Garrett Addresses Clock Management On Final Scoring Drive vs. Packers

[CowboyRoy]

Until JG admits that he mismanaged the clock then he’ll never progress as a coach, people who become good at their jobs admit their mistakes and learn from them...but Garrett never takes fault for these epic screw ups, so how can he learn and become better? In his mind it is always someone else’s fault...Garrett is a jag as a coach, the only time his team looks good is in seasons with 4th place schedule, this year it’s a first place schedule and it shows...

Time for a complete overhaul of the coaching staff...however...that will not happen, Jones has his perfect yes man, and that says a lot about Jones...true leaders don’t want yes men, they want visionaries...I have 0 respect for Jones...

The one thing has never happened in Dallas is for the media to gang up on this clown and force Jerry to kick Garrett out of town. In PHilly or other great sports towns, this kind of pathetic ineptitude by a head coach would never stand. Local media would be calling for his head 5 years ago.

 

[Jarv]

You might have a point about Wade because he's been fired more that all the folks on "The Apprentice". My guess is the O'Brien will also be fired if the Texans players perform poorly for the rest of the season. You can bet money that Bellicheat will never take ownership of losses and he's not in danger of losing his job either.

How much money? There is a ton of more examples too...

http://www.nbcsports.com/boston/new...akes-blame-broken-coverage-led-dolphins-score

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap20...elichick-admits-he-was-wrong-in-patriots-game

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/...enny-stills/m1uuHtdLhnayW7p8yqEkdL/story.html

 

[Staubacher]

If you watch the video of Dak's TD, you can clearly see the DB that Witten was blocking was making zero effort to stop Dak. The Green Bay defense was apparently instructed to let Dallas score if we got the first down. We fell into their trap. If the opposition wants you to do something, we should be trying to do the opposite.

They knew if they got the ball with any reasonable time on the clock they would have a great chance at tying the game. I would have milked the clock down to under 25 seconds even if it meant we finished the game without the TD. Four shots from the 1 was still our best chance to win the game in regulation.

It's funny because I hear everyone say that you have to get the TD when you can, and yet I hear so many coaches and media now say that Dallas made the mistake of leaving too much time on the clock. They are now saying that you cannot leave that much time for an Aaron Rodgers or a Tom Brady, and I agree. That is why the right decision was to take a knee after we got the first.

Whether you lose with your defense on the field or whether you lose with your offense on the field, It is still a loss. I'll take my chances with the offense. Garrett needs to know his own team's strengths and weaknesses.

Excellent post. Spot on.

Let me add:

Right before the half after Dak was sacked we had a 3rd down near midfield 9 secs left and 2 timeouts. Call a TO there and take a 15-20 yard shot down the field, call last TO and set up Dan Bailey. Garrett didn't even try, knowing Packers just scored a TD and would have the ball to begin the 2nd half.

Everyone on earth knows the Dallas defense stinks and Rodgers is on the sidelines smirking and licking his chops. Everyone also knows our offense is the team's strength by far. The whole philosophy of management this season was rebuild the defense with draft picks and hope the offense covers. So Garrett coaches opposite of that? What a clueless idiot.

 

[links18]

Yep. Fans criticizing the game mgmt in that final sequence looking for perfection to mask our defense need to get a grip or leave their agendas against Garrett at the door .

The offense did their part with an impressive time consuming drive for the potential game winning TD. At some point we need a defense which can close games out or at least extend them.

Even Aikman said you shouldn't try to score too soon in that situation, but you know its just Aikman, three Super Bowl rings and all.

 

[Everson24]

"The objective in that situation is to go down and score a touchdown,'' Garrett said. "When you get down there close, the sole objective is to score a touchdown.

"If we can somehow score a touchdown on the last play of the game and give them no time, that's fantastic. But you have to be careful about being too cute there. You have to give yourself a chance to win the ballgame, first and foremost, by scoring a touchdown.''

"Too cute" was thinking you could score and then stop Aaron Rodgers and the offense you hadn't stopped the entire second half. This defense creates zero turnovers and always play soft zone even when a FG could tie or beat you. It was a terrible decision to leave such an important game in the hands of your pathetic defense.

 

[vlad]

From O-coordinator to now, I really am surprised how many people still defend Garrett. IHe throws players, coaches, etc under the bus, makes no or ridiculous game calls, like this one here (and don't tell me its Linehan, he's not the head coach that can say "run it to milk the clock"

On the other hand anyone calling for Dak to kneel down at the one is even more, yes more, ridiculous. What if someone false starts, holds, etc...plus, what you are going to take a knee on first down? You take the points and because you HC was dumb enough to allow a pass on 2nd down and 2 with that much time left, you deal with it on D and hope for the best.

 

[Diehardblues]

Let's deal in realities.

The reality is our defense isn't very good. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. And I bet that even the most diehard Garrett defenders swallowed hard after Prescott's touchdown and realized Rodgers had over a minute left with a timeout. In a perfect world, sure, offense scores, defense shuts him down, we go home winners that day. But that's not what happened. What happened was utterly predictable.

A fade pass, at that point in the game, from that down and distance is a peculiar call at best, idiotic at worst. And guess what? The results of the game pretty much indicate that the wrong call was made there. That's the beauty of sports. At the end of the game, we have the final results and we can see how decisions the coaching staff affected the outcome.

We needed the TD first. We'd been a little lucky on 2 close 4th downs that could have easily gone the other way to extend that drive.

It's inside 2 minutes. Scoring is #1 priority. Anything could have happened after that.

Sure we knew with over a minute left the game was far from over but if we don't score it doesn't matter.

At least we made them need a TD instead of a FG. No, this game is on our defense and much credit goes to Rodgers .

Looking for any blame with our offense and coaching staff in that sequence is grasping for straws to support a narrative.

 

[Diehardblues]

Our issues are much greater than any shortcoming we have in coaching.

Our defense has given up14 scores in their last 18 possessions .

Even when we control the clock taking 8 or 9 minutes to score our opponent only needs a minute or two.

It's really silly attempting to dissect our offense any further. Fix a defense that can make stops when the game is on the line and we start winning more and going deeper in playoffs .

Looking for a coaching staff to call a perfect game on offense to offset that is ridiculous.

 

[Walker]

How many times have we talked about time management and losing games as a result.

 

[aria]

I'm playing devils advocate here, I like Dak but hypothetically if we ran the ball and Zeke scored, which he very well may have, would there still be this much criticism on JG?

I understand a pass shouldn't even have been in the cards but would you expect Dak to stop at the 1 and not score? Same with Zeke if he had the ball?

 

[SultanOfSix]

He'll get it next year guys.

It's only the eighth year into a twenty year process. The team still has twelve more years to go before they win that coveted Super Bowl appearance that was once was a common thought in the twenty winning seasons of Tom Landry. The next Landry is about to break through and "get it". I can just feel it.

 

[TheMarathonContinues]

Well for starters, only a few people are arguing that Dak should have slid at the one yard line.

What most people have an issue with is the fade pattern on 2nd down. That was a dumb decision.

You are trying to score. What if we ran on 2nd down and Zeke scores? We have even less time on the clock. Go out there and score. I don't care how you do it. Defense needs to make stops.

 

[TheMarathonContinues]

I'm playing devils advocate here, I like Dak but hypothetically if we ran the ball and Zeke scored, which he very well may have, would there still be this much criticism on JG?

I understand a pass shouldn't even have been in the cards but would you expect Dak to stop at the 1 and not score? Same with Zeke if he had the ball?

Exactly....no one is bringing if Zeke scores there. Everyone assumes he wouldn't have.

 

[TheMarathonContinues]

Putting it on Dak to knell at the one to make up for Garrett's poor decision to throw the ball. That's why I disagree with any negative Dak threads. It the Cowboys can't get to the Superbowl with either Romo or Dak, then the problem clearly isn't the QB as much as it is the coaching. Common factor in Romo/Dak's prime years being wasted are Garrett and the front office.

When this is not the first time that Garrett has been bad at clock management.

So Garrett called that fade? Or was it Linehan? Or did Dak check out of a run?

 

[MRV52]

I don’t understand all the hate for the playcall.

First things first, the Cowboys are down 4 points. And you have to score. And you have a great red zone threat in Dez. Should they have ran the ball? Probably. Was throwing it up to Dez an inherently bad playcall? I don’t think so. If I was coach it would have been a running play but I understand the call that was made.

#1 Priority there is scoring a TD. Worry about big, bad, scary Aaron Rodgers next.

You don't throw a pass in that situation where GB still had a timeout. even a pop warner coach would know what to do in that situation. Such a stupid call.

 

[TheMarathonContinues]

So you'd rather be a proven moron by screwing up and definitively losing the game than being a hypothetical moron based on a series of what-if's?

So what do we even pay the defense for? What do we pay Maranelli for if we keep making excuses for this defense? It's to the point now we are upset he scored too fast so we should risk not scoring at all then score.

 

[Sydla]

We needed the TD first. We'd been a little lucky on 2 close 4th downs that could have easily gone the other way to extend that drive.

It's inside 2 minutes. Scoring is #1 priority. Anything could have happened after that.

Sure we knew with over a minute left the game was far from over but if we don't score it doesn't matter.

At least we made them need a TD instead of a FG. No, this game is on our defense and much credit goes to Rodgers .

Looking for any blame with our offense and coaching staff in that sequence is grasping for straws to support a narrative.

There are many ways to score a TD. Why pick one of the lowest percentage plays?

You can try to ignore the clock shouldn't be a factor but that would be silly. Shoot, the coaches were worried about the clock, hence the conservative, ground and pound drive with nothing but quick dump off passes. They wanted to chew up clock.

And right when they had run this drive to perfection, they go full blown moron and call one of the lowest percentage passes you could call that has a high probability of not being complete and giving the Packers a needed free timeout.

It's mind numbing people are justifying that play call, at that point in the game, at that spot on the field, with the circumstances as they were.

The only narrative at play here is people like yourself who just can't criticize Garrett. When a team loses, the blame for a loss can lie with many people. In this case, no one is excusing the defense. They failed. But the offense had a chance to protect the defense and they didn't because the coaches, after running a pretty picture perfect drive, went full blown knucklehead and called a low percentage pass play that actually helped the Packers.

PS - Am I misreading your post above? They only needed a FG to tie and force OT. So they didn't have to score a TD.

 

[TheMarathonContinues]

You don't throw a pass in that situation where GB still had a timeout. even a pop warner coach would know what to do in that situation. Such a stupid call.

And what if you don't scare? Garrett is a moron would be all over this site.

 

[BotchedLobotomy]

You don't throw a pass in that situation where GB still had a timeout. even a pop warner coach would know what to do in that situation. Such a stupid call.

Not only do you NOT throw a pass in that situation, but if you are dumb enough to do it, throw something with a better chance of being successful than a corner fade pass.

 

[aria]

Exactly....no one is bringing if Zeke scores there. Everyone assumes he wouldn't have.

Yeah, I thinks there's a high probability he woukd have. I think JG catches a lot more flak then he deserves. It's extremely difficult to plan these things to a T. Only here does a coach get criticized for getting a TD, unless the blame goes to Dak which I wouldn't agree with either.

If JG called running plays that got stopped he would be criticized for not doing more with the game on the line. He can only do so much. If you want to blame the defense have at it but to blame JG for scoring a needed TD with a little over a minute left is ridiculous.