What happened last season to the Dallas Cowboys can be summarized by a single Tom Landry quote:
“Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.”
The Dallas Cowboys did not stay with their plan. You remember “The Plan”, don’t you? It was completely described, detail by detail, by the new Head Coach Jason Garrett back in the spring of 2011:
Achieve stronger, more tight knit squads by assigning playing time according to competition among players for starting positions. This pushes the starter to work harder to keep his job, backups no longer felt trapped by circumstances such as playing behind a guy with a huge contract. According to Jason Garrett, a players salary was irrelevant, it all came down to who was playing the best.
Maintain value in your draft position by never reaching for a need, instead draft the BPA. This would insure that the team didn’t sacrifice better talent at one position by focusing specifically on another, even if the former squad was perceived as not needing such an upgrade. Jasson Garrett explained that the idea of a squad not needing addition elite talent was flawed as was the philosophy of “filling a need”
First of all, if a team needs to fill a need, that is, they feel as though there is a “hole” at a specific position, then the team didn’t need one player, they need at least two. It had been obvious in the past, especially in 2010, that if you feel that you have filled a hole by acquiring and paying for a very good player then you failed to account for the fact that the average starter each NFL season misses from 3-5 games a year. That is, you could sign the next Bob Lilly at DT next year but you will still be one play away from exactly where you were before. And “before” used to be using your backup, 7th round rookie, or an undrafted career backup, or emergency stop gap player though trade or the street.
A single player does not fill to need, a squad of highly motivated, highly competitive players do that.
Jason Garrett was also adamantly opposed to trading future picks for players. Value was sacrificed , you could almost think of it as a cradit card. The Cowboys would get better talent now but lesser talent in the future. The greatest issue with this is that there is never any guarantee such a sacrifice would contribute to achieving the goal, in fact it rarely does. Remember the WR’s Joey Galloway and Roy Williams?
Jason Garrett wanted the “right kind of players” which he described as hard workers who loved to play the game and would constantly strive to get better and help make the team better. They were good citizens. They were guys that had worked hard in college and has achieved a high level of production.
You may not have noticed that the vast majority of draftees were 4 year college players who graduated. The rare exceptions were mostly top 1st round talent, such as Tyron Smith.
The majority of offensive players drafted from 2011 to 2014 were team captains but another attribute went generally unnoticed. Most were All Academic. Jason Garrett liked intelligent offensive players because they could learn and improve quicker.
The team would work hard, become cohesive because they knew that a great team isn’t built of elite players, it is one built with the type of players that build an elite team. Talent is important , of course, but familiarity, teamwork , and playing for each other are also critical components.
A greatly improved team is not usually the result of the previous off-season’s diligence in finding a few new players that contribute through their productivity. It has far more to do with an increase in the unity of the current players. They have practiced another full season together, they become more familiar with each other’s nuances on the field. They go through practice plays so many times that they become far more successful anticipating what each other is going to do in particular circumstances. They become synced. A runningback knows how to attack a hole at a specific angle because he is instinctively aware of his lineman’s physical presence. For example, he may have a guy with a larger than typical girth, i, e. Nate Newton. He will automatically make a different type of shift to navigate around his lineman to avoid getting bottled up.
A RB can look pretty ridiculous when he doesn’t know his lineman, he trips over them, he runs into them, A quarterback unfamiliar with his RB can create poor hand-offs, poor blocking by that RB, even turnovers.
It is impossible to separate the individual talents of players from what their team does or does not do for them as a result of being in sync. It should be no secret that successful teams didn’t just appear one particular season out of the blue. I can guarantee that in almost every instance, there was stability in the coaching staff, the offensive and defensive systems, and in the players themselves. There will be a core of players that begin their success several seasons prior by playing and practicing togeher and developing chemistry. When you look back at 95% of the championship teams you can find 3 or 4 offensive linemen that had been playing together for several years, likewise with several other of the squads, the secondary would be another great example.
However, I say again, a critical component is to acquire talent that fits your scheme and players that want to be team guys and work hard to get better and be good leaders.
This is the reason why so many posts about getting this player or getting that player is irrelevant. It is one of the many major flaws in Jerry Jones’s ability to be a successful GM. You simply cannot take the “plug and play “ approach to acquiring talent. The new players will not know the system, they will not know the players, they will not play with the confidence that their teammates will react a specific way on a play leaving him free to make more aggressive moves that create big plays.
This is the single greatest reason for the lack of turnovers last season. Defenders had to play tentatively, more cautiously because there were so many lineup changes due to suspensions and injury. There was far too much dependence on the performance of players that were not with the team the previous years, particularly along the defensive line. The season ending injury to Scandrick, the nagging injuries to Lee, and the injuries along the defensive line resulted in conditions that limited the risk taking of going for a INT instead of defending it or trying to create turnovers by attacking the ball and not the ball carrier.
This is also why the single most devastating event was not the injury to Tony Romo, it was not resigning
DeMarco Murray. Forget perceived talent level, forget individual accomplishments, this team was far far better with him than without, period. Demarco’s Cowboys career was perfectly aligned along the entire rebuilding of the offensive line. He came in with Tyron in 2011. He suffered through 2012, a season in which all five O-line starters had never played their position previously for the Cowboys. Smith and Free were switched and the interior was brand new.
DeMarco started in both seasons that our other 2 1st round picks started on the line their rookie seasons. He knew them. They knew him, in fact, pretty much, only him. They could develop a rhythm that created a superior running game, consistently relieving Romo from the pressure of having to make a play to keep them alive. You remember the benefits to his results that year. It was no wonder then how he almost instantly began to lament the departure of Murray while diplomatically making it sound less than a criticism of that decision.
Do you remember the talk early in the season on how the offensive line was playing so poorly, how they might have been overrated? No that was never the issue. They didn’t work any less harder, they just could not benefit from that work because their RB’s didn’t know where the linemen would be and the linemen wasn’t familiar with their RB’s tendencies. You don’t pick that up in one off-season. How many RB’s since 2000 that were Pro Bowlers played up to that level the first season on a new team?
It’s funny how, by the end of the season, some fans were disappointed that Mcfadden didn’t start earlier in the year, how things ,may have been different. It wouldn’t have been different, you saw those late result because McFadden and the O-line were slowly developing that familiarity during the season. The more they played together the better McFadden looked, the better the O-line looked. It was that simple. A great part of the reason Randle struggled was due to this lack of cohesiveness, he was never even close to the sufficient reps necessary to establish that bond. He was only successful in the first drive, when they most likely featured the plays he was most familiar with. As the game progressed and they called less familiar plays, it was chaos on the line, there was that tentativeness, the lack of familiarity. Forget the meat on the bone, Randle couldn’t find the diner plate after the 1st quarter.
This also explains Murray’s lack of production for the Eagles, particularly in the 1st half of the season. He was dealing, not only with a completely new line, but a new coach, new system, new quarterback, and a new role. Small wonder why he may be actively campaigning for a release because guess what happens in Phillie next season. New coach, new system, new role, quite possibly a new quarterback. There are only so many years in a RB career and he can’t afford another learning season.
And now back to my point about the “plug and play” mentality for many fans and our illustrious GM. We have all seen this before, and what we are seeing is the lack of a critical component in “the Plan”. That would be patience. It takes patience to wait for players to get better, to wait for a team to get better, particularly if you believe that the team is very close to reaching the goal associated with this plan. Therein lies another great trap. A team doesn’t have to be “close” to a goal to miss out on it. A team can be right on top of it. They can be, hands down, the best performing team of the regular season and still not achieve the goal of a Super Bowl. There are too many outside variables, too many “what if’s” for any team to think that they can focus on a specific season and make decisions that pertain to winning in a specific year while sacrificing resources for a future year.
Over 50% of the time, the best NFL teams in terms of comparing the combined indicators like won-loss, offesnive and defensive rankings, power rankings etc, that team fails. There are examples throughout NFL history. The Vikings going all out on the Walker trade is the best example but the Vikings were also the very best team in 1975 and probably should have won the Super Bowl except for a prayer and a throw by one Roger Staubach. The Rams have been the best twice in the 1970’s only to exit in the divisional round. The 49es were the best, stat-wise in both 1992 and 1995, two Cowboy Super Bowl years. The Cowbosy were the best in 1994.
To summarize, putting all your NFL eggs in one basket is foolhardy and history confirms it. However, that won’t stop Jerry Jones, the direct source of the “impatience factor”. The signing of Hardy, the commitment to Randle and the devastating decision making we are about to witness in a month will be further proof that Jerry Jones could be a GM for a thousand years and he still would not comprehend the true reason for the team’s demise this past season.
It’s not just Murray, of course. It included his impatience with the Cowboys results with Weeden (bck to that unfamiliarity factor), It included rushing Romo back too early. It included overpaying for average alent on the veteran free agent market, none more obvious that Brandon Carr…..at least this month.
How do the Cowboys right the ship? They must recommit to the plan, and stick with it. With that said, there is nothing wrong with the possibility that the BPA at #4 will be a RB. If so, the Cowboys should take him in 2016 so he will be a factor in 2017 and beyond. The same is also true in the 2nd round as it pertains to the position of QB. If this team was capable of grooming an undrafted rookie for three years then it should be more than capable of doing the same for a 2nd round pick while finding an intelligent choice of a veteran backup.
They should refocus on the “right kind of players” while rejecting any notion that the “wrong kind of player” is worth the risk, talent-wise. It is not the failure to deliver results that is the primary risk, it is his infiltration and corruption of the team chemistry, the team unity, the real and primary reason for the success of all those great teams of the past.
