There is no doubt that Parcells was good for the Cowboys when he was hired. He did some excellent things like firing Larry Lacewell.
I don't believe that I have any bias towards Garrett. If you know my posting history, it's generally about trying to find the truth and sort out facts from fiction. I'm not particularly a big fan of Garrett per se. I don't like his game management and I don't really like him as an offensive coordinator. It's just that I have concluded that he is probably the best HC for right now when you consider the Jerry part of the equation. If Garrett were fired, Jerry could make a big mess in the interim while a new HC is coming up to speed on all of the Cowboys issues. This is especially true if the new guy has not worked for the Cowboys in the past.
There were many things that were actually better about the situation that Parcells inherited than the situation that Garrett inherited. It was much easier to maneuver when the salary cap was not a big mess. It's taken years just to strip the roster down to a manageable situation since Garrett took over. They had to cut BIgg, Gurode, Barber, Roy Williams, Newman, and more recently Ware and Austin etc.. and it took time to absorb the cap hits from all of those cuts. Garrett did have better players and a QB, but there was much less that could be done with the roster due to the past dead money and the current mega-contracts. Parcells also had the benefit of being able to cut any players with locker room influence like Emmitt and LA. Garrett had to come in as a 1st time ever Head Coach and try to deal with a locker room full of players with mega-contracts and they had not had any discipline from the previous HC (Wade).
Also, I don't really give Garrett all of the credit for the good things that have happened. A lot of it was just enabled by him, not necessarily accomplished by him. He (unlike Wade) is another voice to help Stephen Jones convince Jerry that they can't operate like an Oil Well Wildcatter in regards to the salary cap. Jerry talked about this issue this off-season. He said that he has finally accepted that his way of doing things is not working withing the confines of the salary cap and the CBA. He referred to being a risk taker and that the modern NFL needs a manager. I also believe that Garrett gets heavily involved in the scouting process and relies on the scouting dept. to do their jobs. Wade was clueless in this area with his one reported push in the draft being to take LB Jason Williams because "he is really fast". Parcells was at the opposite end from Wade and would draft guys like Carpenter on a whim regardless of the input of the scouting dept. Obviously it's not all good in this area with the Floyd fiasco. There is really no excuse for the scouting dept. to not be in sync with the coaching staff.
People want to compare Garrett to guys like Harbaugh, but the reality is that with Jerry in the equation, the choice is Garrett or somebody like Wade Phillips. Like I said before, I'm not really a huge Garrett fan per se, but I consider him to be 1000x better than Wade Phillips and I believe they have a chance to really build up a quality roster with Garrett here. If they get the roster issues resolved and they still can't win, then I'll jump on board with getting rid of Garrett at that point.
This is just a really nice take. Even if people don't agree with it, they should be able to see that it's a reasonable argument, and nicely stated.
I think the situation Jason inherited in Dallas was a tall order, for all the reasons you mention. I lay more of the blame for that circumstance on Jerry than I do on Wade (I blame Wade mostly for not being a strong enough personality to manage his boss while he was in Dallas, but, as you say, managing Jerry is a really, really difficult job). But it's easier to build something from scratch than it is to patch back together something nice and expensive that's broken. I don't understand any fan looking at that 2010 roster, at 1-7, and arguing that it wasn't very broken at that point.
That said, Jason false started on the OL rebuild. He false started on the DC hire. He got (tragically, in my opinion) snakebite this season on the DL. He's struggled on game days (not as badly relative to any other coach in the NFL as our fans would believe, but it's definitely not his strength. I personally don't even like the offensive scheme all that much.
All that said, he's brought stability to the organization--or at least stability has increased during his time here. To the draft process, to the cap management. We do have an obvious draft strategy for the first time since I can remember, and it shows. The HC position in Dallas is a very challenging position. Much more than any other team in the league that I can think of (maybe WAS or, until recently, CLE is tougher, but that's more a measure of organizational dysfunction than anything else). It's going to take a special coach to have success here. The one we've got has a lot of skills in that regard, but he's got important open questions about his ability to navigate through a season. And now, he's also got to fix a bad DL on the fly and find a QB in waiting. And he doesn't have room to false start on personnel again. I think we can do it. But I also think it's a tall order. And I really, really don't like the idea of starting from scratch again if we whiff on defense for a third straight season. I guess we'll see how it plays out here, soon enough.
