Garrett not a good coach?

[Silver N Blue]

Read the article and completely agree. You just dont see people cut up coaches like they do Garrett. At least not guys that have long tenured positions in coaching.

Garrett is a liability on game day and in game day preparation. Especially when it comes to the biggest stage in the playoffs.

You want to talk about likeability and organization, yipppeeeee yeeeee!!!

When you get in the big games and the teams are all good it can comes down to coaching. Garrett HAS fallen short every time and continues to make the same blunders over and over again. Add a GREAT coach to this team and its already a powerhouse.

Great follow up post!

 

[Silver N Blue]

For those of you who can't wait to find out, the NFL player is Eric Davis. He's entitled to his opinion. Looking at an NFL season like 'Tony Romo gets you 8 games,' 'Dak gets your 7 or 8 games' is pretty amateurish. That's not how things work.

And I know a lot of people believe a HC is going to scheme or play call you to a couple extra wins a season, but I don't think that's accurate, either (though there are some exceptions where coaches do do that now and then). The best HCs assemble and develop talent and depth. The game is about finding mismatches. Sometimes you can do that with a play call. Sometimes you do it with a play design (like the pick plays NE was doing so much of, or Dez' pass to Witten this last season). Mostly you do it by adding players and putting them in the right position to succeed. We've done a good job of that here in recent years.

Well he did play in the NFL, is a SB champ, and can speak of what a coach brings to the table better than all of us arm chairs in here. Agree it is just his opinion but from a professional point it does carry more weight than yours or mine. IMO

 

[CowboyRoy]

Never mind? lol ok. I asked a simple question and get nothing?

What because with 44 seconds remaining in the game a timeout in their back pocket sitting on the GB 33 Yard line Dallas choose to try and win the game instead of running the clock and hoping to win in OT? that is the great strategy? playing not to lose? OK. lol

Yep, because he panicked and instead of continuing the drive with the defense on their heals and running down the clock he had to stop and regroup. Wasnt sure what to do. If you are trying to win the game, you dont give up a down by spiking the ball. Then the next mistake was throwing two passes and running NO time off the clock. He blew the clock management at the end of the first half as well, but it didnt wind up hurting us.

The guy is just still a rookie after 10 years. No prior experience coaching. Some guys just arent meant to be head coaches. Garrett is one of them.

 

[CowboyRoy]

So, if we've moved off of the current team and are looking instead at past teams (let's pretend we're in the '*Was* Garrett not a good coach?" thread for a minute). Here's where we've been in terms of % of rushes since the team completed it's OL overhaul with the drafting of Zack Martin:

2016: 1st
2015: 10th
2014: 3rd

And here's where we were in the years prior:

2013: 29th
2012: 31st
2011: 22nd
2010: 20th

We've run the ball more as the OL has improved. We ran it less when we didn't trust the OL to get the job done. It didn't have anything to do with whether or not Jason Garrett is or was a good coach.

As for the GB game, here's the play by play again.

http://www.espn.com/nfl/playbyplay?gameId=400927749

First drive, we ran twice in four plays, then Witten gave up that sack and put us in a passing situation. Second drive, we ran it four out of seven plays, until the unsportsmanlike conduct penalty put us in 2nd and 20. The third possession was a three-and-out where we ran it once for 2 yards. Yes, we could have run it on first down there like we had on the previous two drive-starters. We weren't going to run it on 3rd and 8, though. Not a lot to complain about with the run v. pass play calling there.

Instead, look at the GB drives. Their fullback ripped us for 20 on 2nd and 8, and Rodgers absolutely shredded us in the passing game.

It's not about play calling. It's not about clock management. This game is about passing effectively and stopping their QB. If you do those two things, you usually win. If you don't, you lose. We lost because we couldn't stop Aaron Rodgers early. It had nothing to do with abandoning the running game.

LOL.......You have serious comprehension issues.

Your now infamous quotes of the past:

"its a passing league now"
"That is the way the NFL is now"
"running the football actually doesnt help your offense, its all about offensive efficiency and who passes the ball better"
"Garrett is doing the right thing by passing 70% of the time"

And now you try to defend Garrett by pointing out how much we run the ball and that its working great. LOL

So at least you finally admit that running the ball is a great way to build your offense. I accept your apology for being completely dead wrong.

 

[CowboyRoy]

I never compared Garrett to Linehan.

Linehan had numerous issues with being a pass heavy playcaller with the Vikings, the Rams and the Lions.

As far as when Linehan had been coach compared to Garrett...Garrett wasn't a coach because he was a player in the league. Linehan didn't make it to the NFL until 2002 and Garrett didn't start coaching in the NFL until 2005.

The fact is that the playcalling to more running is an initiative set by Garrett. If he wanted to go back to a pass heavy offense...guess what would happen to the playcalling?

Garrett is a conservative coach in part because his mentor is Nick Saban who is a very no frills coach from a schematic standpoint. Garrett has a habit of overdoing certain gameplans and refusing to adjust (i.e. Dez running 23 out of 29 Go Routes versus the Giants in game 1).

I don't hate Garrett, but I'm not sold on him as a postseason coach. And the fact of the matter is that he, like any HC, has a major influence in the playcalling.






YR

As far as coaches go, Garrett has as little amount of authority as any coach in the NFL. At the bottom end of the spectrum in that regard.

And as far as having a say in what plays are called, sure. But clearly Linehan runs the show on offense. The offense we see now and the one under Garrett is very different.

Can any of us forget the lack of running under Garrett. The lack of play action under Garrett. The two TE offense. The lack of 4 and and 5 WR sets. The lack of pick plays, the lack of movement of Dez. The emergence of Beasley under Linehan.

 

[Idgit]

LOL.......You have serious comprehension issues.

Your now infamous quotes of the past:

"its a passing league now"
"That is the way the NFL is now"
"running the football actually doesnt help your offense, its all about offensive efficiency and who passes the ball better"
"Garrett is doing the right thing by passing 70% of the time"

And now you try to defend Garrett by pointing out how much we run the ball and that its working great. LOL

So at least you finally admit that running the ball is a great way to build your offense. I accept your apology for being completely dead wrong.

I don't think any of those quotes of mine are actual quotes of mine. Are they? I guess I might have said "that's the way of the NFL now" at some point. But the others sound like bad misinterpretations of actual points only drawn with a crayon. Are you going from memory here?

I'm not even going to touch on the distinction between the rate of called running plays and the previous discussions on the importance of passing efficiency v. rushing efficiency. There's no inconsistency there, so you don't have a point.

I'll assume by your sidestepping the discussion about abandoning the running game in the playoffs that you had no interest in the play-by-play and realize your earlier criticism was just more made up stuff, too. We're all shocked.

 

[cowboyblue22]

I guess if winning 13 games in a regular season are your goals that's fine I would like to see them be able to least win a divisional playoff game and so far when they went against a better team with a better coach they lost both times where dallas gets in trouble is when they play the better coaches they lose

 

[Idgit]

Well he did play in the NFL, is a SB champ, and can speak of what a coach brings to the table better than all of us arm chairs in here. Agree it is just his opinion but from a professional point it does carry more weight than yours or mine. IMO

Fair enough. For me, it depends what his opinion is and how he supports it. If he's coming in with the idea that "so and so QB gets you 8 wins automatically..." well, that's not a very sophisticated way to look at any sports league. I don't care all that much who is saying it, it's hard to take that debate very seriously.

 

[haleyrules]

I am starting to believe that our beloved Idgit is, in fact, Garrett! I mean note the hair and those eyes are very similiar!

 

[haleyrules]

I guess if winning 13 games in a regular season are your goals that's fine I would like to see them be able to least win a divisional playoff game and so far when they went against a better team with a better coach they lost both times where dallas gets in trouble is when they play the better coaches they lose

Amen.

 

[Idgit]

I guess if winning 13 games in a regular season are your goals that's fine I would like to see them be able to least win a divisional playoff game and so far when they went against a better team with a better coach they lost both times where dallas gets in trouble is when they play the better coaches they lose

At least the criticism has changed from not being able to get over .500 to winning 12+ and regularly getting to the playoffs but not winning there.

As long as you keep moving the goalposts in the right direction, we ought to be good.

 

[Idgit]

I am starting to believe that our beloved Idgit is, in fact, Garrett! I mean note the hair and those eyes are very similiar!

It's Coach of the Year Idgit, to you.

 

[Yakuza Rich]

As far as coaches go, Garrett has as little amount of authority as any coach in the NFL. At the bottom end of the spectrum in that regard.

And as far as having a say in what plays are called, sure. But clearly Linehan runs the show on offense. The offense we see now and the one under Garrett is very different.

Can any of us forget the lack of running under Garrett. The lack of play action under Garrett. The two TE offense. The lack of 4 and and 5 WR sets. The lack of pick plays, the lack of movement of Dez. The emergence of Beasley under Linehan.

I don't forget the lack of running the ball under Garrett. But by the same token, Vikings, Rams and Lions fans don't forget the lack of running under Linehan.

From day 1 as the full time head coach, Garrett has talked about making the offense more physical. Part of the issue he had with trying to run the ball in 2011 and 2012 was the lack of a good center. In fact, we went thru 6 difference centers in 2012 and got rid of Gurode to begin the 2011 season. If you watched Gurode on tape..he was the most frustrating center I've ever watched.

The other part of the issue is that Romo killed a lot of run plays during that time and audibled into pass plays. Wade had chirped about Romo doing that, Garrett did and there was an infamous moment in practice where Jason Hatcher yelled at Romo to stop audibling out of run plays.

While Garrett spoke up a couple of times about Romo audibling out of run plays...I still think he was more or less enabling Romo to do so.

Then in 2013 Callahan became the play caller and we went nuts with the passing...throwing 51 times and running 9 times against KC in a game where we had no bigger than 7 point deficit.

Garrett took back the playcalling duties and we ran more often. By the second half of 2013, the Packers defenders mentioned that they felt we were the best zone running team in the league. Ironically, that was the game where we completely abandoned the run and lost a game we should have never lost.

I think come 2014 many things happened that forced us to run more often.

1. We added Zack Martin who was even better than advertised and now we had 3 first round picks with legitimate Pro Bowl talent on the O-Line.

2. Romo got hurt so we didn't want him throwing 40+ times a game if we could prevent it.

3. Linehan came in.

4. We probably learned that throwing the ball ad nauseum doesn't work for this offense (it only took 7 years)

5. We were down by 21 points on the road to the Rams in 2014 and got back into the game and won largely by sticking to the run which provided a 'lesson learned.'

6. Our defense looked so bad going into 2014 that we felt we needed to run the ball a lot in order to keep the lousy defense off the field.

Linehan calls the plays, but the directive to run the ball more is set by Garrett. And in 2014 when we ran the ball on first down nearly 75% of the time...that actually goes right into Garrett's mindset as he's always been the type that when critics get on his case for not doing something...he'll go into maximum overdrive and completely overdo it.

Fortunately, I think Linehan has learned from this experience as well and is now perfectly fine with being a playcaller that tries to establish the run and stick with the run even when the team is losing and/or they are facing 8 in the box.

I like Linehan a lot because I think the gameplanning is better now which Linehan provides input into (just like any O-Coordinator) and the design of the offense and the schematics are much improved. And I believe that Linehan likely helped influence the offense from getting out of the running 75% on first down and getting that closer to 50%.

I couldn't care less if Garrett isn't the full-time playcaller. I'm more interested in having a coaching structure that works best for the team. I wouldn't want Linehan or Marinelli as the head coach. They called plays when they were HC's and were lousy HC's. I'd much rather have the structure we have now. Just stop being so conservative on 4th downs and stop refusing to adapt from the gameplan during games.






YR

 

[Silver N Blue]

Fair enough. For me, it depends what his opinion is and how he supports it. If he's coming in with the idea that "so and so QB gets you 8 wins automatically..." well, that's not a very sophisticated way to look at any sports league. I don't care all that much who is saying it, it's hard to take that debate very seriously.

Understand and hear you. My take on listening and reading is a very good QB is pretty much good for 7-9 wins on their own. I think it also shows what he thinks of Dak as well already. No Davis fan either but he has mellowed out the past few years and provides are more even analysis at this juncture of his second job. I don't think he is the only former player to knock on Red's coaching abilities in games which matter. This year has to be the year...no more wait till next year crap or wait till Red has his RKG team assembled. He has them...now go win..

 

[Idgit]

Understand and hear you. My take on listening and reading is a very good QB is pretty much good for 7-9 wins on their own. I think it also shows what he thinks of Dak as well already. No Davis fan either but he has mellowed out the past few years and provides are more even analysis at this juncture of his second job. I don't think he is the only former player to knock on Red's coaching abilities in games which matter. This year has to be the year...no more wait till next year crap or wait till Red has his RKG team assembled. He has them...now go win..

I actually haven't heard a lot of people in the league criticize Garrett. Aside from a few ESPN types who were dipping into the Cowboys limelight for some attention.

I do agree we've got a competitive team and should be beating even the best teams much of the time now.

To be fair to Garrett, that hasn't always been the case and we've consistently gotten more and more competitive. It's not like those 2011-2012 teams had personnel we should have been expecting to contend for postseason glory with.

 

[CowboyRoy]

I don't think any of those quotes of mine are actual quotes of mine. Are they? I guess I might have said "that's the way of the NFL now" at some point. But the others sound like bad misinterpretations of actual points only drawn with a crayon. Are you going from memory here?

I'm not even going to touch on the distinction between the rate of called running plays and the previous discussions on the importance of passing efficiency v. rushing efficiency. There's no inconsistency there, so you don't have a point.

I'll assume by your sidestepping the discussion about abandoning the running game in the playoffs that you had no interest in the play-by-play and realize your earlier criticism was just more made up stuff, too. We're all shocked.

I told you several times that my comment about abandoning the run was early in his career and what he did in the playoff game. Yet you continue to waste time providing stats of other times.

I thought I would point out how you were all for Garrett and his pass happy ways early in his career. Now you are all for running as much as we are? Quite the contradiction. Especially considering how wrong you told me I was in regard to needing to run the football much more and establish a dominant run game for this team to take the next step.

And I see you have little comment on the fact that the run game essentially took off once Linehan became OC. Nothing to say?

 

[CowboyRoy]

I don't forget the lack of running the ball under Garrett. But by the same token, Vikings, Rams and Lions fans don't forget the lack of running under Linehan.

From day 1 as the full time head coach, Garrett has talked about making the offense more physical. Part of the issue he had with trying to run the ball in 2011 and 2012 was the lack of a good center. In fact, we went thru 6 difference centers in 2012 and got rid of Gurode to begin the 2011 season. If you watched Gurode on tape..he was the most frustrating center I've ever watched.

The other part of the issue is that Romo killed a lot of run plays during that time and audibled into pass plays. Wade had chirped about Romo doing that, Garrett did and there was an infamous moment in practice where Jason Hatcher yelled at Romo to stop audibling out of run plays.

While Garrett spoke up a couple of times about Romo audibling out of run plays...I still think he was more or less enabling Romo to do so.

Then in 2013 Callahan became the play caller and we went nuts with the passing...throwing 51 times and running 9 times against KC in a game where we had no bigger than 7 point deficit.

Garrett took back the playcalling duties and we ran more often. By the second half of 2013, the Packers defenders mentioned that they felt we were the best zone running team in the league. Ironically, that was the game where we completely abandoned the run and lost a game we should have never lost.

I think come 2014 many things happened that forced us to run more often.

1. We added Zack Martin who was even better than advertised and now we had 3 first round picks with legitimate Pro Bowl talent on the O-Line.

2. Romo got hurt so we didn't want him throwing 40+ times a game if we could prevent it.

3. Linehan came in.

4. We probably learned that throwing the ball ad nauseum doesn't work for this offense (it only took 7 years)

5. We were down by 21 points on the road to the Rams in 2014 and got back into the game and won largely by sticking to the run which provided a 'lesson learned.'

6. Our defense looked so bad going into 2014 that we felt we needed to run the ball a lot in order to keep the lousy defense off the field.

Linehan calls the plays, but the directive to run the ball more is set by Garrett. And in 2014 when we ran the ball on first down nearly 75% of the time...that actually goes right into Garrett's mindset as he's always been the type that when critics get on his case for not doing something...he'll go into maximum overdrive and completely overdo it.

Fortunately, I think Linehan has learned from this experience as well and is now perfectly fine with being a playcaller that tries to establish the run and stick with the run even when the team is losing and/or they are facing 8 in the box.

I like Linehan a lot because I think the gameplanning is better now which Linehan provides input into (just like any O-Coordinator) and the design of the offense and the schematics are much improved. And I believe that Linehan likely helped influence the offense from getting out of the running 75% on first down and getting that closer to 50%.

I couldn't care less if Garrett isn't the full-time playcaller. I'm more interested in having a coaching structure that works best for the team. I wouldn't want Linehan or Marinelli as the head coach. They called plays when they were HC's and were lousy HC's. I'd much rather have the structure we have now. Just stop being so conservative on 4th downs and stop refusing to adapt from the gameplan during games.






YR

Certainly Linehan doenst need Garrett to tell him that we should be running the ball more. It was obvious based on the makeup of the team and the lack of success with the pass happy nature of Garrett prior. Garrett was woefully late to that realization. And it takes more then just saying we needed to run more. It takes an attitude adjustment and a commitment with play calling. Both of which Garrett didnt have the stones for when he was calling the plays. He would abandon the run sometimes in the first quarter.

 

[CowboyRoy]

I am starting to believe that our beloved Idgit is, in fact, Garrett! I mean note the hair and those eyes are very similiar!

Amazing how he comes fleecing to Garretts aid at every turn. In his mind Garrett is clearly one of the great head coaching minds in all of football. Yet the media, players, and most fans think Garrett is below par.

 

[Doomsday101]

Understand and hear you. My take on listening and reading is a very good QB is pretty much good for 7-9 wins on their own. I think it also shows what he thinks of Dak as well already. No Davis fan either but he has mellowed out the past few years and provides are more even analysis at this juncture of his second job. I don't think he is the only former player to knock on Red's coaching abilities in games which matter. This year has to be the year...no more wait till next year crap or wait till Red has his RKG team assembled. He has them...now go win..

I think it is pretty amazing what the team did this past season. I agree Cowboys need to continue to improve but offense will only go so far we need a defense that can stop top offenses in this league. The notion we can just play keep away by using ball control only work so much but when you hit post season and every team you face has the ability to put up points your odds become much slimmer to advance to the championship. Cowboys defense is a must if they are to achieve the goal of a SB.

 

[Idgit]

I told you several times that my comment about abandoning the run was early in his career and what he did in the playoff game. Yet you continue to waste time providing stats of other times.

I thought I would point out how you were all for Garrett and his pass happy ways early in his career. Now you are all for running as much as we are? Quite the contradiction. Especially considering how wrong you told me I was in regard to needing to run the football much more and establish a dominant run game for this team to take the next step.

And I see you have little comment on the fact that the run game essentially took off once Linehan became OC. Nothing to say?

Ok, we're getting far afield from the original discussion here, so let me try to recap before moving forward.

1. Your original argument was that Jason Garrett is not (present tense, and consistent with the topic of this thread) a good coach because he "is famous for abandoning the run." And, that he gets behind in big games as a result.

I responded to the criticism that he abandons the run by pointing out that he relies on the run more than any other HC in the league. And I pointed out that if you look at the play by play of the GB game that deficit was unrelated to abandoning the run, a point which you then abandoned, leaving us to assume you conceded it by default.

2. You then changed or qualified your 'is famous for abandoning the run' argument to mean be "is famous because he used to abandon the run." I responded to that by pointing out that we rely on the run much more than the average team and have for years. And that, the time when he didn't rely much more heavily on the run than other teams coincided with the time where our OL was in flux. Ie, not relying on the run with those early Garrett teams is the sign of good coaching, not bad coaching.

3. You then pivoted to a bunch of 'quotes' from me which weren't actually my quotes or even the types of things I actually say.

4. Finally, you give up on the abandoning the run stuff and try to turn the argument to what *I* believe instead of two what Garrett believes, suggesting that my defending the criticism that he's 'famous for abandoning the run' is somehow inconsistent with the argument that rushing more efficiently does not make you significantly more likely to win a football game.

The problem with that argument is that the rushing efficiency argument is an argument based on 'efficiency' and not 'frequency.' I don't know how many different ways there are to say it, but I've never suggested that the rushing game itself is not important. I've always said there are game situations where it's important to rush the football and that running the football is a huge part of every NFL offense. It's rushing effectiveness that's relatively unimportant. So your argument isn't in any way relevant to the discussion here. You confused yourself because both concepts involve the word 'rushing.'

And I didn't address your Linehan comment because it's been pointed out many many times that Linehan expressly said he was charged with running the ball more as a condition of his hire here. We're all active fans. We all know this, so pretending it isn't the case doesn't do anybody any good.

In case we've forgotten, though, here's what Linehan actually said when he came in:

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Linehan talked about his decision to sign on with the Cowboys coaching staff in January. During that process, he said Jason Garrett impressed one priority onto the coming season: the rushing attack.

"He said ‘the No. 1 thing we’re going to do is we’re going to get this run game like the old days,’" Linehan said of Garrett. "He was thinking of the days when he was wearing a uniform here. That was loud and clear, and we were all-in, I was all-in from the get-go."
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I'll let you have the last word here, because it feels like we're drifting further and further from the topic of the thread in your attempt to score a point someplace.

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