to Landry in the 70s and 80s

The comparison fails even for early in their careers.

Landry took over a team THAT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A ROSTER. He had to build the team entirely from scratch and didn't have the luxury of more lax expansion rules we saw from the league when they added Jax and Carolina.

 

[Sydla]

Build a strong offense line and use a run heavy ball control offense to hide a weak defense when the league was trending towards hurry up and passing.

LOL, so building a ball control offense to take pressure off a weak defense is a new innovation that we should give credit to Garrett for?

And let's be honest. What has that ball control, hide the bad defense gotten us? Not much. It's resulted in just one playoff win.

 

[Sydla]

That fairly good team he took over was 1-7 And for the most part over the hill....agaim. I think the comparison the poster was trying to make was during the early years of both careers respectively...no one would be dumb enough to say Garrett compares to Landry in the 70s and 80s

Garrett has handed a franchise QB and an elite defender in Ware. He had a massive head start over Landry.

 

[Aviano90]

Build a strong offense line and use a run heavy ball control offense to hide a weak defense when the league was trending towards hurry up and passing.

That is a solid point and I agree, although he didn't invent this strategy. The issue I have is we play ball control for the first 28 minutes, but then has mismanaged the clock to save time for our opponents numerous times after the 2 minute warning allowing the opponent more time to mount their own drive prior to halftime. For example, calling a timeout with 50 seconds left when we have 1st & goal from the 1 yard line instead of letting the clock wind down before running the play. We still had 2 timeouts to be able to use on 2nd and/or 3rd down if needed. This was against Atlanta in 2015 and the Falcons drove the field almost scoring their own TD before settling for the FG before half time.

 

[ESisback]

The misery is so much worse because we have a mediocre HC who likes to clap and yell, “fight, fight, fight”, when he should be making in game adjustments or managing the clock!!

You seem to enjoy yourself.

 

[School]

LOL, so building a ball control offense to take pressure off a weak defense is a new innovation that we should give credit to Garrett for?

And let's be honest. What has that ball control, hide the bad defense gotten us? Not much. It's resulted in just one playoff win.

It depends on how you define innovation.

If you're going by the book, then it's really a meaningless question since pretty much everything in the NFL has been done before in some capacity.

I tend to think of innovation as doing something others aren't and having success doing it.

Philly was innovative when they made aggressive trades at a time when most of the league was being conservative.

Likewise, Garrett's ball control offense was innovative, as strange as it is to say that, partly because it attacked defenses at their weak point, as most defenses were gearing up to stop the pass.

Yes he makes boneheaded decisions and mismanages the clock in key situation as @Aviano90 rightfully pointed out. But I'd say those deficiencies are not part the question at hand.

 

[Sydla]

It depends on how you define innovation.

If you're going by the book, then it's really a meaningless question since pretty much everything in the NFL has been done before in some capacity.

I tend to think of innovation as doing something others aren't and having success doing it.

Philly was innovative when they made aggressive trades at a time when most of the league was being conservative.

Likewise, Garrett's ball control offense was innovative, as strange as it is to say that, partly because it attacked defenses at their weak point, as most defenses were gearing up to stop the pass.

Yes he makes boneheaded decisions and mismanages the clock in key situation as @Aviano90 rightfully pointed out. But I'd say those deficiencies are not part the question at hand.

In no way is running the ball to protect the defense innovative. By any definition.

 

[School]

In no way is running the ball to protect the defense innovative. By any definition.

It is only if you're ignoring context such as league trends and roster building.

 

[Sydla]

It is only if you're ignoring context such as league trends and roster building.

The context is overstated. Teams have run the ball for years to control the clock, even in the NFL. People are making it seem like running the ball was on life support in the NFL and Jason Garrett brought it back from the brink of extinction.

In 2014, the Cowboys ran the ball 508 times. That wasn't even highest in the league that year. It was 3rd. And if you look back over the previous ten years, it wouldn't even rank in the Top 10 of rushing totals. So no, this idea that Garrett was doing something people had stopped doing is a reach.

I think, in the end, this just highlights how desperate it has become for some to justify why Garrett is a good coach. We are now trying to give him credit for being innovative in running the ball.

 

[LACowboysFan1]

In no way is running the ball to protect the defense innovative. By any definition.

I tend to agree, being innovative involves having new ideas or methods, if it's been done before, it's not new, therefore it's not innovative.

Landry's 4-3 defense was innovative, teams used the 5-2, 5-3, 6-1, etc. defensive alignment, nobody used 4-3 as their base defense.

But true innovation is rare since we've had football since the 1800's...

 

[School]

The context is overstated. Teams have run the ball for years to control the clock, even in the NFL. People are making it seem like running the ball was on life support in the NFL and Jason Garrett brought it back from the brink of extinction.

In 2014, the Cowboys ran the ball 508 times. That wasn't even highest in the league that year. It was 3rd. And if you look back over the previous ten years, it wouldn't even rank in the Top 10 of rushing totals. So no, this idea that Garrett was doing something people had stopped doing is a reach.

I think, in the end, this just highlights how desperate it has become for some to justify why Garrett is a good coach. We are now trying to give him credit for being innovative in running the ball.

Just looking at the total number of rushes, like many counting stats, is misleading, since, among other reasons, the offense often ran the play clock all the way down to shorten the game.

I would also say merely calling it ball control is an understatement, since it was really an overwhelming strength that many teams simply couldn't match up with.

I think in the end, this just highlights how desperate some have become to not give Garrett, admittedly a heavily flawed coach, any modicum of credit when he actually does something right.

 

[Sydla]

Just looking at the total number of rushes, like many counting stats, is misleading, since, among other reasons, the offense often ran the play clock all the way down to shorten the game.

I would also say merely calling it ball control is an understatement, since it was really an overwhelming strength that many teams simply couldn't match up with.

I think in the end, this just highlights how desperate some have become to not give Garrett, admittedly a heavily flawed coach, any modicum of credit when he actually does something right.

You want to think it's misleading because it undermines your point. But the context you claimed is Garrett going against the flow of the league, what was becoming too pass happy. Well certainly, if that context is to hold water, the Cowboys' rushing totals would seemingly be an outlier against previous years.

But they weren't. They were right in line with previous seasons for teams that ran the ball a lot. Further, let's go with TOP, since that's also something you are pushing. The Cowboys TOP for 2014, for example, ranked #1 at 32:52. Ranked second? The Steelers at 32:24 and Seahawks at 32:22. Not exactly huge differences here. The previous year, that TOP wouldn't have ranked first. The Chargers were over 33 minutes a game in 2013. Or 2012.

So again, this idea that Garrett was doing something counter to what the league was doing and trending towards is a myth. It may have been different for the Cowboys who had allowed Romo to throw the ball a ton and then shifted to more ball control, but what the Cowboys finally started doing in 2014 wasn't something that had disappeared from the NFL. There were other teams in the NFL eating clock and running the ball a lot.

He gets the credit when he does something of value. I give him credit for a nice job in 2016 when he took a rookie led team to 13-3 (really 14-2 that last Eagles game was a joke). So if you are trying to argue that I don't want to give him credit, that's bogus. I just don't accept made up successes to credit him for that aren't backed by actual evidence.

 

[LACowboysFan1]

I think in the end, this just highlights how desperate some have become to not give Garrett, admittedly a heavily flawed coach, any modicum of credit when he actually does something right.[/QUOTE]

Why would anyone want to keep a "heavily flawed" coach?

No coach is perfect, but surely we can do better than "heavily flawed"...

 

[Sarge]

Name one thing innovative that Garrett has done or come up with (aside from icing his own kicker).

 

[Idgit]

Being 'innovative' is like being 'unpredictable.' Those things are great if they help you score points. If you score points at a higher rate than most everybody else does, anyway, it doesn't matter how you get it done. What Garrett's done offensively in Dallas has generally worked well. It's ok to admit that.

As far as being 'great' goes, who cares if he's great. All that really matters is whether or not the team can win a championship with him. If you're going to take a lesson from really good coaches like Saban and Carroll and Johnson, the message should be that winning NFL championships is hard. Those guys can all coach, I don't think that can be disputed. When they have the talent, they've been unbeatable at times. When they didn't...not so much.

The NFL is about the players more than it is the coaches. A guy that can get you 12 or 13 wins can get you to a championship if you put the right guys around him. Doing that's a lot easier said than done, though. That's the area where Dallas has fallen short during the current run. We've done a good, but not great, job of assembling the talent. There are several reasons for that. If that gets fixed, Garrett will do the same job he's always done and people when then think he's great. But it'll still be about the players more than it is the coaches.

 

[Jipper]

I think in the end, this just highlights how desperate some have become to not give Garrett, admittedly a heavily flawed coach, any modicum of credit when he actually does something right.

Why would anyone want to keep a "heavily flawed" coach?

No coach is perfect, but surely we can do better than "heavily flawed"...[/QUOTE]


Who calls him heavily flawed other than a bunch of disgruntled fans on a social site? I don't see any of the sports analysts using this vernacular.

He has things to work on but I think it gets magnified bc fans on here are just so frustrated with not having success.

 

[Sydla]

Who calls him heavily flawed other than a bunch of disgruntled fans on a social site? I don't see any of the sports analysts using this vernacular.

He has things to work on but I think it gets magnified bc fans on here are just so frustrated with not having success.

LOL. That's exactly the point. Why continue to support the employment of a coach that has not had much success over 7 years?

Isn't that what coaches are supposed to be judged on? Success? What should be base our beliefs in Garrett on? His hair?

And I don't know if you've looked around recently, but there are few sports analysts left that openly defend Garrett at this point. At best, some have slipped into the reality that time is running out for him to prove something here.

 

[Jipper]

LOL. That's exactly the point. Why continue to support the employment of a coach that has not had much success over 7 years?

Isn't that what coaches are supposed to be judged on? Success? What should be base our beliefs in Garrett on? His hair?

And I don't know if you've looked around recently, but there are few sports analysts left that openly defend Garrett at this point. At best, some have slipped into the reality that time is running out for him to prove something here.

Not openly defending him is not the same as calling him "heavily flawed"...

And the reason I support him is because I have seen him c ompletly rebuild a team and the fact that he now has a 100% team that he built...if he can't win with it this year to the tune of 10 wins at least then I will be ready to move on.

 

[Aviano90]

Who calls him heavily flawed other than a bunch of disgruntled fans on a social site? I don't see any of the sports analysts using this vernacular.

He has things to work on but I think it gets magnified bc fans on here are just so frustrated with not having success.

He was trying to quote School, who called him heavily flawed.