INDIANAPOLIS — Bill Callahan was the offensive coordinator in name only last season, Jerry Jones said Sunday. Head coach Jason Garrett really had that role, the Cowboys owner explained.
“Jason was really your coordinator last year,” Garrett said. “That’s a fact. That was one of the issues. It was unfair to Bill.”
Callahan was given the play-calling duty last off-season. But the mechanics of the relaying process between Callahan and quarterback Tony Romo were modified during the team’s bye week last November. Starting Nov. 24, in a victory over the New York Giants, quarterbacks coach Wade Wilson was moved from the sideline to the booth to sit alongside Callahan. Garrett then took over Wilson’s headset and would transfer Callahan’s called play to Romo via the communication device in the quarterback’s helmet.
“All of it was manifested by the fact that it was very difficult for Jason to get out of that role,” Jones said of Garrett, who called plays from 2007 to 2012. “We laugh, but there is a difference when you’re sitting in the room and as the coach and you say, ‘hey, wait a minute, y’all put some salt and pepper in there’ than after it has already been cooked and you’re tasting it outside the room and it might need a little salt and pepper. It’s a big difference.’”
Jones said Garrett had “the last pencil down” on an offense that produced its fewest yards per game than since 2005.
“That wasn’t the plan,” Jones said. “Going into training camp, going into OTAs, going into that period of the time, the plan was for Bill to ultimately be the play-caller with Romo executing it…I think calling the plays – I would agree with [Garrett] right there – that that was the last pencil down. Call it the last pencil down. Who has got the last pencil down? I think Jason had the last pencil down all the way through.”
But Garrett didn’t have a headset the first 10 games of the season. So who was really calling the plays throughout 2013?
