Just like Saban threw everyone under the bus after the loss to Mobile. There are a lot of "real" head coaches out there who don't take much blame. Parcells never did. What gets me is that I see so often - on this forum - that Garrett doesn't do a good enough job calling people out. To me, it's heat of the moment stuff right after the game, so professionalism tends to take a back seat to emotion.
If you ever listen to Garrett talk about other teams, he *never* really calls anyone out. What he does is critique specific decisions or specific plays, but he does it in the context of the larger game plan, and in that larger game plan he's always very complimentary of everybody. Then he'll make a sweeping generalization: "everybody in the organization needs to do better. I need to do better, the coaches need to do better, Tony needs to do better. And we all understand that. That just comes with the dinner in the NFL. It's a very competitive league and competition is part of the deal..."
I was listening to him praise Jim Haslett's defensive unit this season in WAS, for crying out loud.
What I come down to when I hear people trot out the 'he'll say anything to avoid blame for anything stuff' is whether or not his behavior differs when he's talking about himself as opposed to one of his coaches, or players, or another coach or player on a different team. What I hear is a guy who's entirely consistent in how he handles those types of questions and one who will give very specific criticisms of a play or decision and then, as I said above, sweeping pleasant generalities and platitudes about the process of improvement. I think he does this for a very specific purpose, and it's an obvious part of his strategy for handling the press. What's more, it's really effective.
If I saw a guy who covered for himself any differently than he covered for others, I might change my mind, but the guy's very consistent about what he says and does in front of a microphone.
