1. Romo wasn't taking pain meds but he was taking a nerve block in the ribs prior to the games. Romo was playing well and making enough good decisions to put us in the lead that day. Carpenter made a good play on an ill-advised throw and we probably didn't need to be running that deep in our own end with a 3 TD lead so I'll concede the point to some degree. However, at that time in the year we could not run the ball consistently and our defense is not good enough to defend against a powerhouse offense with a whole run of 3 and outs from the offense. We probably needed to keep throwing but Romo needed to make better decisions in that game understanding the circumstances.
2. Now at the end of the NE game Garrett appropriately ran the first 2 times but lost 3 yards and got a penalty making it 3rd and 18 if I remember correctly. It is very hard to convert a 3rd and 12+ yards - moreso if you are on the road, have a QB with bad ribs and your top 2 WRs are dinged up and you just lost your #1 RB. You have an injured QB playing behind a young and inexperienced OL against a team that won 14 games the year before and was on their way to another SB appearance. You also have your star QB coming off a game where he was crucified by the media for 3 INTs in the second half.
I really think Garrett had no choice but to run a low-risk play on 3rd down there. I don't really disagree with running it on first and second down to take a bit of time off the clock but ideally you would be in 3rd and 5 and not 3rd and 15.
At that time in Garrett's and Romo's career I really can't fault the playcalling but it was a matter of poor blocking from the OL.
The defense could have still held them and had a whole field to defend which they couldn't do.
3. In the Cardinals game he should have tried to get more yards there but got too conservative given the amount of time left in the game. 5-10 more yards makes for an easier FG for Bailey. I think the decision was wrong.
In the end, I think Garrett's biggest problem all season was a very inconsistent OL that gave up a lot of sacks, hits and pressures. Our whole gameplan seemed to be set around getting the ball out of Romo's hands before something bad happened and these tendencies actually allowed defenses to get very aggressive against us knowing this.
You have to remember we had a spurt where we played well with Murray running the ball behind Fiammetta. In that stretch we saw what the offense could do with blocking - Murray was averaging 6 ypc and Romo was tearing defenses apart now that he could pass against defenses afraid of the run. This is the way our offense is supposed to run and can't operate properly with an OL that isn't opening up holes consistently and can't pass block for 3 seconds consistently.
Now you can blame Garrett for not doing a better job patching the OL but you have to also remember we had a bunch of declining overpaid vets who weren't playing much better in 2010. We also had very little cap space because of all those overpaid vets and we had to carry money over into this season to deal with all the dead cap money that cutting said vets was going to impose on the 2012 salary cap. I think we ended up with about 23M dead cap and carried forward around 16M of unused space to have a net loss of 7M for the year plus the 5M league penalty which made us play this year at 12M down. If Garrett didn't play shorthanded last year we would have had a cap deficit of 28M this year. So Garrett took most of the hit in the rebuilding year so he could play with a better cap situation in the year when we had a better chance of winning which speaks to good discipline and long-term planning.
When I look at this team I think it is our most complete roster top to bottom since 1995. We are super-weak at any position outside of Center. We have good prospects almost everywhere now for the future except QB and TE where we happen to have Pro Bowlers and an excellent backup QB. All the malcontents have now been eliminated from the roster and there is no sign of cancer recurrence at this stage after another offseason. Jerry managed to control his wallet and the investments we made were fairly sound and despite the calls from the media and fans he didn't over-react to the weak interior OL as he always would have done in the past. He kept his focus on the overall team and most good teams cannot spend a fortune at interior OL without then losing players elsewhere. Garrett convinced Jones to invest in underrated interior OL who Callahan can patch together into a functional unit without breaking the bank and without putting in progress stoppers in front of some promising kids we brought in last year.
So overall I like what we had done pesonnel-wise.
In terms of coaching, he brought in an OC, thankfully. He really needed one last year and was spreading himself too thin leading to bad decisions like in the Cards game you alluded to. He got rid of our worst asst. coach Campo and brought in a very good DB coach who will try to fix the weakest unit on the team. This guy did a great job in Cleveland and is familiar with Ryan so I am expecting good things. He brought in Callahan to be OL coach and he is known for doing an excellent job on the OL and at OC but he is just a bad head coach. I think Callahan will do a great job for us, too.
In terms of team governance, I think he has put together a good group of guys. I think he has brought in some kids who will be good leaders for the future like Sean Lee and Dan Connor. All the troublemakers are gone so I expect a strong lockerroom this year.
I am very hopeful about this team. I do agree there were some questionable moments from last year, especially the Cards game. However, I also saw a lot of good decisions in the background that have put is in a good position to succeed this year. I also see evidence of a coach who looks at his flaws and then tries to correct them instead of denying them. I think this approach won him some converts in the lockerroom and this is firmly his team now whereas I thought he was having some trouble getting buy in from the defense early last year.
I look forward to a good year. I think we can contend for a playoff spot with this roster but the Eagles and Giants will both be very strong and the schedule is difficult. I think the offense will be a juggernaut and the defense can be a top 5-10 unit. I am hoping for 10-11 wins.
So to answer the question, yes I think Garrett will be better this year. No I don't think he put up the worst coaching job in history last year. I would say it was a mediocre year and grade him a B- overall.
