Plankton
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In six months, you’ll never know that I was here.
- Bill Parcells, 2007
Never have those words rung more true than they do today.
The Bill Parcells coaching tenure was the last time that the influence of Jerry Jones was less than 100% over the football operation. During Parcells’ time in Dallas, while the record wasn’t what anyone was hoping for, he radically altered the scouting philosophy of the football team, and injected much needed discipline into the entire organization. The changes were such that after he departed the Cowboys in 2007, his team had digested enough of these lessons to win 33 regular season games over the next three seasons, and two NFC East Divisional Championships.
That being said, the team was unable to get over the hump due to the same organizational rot that has infested the Dallas Cowboys since the fateful day of March 30, 1994, when it was “mutually decided” that Jimmy Johnson would no longer be the head football coach of the Cowboys.
On that day, the Cowboys were the two time defending Super Bowl champions. The best team in the NFL, and a seemingly boundless future in front of it.
Two years later, they were champions for the third time in four seasons, to that point the only team to have accomplished this feat in the Super Bowl era.
Twenty four years later, fans of the Cowboys are waiting for another trip to the NFC Championship Game, much less another Super Bowl title.
After yesterday’s gutless, listless, careless, spiritless and hopeless effort in losing to the Eagles, they don’t seem to be any closer to ending this run of mediocrity than they were when Parcells walked through the doors in 2003. The Cowboys appear to have a lot of good, talented, shiny pieces, but they lack the very things needed to achieve that ultimate goal:
Grit.
Determination.
Commitment to team success.
Not letting your teammates down.
Leadership.
Accountability.
Guts.
Lacking these core elements for success will result in the Cowboys sitting home for the playoffs in 2019. It’s easy to sit and blame Jason Garrett and his coaching staff for everything that ails this team and organization for once again coming up small and short when the season was on the line, but that would be burying the lead.
Garrett certainly deserves his share of blame for the failures of 2019. There are too often times throughout his tenure where the Cowboys came out of the gate flat footed, and fell behind quickly. Two examples are the 2016 Divisional Playoff loss to the Packers as well as yesterday’s game, where the Cowboys allowed an Eagle squad more resembling Archibald Willard’s Spirit of ’76 painting rather than a contender for the NFC East title take the fight to them, and have the Cowboys staring up at a 10-0 deficit. During the game, the body count piled up further for the Eagles, with Zach Ertz, Ronald Darby and Jalen Mills missing stretches of the game. This, on top of being down to practice squad level talent at wide receiver. The Cowboys, coming into the game with the most prolific offense in the league in terms of yards and fifth best in the league at scoring, were unable to take advantage of this at all.
In this game, the undermanned Eagles showed all of the fight and intensity symbolized in the Willard painting. The Cowboys were as flat as the canvas that the paint was stroked onto. With no intensity on the field, and even less from the coach on the sidelines, the Cowboys did just enough to hang around, but not enough to actually win. Where guys like Ertz, Mills and Fletcher Cox came back into the game despite injuries to keep up the fight for the division, you had players on the Cowboys either tap out of the game (Ezekiel Elliott) or get rotated out (Amari Cooper, Randall Cobb), depending on what version of events you believe, and allow the ship to sink.
There’s a saying that what goes on on the football field during a game is either what a coach allows to happen or coaches to happen. In this case, Garrett allowed his players to take a backward step, and not stand up when things got tough. After the game, Garrett seemed content with the fact that Cooper and Cobb were nowhere to be found on the final offensive play of the game for the Cowboys, when their very playoff hopes hung on a Dak Prescott 50-50 ball to Michael Gallup in the end zone when they could have just gotten a first down instead. He also seemed content with Elliott tapping out of the game and not being on the field for a third and short play early in the second half. Garrett also was fine with his highly paid offensive line and running back merely serving as decoys on a third and one in the fourth quarter, having an erratic Prescott throwing a pass to a tightly covered Cooper, and on fourth down, with the season on the line, he punted the ball away. This, three games after Garrett went for it on fourth and one from his own 19 against the Bills on Thanksgiving. In the first half.
With this loss, it’s but a certainty that Garrett and most of the coaching staff will not return next season. Regardless of what anyone thinks of Garrett and his coaching ability, he had a nearly 10 year run as head coach, and his voice is clearly not getting through to the team any further. The staff also had deficiencies in many areas, most specifically special teams, and did not do themselves many favors during the course of the season.
It's also a certainty that there will be some personnel churn in the offseason. Jason Witten and Sean Lee will likely move on to their life’s work and retire. Byron Jones will be a coveted free agent, and may not return. Same goes for Robert Quinn. The Cowboys have some difficult decisions to make on long term deals for Prescott and Cooper, two players asking for big contracts that came up small in the second half of the year. Missed draft picks on guys like Taco Charlton and Trysten Hill will add to the holes in need of repair in 2020.
But, those issues can be addressed. The larger issue, and the reason why we are talking about 24 years without an NFC Title Game appearance will remain.
The issue that allows players to become larger than life personalities without true accomplishment.
The issue that allows players to go through a season without fear of losing their jobs until Week 15.
The issue that allows a head coach and his staff to be effectively neutered in their ability to command the respect of their team, and institute accountability and discipline in the team.
The issue that allows a personnel department to not address glaring roster issues until the rot had destroyed the foundation of the team.
That issue is with ownership.
When Parcells left, Jerry Jones was overheard saying that he was happy that he and others wouldn’t have to walk on eggshells anymore. Jones said the same thing when Johnson left the organization. What Jones wants is what money can’t truly buy – the gravitas that goes with being viewed as a true football man. That can only come with grinding, hard work and experience. Jones wants to buy his way into it. Think this approach has rubbed off on this team at all?
The problem with being the GM/Chief Marketer/Owner is that the last two of the troika of titles can afford to be idealistic and hopeful. The GM needs to be the biggest cynic and skeptic in the organization. At any sign of success, Jones blows smoke up his team’s collective rear-ends. Is it any wonder why they can’t sustain a high level of play for a long period of time?
Jones famously said in his drunken soliloquy to Ed Werder and Rick Gosselin in 1994 that any one of 500 coaches could have won the Super Bowl with the Cowboys. He even went on to say that he, Jones, could coach the bleep out of this team. With the passage of time, don’t you think that he actually believed what he was saying? The only times that Jones hired a football coach who would be the face of the operation was when he needed something financially. The first time was after he bought the team, and he needed to make the operation solvent. The second time was when he needed to get a stadium funding bill passed. At any other time, he wanted to put someone in the position who would allow him to “coach the bleep out of this team.” That meant having an open door to his players, allowing them to go over the head coach’s head. That meant having a weekly radio show, where he can wax poetic about his team even if it creates conflict and distractions for his coach. That meant having press gatherings after each game, where it made his coach’s press briefings superfluous.
What Jones has cultivated has made the Cowboys the Kardashians of the NFL – famous for being famous, not for accomplishment. His goal has been met – the Cowboys are relevant. They are the talking point after most Sunday’s, but not for the right reasons. The team is a perfect reflection of Jones – well paid, verbose, and over their heads in tough football situations.
What this team needs is a return to the broken eggs style of coaching that Parcells and Johnson brought. Where the players are accountable to the head coach. Where compliments are earned and measured. Where grit supersedes glitz.
In 2004, during the preseason, rookie running back Julius Jones tapped on his helmet to come out of the game. Parcells yelled at him to stay in the game. He proceeded to have Jones get the ball on seven consecutive carries. Message sent - do not tap to come out of a game. How do you think it would have played yesterday when Elliott tapped out of the game, which he does in pretty much every game?
Parcells was right. When you look at the present day Cowboys, you’d never know that he was there.
- Bill Parcells, 2007
Never have those words rung more true than they do today.
The Bill Parcells coaching tenure was the last time that the influence of Jerry Jones was less than 100% over the football operation. During Parcells’ time in Dallas, while the record wasn’t what anyone was hoping for, he radically altered the scouting philosophy of the football team, and injected much needed discipline into the entire organization. The changes were such that after he departed the Cowboys in 2007, his team had digested enough of these lessons to win 33 regular season games over the next three seasons, and two NFC East Divisional Championships.
That being said, the team was unable to get over the hump due to the same organizational rot that has infested the Dallas Cowboys since the fateful day of March 30, 1994, when it was “mutually decided” that Jimmy Johnson would no longer be the head football coach of the Cowboys.
On that day, the Cowboys were the two time defending Super Bowl champions. The best team in the NFL, and a seemingly boundless future in front of it.
Two years later, they were champions for the third time in four seasons, to that point the only team to have accomplished this feat in the Super Bowl era.
Twenty four years later, fans of the Cowboys are waiting for another trip to the NFC Championship Game, much less another Super Bowl title.
After yesterday’s gutless, listless, careless, spiritless and hopeless effort in losing to the Eagles, they don’t seem to be any closer to ending this run of mediocrity than they were when Parcells walked through the doors in 2003. The Cowboys appear to have a lot of good, talented, shiny pieces, but they lack the very things needed to achieve that ultimate goal:
Grit.
Determination.
Commitment to team success.
Not letting your teammates down.
Leadership.
Accountability.
Guts.
Lacking these core elements for success will result in the Cowboys sitting home for the playoffs in 2019. It’s easy to sit and blame Jason Garrett and his coaching staff for everything that ails this team and organization for once again coming up small and short when the season was on the line, but that would be burying the lead.
Garrett certainly deserves his share of blame for the failures of 2019. There are too often times throughout his tenure where the Cowboys came out of the gate flat footed, and fell behind quickly. Two examples are the 2016 Divisional Playoff loss to the Packers as well as yesterday’s game, where the Cowboys allowed an Eagle squad more resembling Archibald Willard’s Spirit of ’76 painting rather than a contender for the NFC East title take the fight to them, and have the Cowboys staring up at a 10-0 deficit. During the game, the body count piled up further for the Eagles, with Zach Ertz, Ronald Darby and Jalen Mills missing stretches of the game. This, on top of being down to practice squad level talent at wide receiver. The Cowboys, coming into the game with the most prolific offense in the league in terms of yards and fifth best in the league at scoring, were unable to take advantage of this at all.
In this game, the undermanned Eagles showed all of the fight and intensity symbolized in the Willard painting. The Cowboys were as flat as the canvas that the paint was stroked onto. With no intensity on the field, and even less from the coach on the sidelines, the Cowboys did just enough to hang around, but not enough to actually win. Where guys like Ertz, Mills and Fletcher Cox came back into the game despite injuries to keep up the fight for the division, you had players on the Cowboys either tap out of the game (Ezekiel Elliott) or get rotated out (Amari Cooper, Randall Cobb), depending on what version of events you believe, and allow the ship to sink.
There’s a saying that what goes on on the football field during a game is either what a coach allows to happen or coaches to happen. In this case, Garrett allowed his players to take a backward step, and not stand up when things got tough. After the game, Garrett seemed content with the fact that Cooper and Cobb were nowhere to be found on the final offensive play of the game for the Cowboys, when their very playoff hopes hung on a Dak Prescott 50-50 ball to Michael Gallup in the end zone when they could have just gotten a first down instead. He also seemed content with Elliott tapping out of the game and not being on the field for a third and short play early in the second half. Garrett also was fine with his highly paid offensive line and running back merely serving as decoys on a third and one in the fourth quarter, having an erratic Prescott throwing a pass to a tightly covered Cooper, and on fourth down, with the season on the line, he punted the ball away. This, three games after Garrett went for it on fourth and one from his own 19 against the Bills on Thanksgiving. In the first half.
With this loss, it’s but a certainty that Garrett and most of the coaching staff will not return next season. Regardless of what anyone thinks of Garrett and his coaching ability, he had a nearly 10 year run as head coach, and his voice is clearly not getting through to the team any further. The staff also had deficiencies in many areas, most specifically special teams, and did not do themselves many favors during the course of the season.
It's also a certainty that there will be some personnel churn in the offseason. Jason Witten and Sean Lee will likely move on to their life’s work and retire. Byron Jones will be a coveted free agent, and may not return. Same goes for Robert Quinn. The Cowboys have some difficult decisions to make on long term deals for Prescott and Cooper, two players asking for big contracts that came up small in the second half of the year. Missed draft picks on guys like Taco Charlton and Trysten Hill will add to the holes in need of repair in 2020.
But, those issues can be addressed. The larger issue, and the reason why we are talking about 24 years without an NFC Title Game appearance will remain.
The issue that allows players to become larger than life personalities without true accomplishment.
The issue that allows players to go through a season without fear of losing their jobs until Week 15.
The issue that allows a head coach and his staff to be effectively neutered in their ability to command the respect of their team, and institute accountability and discipline in the team.
The issue that allows a personnel department to not address glaring roster issues until the rot had destroyed the foundation of the team.
That issue is with ownership.
When Parcells left, Jerry Jones was overheard saying that he was happy that he and others wouldn’t have to walk on eggshells anymore. Jones said the same thing when Johnson left the organization. What Jones wants is what money can’t truly buy – the gravitas that goes with being viewed as a true football man. That can only come with grinding, hard work and experience. Jones wants to buy his way into it. Think this approach has rubbed off on this team at all?
The problem with being the GM/Chief Marketer/Owner is that the last two of the troika of titles can afford to be idealistic and hopeful. The GM needs to be the biggest cynic and skeptic in the organization. At any sign of success, Jones blows smoke up his team’s collective rear-ends. Is it any wonder why they can’t sustain a high level of play for a long period of time?
Jones famously said in his drunken soliloquy to Ed Werder and Rick Gosselin in 1994 that any one of 500 coaches could have won the Super Bowl with the Cowboys. He even went on to say that he, Jones, could coach the bleep out of this team. With the passage of time, don’t you think that he actually believed what he was saying? The only times that Jones hired a football coach who would be the face of the operation was when he needed something financially. The first time was after he bought the team, and he needed to make the operation solvent. The second time was when he needed to get a stadium funding bill passed. At any other time, he wanted to put someone in the position who would allow him to “coach the bleep out of this team.” That meant having an open door to his players, allowing them to go over the head coach’s head. That meant having a weekly radio show, where he can wax poetic about his team even if it creates conflict and distractions for his coach. That meant having press gatherings after each game, where it made his coach’s press briefings superfluous.
What Jones has cultivated has made the Cowboys the Kardashians of the NFL – famous for being famous, not for accomplishment. His goal has been met – the Cowboys are relevant. They are the talking point after most Sunday’s, but not for the right reasons. The team is a perfect reflection of Jones – well paid, verbose, and over their heads in tough football situations.
What this team needs is a return to the broken eggs style of coaching that Parcells and Johnson brought. Where the players are accountable to the head coach. Where compliments are earned and measured. Where grit supersedes glitz.
In 2004, during the preseason, rookie running back Julius Jones tapped on his helmet to come out of the game. Parcells yelled at him to stay in the game. He proceeded to have Jones get the ball on seven consecutive carries. Message sent - do not tap to come out of a game. How do you think it would have played yesterday when Elliott tapped out of the game, which he does in pretty much every game?
Parcells was right. When you look at the present day Cowboys, you’d never know that he was there.
