Rack;1318135 said:
Did JJT really say he heard we contacted Dom Capers?
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Replacing Zimmer won't be easy
12:38 AM CST on Thursday, January 11, 2007
Jean-Jacques Taylor
Mike Zimmer, who survived three coaching changes, didn't become a football idiot in December.
He's the same guy who coordinated three defenses that ranked among the top 10 in his seven seasons as the Cowboys' defensive coordinator. Actually, he's the same coach whose unit ranked among the top five for a chunk of this season. And no matter how much you blame Zimmer for that disgraceful defensive performance in December, he's the same guy who presided over a unit that led the NFL in 2003.
But let's not fool ourselves, Zimmer never adapted fully to the 3-4. And that's why he's now the Atlanta Falcons' defensive coordinator. He will run the 4-3 defense, the scheme he knows intimately.
Yeah, Zimmer knew the 3-4 defense, its principles and philosophies, but he never fully grasped the intricacies and nuances of the scheme so that he could transform the Cowboys' defense into an elite unit. Never was that more evident than the final month of the season, when the defense collapsed and Zimmer couldn't fix it.
"It was the worst I've ever been through," Zimmer said Wednesday. "I couldn't figure it out. I was suicidal ... that's not a joke."
Actually, it's a glimpse into his mindset.
Zimmer, the son of a coach, is a demanding taskmaster with a vocabulary only a drill sergeant can appreciate. He believes perfection is attainable, and it's his job to make his players achieve it. So he's hard on them. Some say, too hard.
They say he tears them down with his words in practice and meetings, but doesn't build them up with backslaps when they perform well.
That's the difference, they say, between Zimmer and Parcells. Zimmer makes no apologies for his style. Never has, in part because he's as hard on himself as he is on his players.
The Cowboys' abject defensive performance at the end of this season embarrassed Zimmer, whose fear of failure is surpassed only by that of Parcells'. As the season slipped away with the defense seemingly unable to stop anyone, Zimmer questioned himself.
"On Christmas night after we lost, I went to work and stayed all night," he said. "After that, I started coming in earlier and earlier. That's the only thing I knew to do. I had to keep grinding and grinding."
With Zimmer gone, the focus of the defense returns to Parcells.
Now, he can get a defensive coordinator well-versed in the 3-4. While Parcells hasn't said he's returning for a fifth season yet, he's presided over meetings all week, and all indications are that he'll coach the team next season.
Defensive coordinator is the most important hire Parcells will make since Jerry Jones lured him out of retirement, because if the Cowboys can't fix their defensive problems, everything else is irrelevant. You can't win with the defense the Cowboys put on the field at the end of the season.
For now, Parcells is leaning toward naming Todd Bowles and Paul Pasqualoni co-coordinators. In that scenario, Bowles would handle the pass defense and Pasqualoni the run defense. The key, though, is who handles the play-calling on gameday.
Parcells recently spoke to Dom Capers to gauge his interest in running the defense, but was rebuffed. Still, it's an indication Parcells wants an established coordinator. But as hard as it might be to fathom, not every coach yearns to work for Parcells.
Think about it. Parcells is basically on a year-to-year contract in a business where assistant coaches prefer security over cash. Parcells is never going to give an assistant autonomy, something every established coordinator wants. During the December collapse, Parcells called many of those defenses that didn't work.
Sometimes, you don't miss a guy until he's gone. Remember Sean Payton?
E-mail jjtaylor@dallasnews
