sean10mm
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More than anything else, what Jason Garrett is trying to do with this team is to re-create the Jimmy Johnson era. And who doesn't want that? In the 1990s the Cowboys ground their opponents into dust with straightforward game plans and overpowering talent, winning games with the kind of tragic inevitability we normally associate with geological disasters. Garrett ultimately dumped the 3-4 of the Parcells and Philips eras for the old 4-3 defense, they run the same basic Air Coryell offense that Norv did (with some odd tweaks to account for the new guy's legs), and they sank a ton of capital into assembling an elite offensive line and every-down running backs.
However, this was actually a terrible idea that was doomed to fail, on multiple levels.
However, this was actually a terrible idea that was doomed to fail, on multiple levels.
- You can't build a team like Jimmy did anymore. The emergence of free agency and the salary cap makes it impossible to stockpile teams like they did in 1992-1996 where you have stars all over the roster AND great depth behind them. At best what the Cowboys have done lately is assemble a brittle structure with some big names on the top, but nothing behind them but pure scrubs, so any key injuries just ruin entire units of the team overnight. The best you can do now is build teams that deep in complementary parts, with a coaching staff that is skilled in shuffling them around over the course of a season to keep the unit as a whole operating through the inevitable injuries or suspensions or whatever.
- Because of #1, you can't just get by on running old timey schemes and win by bludgeoning people to death using plays they see coming a mile away. The gap between the best roster and the worst roster is just too small now; now more than ever, the weaker team can beat the stronger team with strategy. Part of Garrett's vision almost seems like an implicit admission of his lack of tactical ability - he wants a team that doesn't require tactical ability to win with. The problem is, like I said, you can't make a team like that anymore. At best, it works in spurts until somebody important gets hurt and the whole thing falls apart.
- Jimmy Johnson was great at coaching "difficult" players into being part of the team; you could even argue he was the first coach who really knew how to get the most out of the "modern" star-athlete type of guys. He did it at the U and he did it in Dallas. Garrett, by contrast, has shown no ability to handle these guys - they just become locker room cancers he has to kick out, like TO and Bennett. Do we really believe Garrett could handle a modern-day Charles Haley type? LOL. This is where the attempts to equate Jimmy delegating duties to his coordinators to what Garrett does crap out - Jimmy was a practical psychologist on a level that Garrett can't sniff. Bennett's Super Bowl ring with the Patriots says "hi" right about now, just to rub it in.
- This 1990s football worldview especially doesn't mesh with the guys he has taking the place of the triplets. Dez is supposed to be his Irvin, but Dez is already in decline. Zeke isn't even playing. Dak is good enough to be the QB of the future, but he's also such a different kind of player from Aikman that the Air Coryell playbook should probably just be burned. Whatever Andy Reid's faults, if you put Dak on the Chiefs running that crazy WCO/spread option/wacky motion/whatever offense instead of Alex Smith he probably has 5,000 combined yards by the end of the year. Instead he's trying to throw jump balls to a declining player running a telegraphed route combination that belongs in a museum, and we're mad he doesn't look like Drew Brees doing it.
