Good point. There's no team that never has any penalties. Your hand accidentally comes up and touches the opponent's facemask, you don't grab, but the ref thinks you do -- sometimes things like that happen. There were a few bogus penalties. However, most of the penalties against the Cowboys were legitimate, and many of them were just plain stupid, as you point out. There were so many false starts, I thought Phil Pozderac must be back. My school's football coach would simply make players run extra laps if they committed a stupid penalty. He didn't bring in refs to call them. He simply watched for them himself, as did the assistant coach. The Cowboys could afford to bring in some refs to call penalties in practice. Would something as simple as making players run laps for committing penalties work? I also wouldn't allow any bling on the practice field or the playing field. If some player buys an expensive diamond necklace, that's fine. It's his money. But that thing had better not show up on the field or he's putting it in his locker and is running laps. I would also punish players and coaches for being late to meetings. I'm not sure if money fines would work, given how much they make. So maybe pushups in front of the class, plus an apology for being late.
These are old school things I know from high school football, but you would think the psychology behind them would work in the pros. I know for a fact that Coach Landry was great at discipline. I know someone who worked for the team back then. He told me that Landry, while he didn't scream and yell, had a way of making a player feel two inches tall if he made a screw up, but then he could make him feel super appreciated if he corrected the mistake. I think all great coaches are good at discipline. Bud Grant of the Vikings was great at it. While he never won a Super Bowl, he fielded several great teams that came close. Chuck Noll of the Steelers was also great at it.
It had been my hope that McCarthy would instill great discipline. He's a Super-Bowl-winning coach, after all. But we haven't seen it yet.
