I do not intend to insult anyone or demean anyone's opinion or right to express it, but some of the nonsense about whom should be hired as HC of the Cowboys and the attacks on JJ as reverting to his meddling ways are beyond my scope of comprehension.
1. We have a playoff team with decent talent, a team that clearly underachieved, a team that should be fairly close to be seriously competitive. Yet people want to hire guys like Singletary and Rivera to be head coach? These are guys who have never been there...Singletary has very little coaching experience. Even Rivera has never run a defense other than the one Lovie Smith designed, a 4-3 by the way. This team is not that easily converted to a good 4-3. We have only one viable candidate with any experience for DT...Ferguson...and he has little mobility. Everyone else is a projection to the position.
At DE, we have Ellis and Ware, and all the guys behind them are oversized DE's selected specifically for the 3-4.
At LB, we have some talent, but are we sure we have 3-4 guys who run well enough to take our defense to a higher level? We could draft and use FA to rectify this, but then we're neglecting the offense and the OL yet another year.
I'm shocked by the idea that some think we'd be ready to go forward with a HC with no experience, especially those who suggest Singletary who has not coordinated either side of the ball, and people want to turn the offense over to Jason Garrett who also has very little experience and probably no offensive playbook of his own yet as a guy with 2 years as QB coach....holy crap.
If we were going to hire a defensive HC, hiring a 4-3 guy instead of Wade Phillips who has done great things in SD would be a highly questionable move.
2. Why is Jerry Jones catching so much grief for considering hiring a HC that would be great for the offense and Romo, a guy who actually has a little experience, though with far less talented teams...Norv Turner...and the most qualified and exciting 3-4 prospect in the league, also with HC experience...Wade Phillips. People want to look at their records in limited stints with inferior teams...yet they are excited about hiring guys who coach defenses that don't match our personel, guys with no HC experience, and then turn the offense over to a guy with two years a QB coach in Miami?
Jerry Jones IS the gm of the Cowboys, but people confuse that role with his position as owner...like it or not, he is both. But the reality is that the hiring of coaches and support staff, and bringing in a young guy to hopefully groom...Jason Garrett...are what gm's all across the NFL do. People talk like Rivera and Singletary are attractive candidates, yet not a single gm in the NFL who needed new coaches in Miami, Pittsburgh, Oakland, Arizona, ??? even gave Singletary an interview as far as I know....certainly he wasn't a serious candidate even in Oakland. And not a single one of those teams, several who were interested in hiring young guys with limited experience were willing to wait on Rivera...if he was all that great, don't you think some of those gm's could have waited? Would it have hurt them any more than Dallas if he was such an attractive candidate?
Come on guys...It's one thing to hire an inexperienced guy like Whizzenhunt...at least he'd been running the offensive side of the ball for a SB champion for a coach who was defensive oriented, and he showed great creativity in using guys like Randall El. But the other HC hires???? Not a single gm in the NFL wanted Singletary, and not a single gm saw Rivera as an attractive enough candidate to wait on him. He wants to be a HC...you don't think he'd even take the job in Oakland if Al Davis had waited on him?
These guys either are not ready for the job or they simply aren't that attractive to other gms, so why lambast Jerry Jones for how he's handling the situation? He's not acting as a meddling owner...he's acting in his capacity as gm, and he's not doing anything any differently than many other gm's.
3. I would support Norv or Wade more than anyone else mentioned. Wade Phillips would step in and take our 3-4 to a new level, just as he's done in SD...he'd get faster results than anyone trying to come in with knowledge limited to the 4-3 and limited experience as a DC, much less trying to do both that and oversee the team as HC. But there's no way we're going to turn our offense and T.O. over to Jason Garrett with almost no experience, not yet.
If we hire Norv, we get a great teacher of QB's, a great x's and o's guy, and a guy who's coached and called plays in the SB with great success when given talented players, which we have...a guy who isn't all that exciting, but at least has some experience as HC...and with Norv, we can turn the defense over to someone who already knows the players and the system, hopefully getting them to at least play to their capabilities with his hands untied by the defensively conservative Parcells.
We're not a team starting over and retooling. It makes more sense to bring in a guy who's at least proven in running his side of the ball and has a little experience in the HC job and in dealing with the big show in Dallas. It won't take much to get this team further than Parcells took it. Norv Turner is like any other coach...either he has success and we don't want to change two years from now, or he doesn't get us over the hump but Romo greatly benefits from his tutilage, and we're in the Cowher or some other market in two years...maybe even the Jason Garrett market.
All head coaches groom young gifted coaches, if that's what Jason is, for HC positions. It's not going to be a threat to Norv Turner...he plans to be successful in Dallas, and if he's not, part of that failure will be partly Jason Garrett's fault as well...Jason has not been guaranteed a future HC gig, and Norv is not "training him" to take over any more than Parcells, Bellichek, or Dungy have prepared guys to become HC's.
Relax...enjoy. Hiring the guys being suggested as alternates to Norv or Wade are simply ridiculous unless we were a team starting at the bottom that could afford to let a coach grow with it. Our team is somewhat close, and we need a coach who can run one side of the ball, not a young, inexperienced coach with two inexperienced coordinators under him....My gosh, the players would probably know the systems better than the coaches.
I can see not being as excited about Turner or Phillips as much as if it were Cowher, but I prefer either over most of the guys the other teams, led by their gm's, hired, and I certainly prefer it with our team right now over having 2-3 guys who would all be learning on the job.
If some of you got your wish today and Singletary were hired as HC, JG as OC, and an internal hire as DC, do you realize all three may not have much more than 10 years coaching experience all put together, and not one of them would have ever done the job he's in before? To me, that's scary.
