Getting to division championship games in three consecutive seasons is nothing to crow about, but it's an accomplishment of sorts. Doing so with a bottom-ten passing defense three years in a row is more impressive yet, though it also says a lot that he wasn't able to improve the passing defense. It's ok to say that game management probably cost us the GB game. That and the holding penalty on a running down that cost us Detroit mean we have to play a meaningful game this week against the odds when we could be resting starters. Some of that's definitely on the head coach. At the same time, this team and this coach are nowhere near as bad as they're made out to be. We've led the division from the starting gun until week 14 or whatever it was, and we're still in contention and control our destiny. To hear some talk, we've been a laughingstock and a dumpster fire all year, and that's just not the case.
And, one note about the improbably losses: this is what happens when you have top-heavy talent allocation on your team. You have to count on players who don't have the skills available to other teams. It bit us under Wade in 2007 and 2009, too. And it bit us under Parcels. Remember when he said we were a dumb team that beat ourselves by mental errors, and one of the reasons he left was because he didn't know how to fix it? This problem has been going on for a lot longer than just under Jason Garrett. At least right now, the problem is largely related to our pass defense, and can be pretty much directly tied to S play and DL and coverage LB decline and injury. We *know* what's wrong. That doesn't mean we can fix it, but I still prefer a positive diagnosis and addressing that aggressively in the offseason to a tear down/rebuild process where we can have a 4th consecutive coach who leads us to 2-3 improbably losses each season that keep us out of the serious playoff hunt.
