Scruggs: Mike Lombardi Rips Jason Garrett's Coaching Ability

Texas Ace said:

Are you forgetting the pick 6 he threw?

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Yes.

townsend said:

Payton has had 3 consecutive 7-9 seasons. He's had 3 dissapointing exits from the playoffs since 2010. Is there really anything Payton has done since Garrett started coaching that would show he's an upgrade over Garrett?

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Well yes he doesn't have the horrible playcalling that Garrett does in crunch time, The Saints problem over the years was their inability to stop anyone on defense. I would take Payton over Garrett in a heartbeat!!

boozeman said:

Said it all along. It will take a supremely talented team on both sides of the ball for Garrett to ever win a title. He is simply incapable of navigating the waters when the competition gets tough. There is a reason we have lost practically every high stakes game he has ever coached.

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They basically need to blowout every team to win. Any close games and Garrett shits the bed and it's pretty much a loss unless the players bail them out in spite of coaching.

Cowboys never win close games?

More ridiculous Garrett hyperbole.

The part people are missing are that these complaints can be lobbied at just about any non Super Bowl champion coach. And even some of the Super Bowl champions.

You lack perspective.

No one is saying there aren't flaws. What is being said is, you are overly critical as you are looking at the situation with Cowboys tinted fan glasses.

Case in point: "Give Bill Belichick this roster and the team waltzes to a Super Bowl."

Yeah no shit, the best coach in the league? Who ever said Garrett was anywhere near that? Belichick isn't available.

You know who was available? Ben McAdoo. Doug Pedersen. Doug Marrone. Adam Gase. Todd Bowles.

These are Garrett's measuring stick, not Bill Belichick.

Anyone who says they'd take those guys over Garrett is only saying so because they are tired of Garrett and/or personally dislike him and want to punitively fire him. Those guys aren't a lick better.

Our head coach has flaws. So do the head coaches of 2/3rds the rest of the league.

Garrett has his problems, but he's coming off 12-4 and 13-3 with his starting QB. He has a talented roster, but definitely not the league's most talented especially considering the defense. He has them about where they should be... in the league's top quarter or so. If things break right, they could win it all.

The Steelers turned this into a business model for like 3 decades now. If we continue to compile 11-5s and 12-4s and 10-6s, we will probably get a ring at some point too.

mschmidt64 said:

Cowboys never win close games?

More ridiculous Garrett hyperbole.

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It is still cute when your Garrett claws come out.

boozeman said:

It is still cute when your Garrett claws come out.

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Yeah, I mean... facts are generally cute I guess.

We were 7-2 this year in one possession games.

We were 5-0 in close games in 2014.

The main criticism people should have for Garrett is that he hasn't won a game in the divisional round. When we could have two different times, with one or two less mistakes. But yeah, it feels like people want to completely forget the fact that a team that at one point had gone nearly a decade without a division title managed to pull down a pair in 3 years, and a team that went a decade without advancing to the divisional round did so twice in 3 years.

Does Garrett get no credit for repeating his stellar 2014 campaign with rookies replacing their pro bowl QB and league leading rusher? Has that ever been done before? Are we so spoiled by the golden years that we can't appreciate how incredible last season was?

mschmidt64 said:

Belichick isn't available.

You know who was available? Ben McAdoo. Doug Pedersen. Doug Marrone. Adam Gase. Todd Bowles.

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Why didn't you include all the coaches who have been available over the last seven years? Don't you want every position upgraded whenever possible? Then why not a spare head coach who adds nothing?

townsend said:

Does Garrett get no credit for repeating his stellar 2014 campaign with rookies replacing their pro bowl QB and league leading rusher?

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I love this line of argument, too. Yeah, he gets credit for immensely talented players for Zeke Elliott and Dak just because they're rookies. I guess if he had rookies Jerome Brown, Bruce Smith, Lawrence Taylor, Jerry Rice, Ray Lewis, and Ronnie Lott that would prove even more how good he is! Because rookies!

In retrospect, we shouldn't have fired Barry Switzer until 2003 because we couldn't guarantee a better coach until BP came along. Switzer may have lucked into another Super Bowl win before 2003. Who knows?

Townsend said:

Does Garrett get no credit for repeating his stellar 2014 campaign with rookies replacing their pro bowl QB and league leading rusher?

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I think Linehan has done a great job since joining the team.

Genghis Khan said:

I think Linehan has done a great job since joining the team.

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You see, I don't buy the "anything good is Linehan, everything bad is Garrett" logic. That's just picking your favorites.

townsend said:

You see, I don't buy the "anything good is Linehan, everything bad is Garrett" logic. That's just picking your favorites.

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It is Linehan's show, though. That was obvious early in 2014 when we were down 21-0 to the horrible Rams and didn't give up on the run.

We're really incredibly fortunate that Dan Mullen loved Linehan's offense and basically copied it at MSU.

Chocolate Lab said:

Why didn't you include all the coaches who have been available over the last seven years?

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Cause after like, year one or year two, he wasn't getting fired, nor was he getting fired after 12-4 in 2014, or this year after 13-3.

I named the coaches in 2016 coming off a 4-12 season when was the last time we had an opportunity to replace him realistically.

Don't you want every position upgraded whenever possible? Then why not a spare head coach who adds nothing?

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Yes, and I've said as much.... but this is where the Anti-Garrett crowd flies off the handle, generally.

When I say "Yes, I'd replace him when an Andy Reid or Sean Payton become available because they are clear upgrades," they spin out of control, accusing me of just protecting him, frothing at the mouth about how that's not good enough.

Actually, it is. Because otherwise you are picking from the list above. No thanks.

I love this line of argument, too. Yeah, he gets credit for immensely talented players for Zeke Elliott and Dak just because they're rookies. I guess if he had rookies Jerome Brown, Bruce Smith, Lawrence Taylor, Jerry Rice, Ray Lewis, and Ronnie Lott that would prove even more how good he is! Because rookies!

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Yeah, he does get credit for these players being rookies and excelling. I mean, ok... take away Elliott maybe, he was the fourth pick in the draft.

Dak was a generational talent just sitting there in the fourth round? Garrett gets no credit for that? Completely unbelievable to say that the head coach has no hand in developing a guy like that.

How about guys like Collins and Brown, taken in the 3rd and 6th rounds? They were just "immensely talented players" that we happened to luck into? No coaching necessary?

Or do we just chalk that up to Marinelli?

Like we can't see through that shit. Anything good that happens, it's because of a coordinator. Anything bad, it's on Garrett.

~flush~ Completely disingenuous.

pdom said:

In retrospect, we shouldn't have fired Barry Switzer until 2003 because we couldn't guarantee a better coach until BP came along. Switzer may have lucked into another Super Bowl win before 2003. Who knows?

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Huge difference between a team that is spiraling down the drain, and is clearly out of control of a head coach who doesn't really care anymore, versus a young team that has been slowly built into one that is capable of contending, with a coach that the players like and respond to, with at least some semblance of a professional, respectable culture being cultivated for long term success.

A more apt comparison would be Chan Gailey... and yeah, we shouldn't have fired him after 10-6 and 8-8 because the next guy up was Dave fucking Campo.

Yes, we take too many risks on bad character guys still, like Hardy and Gregory, and they have uniformly seemed to backfire on us, but somehow the locker room holds together instead of devolving into chaos. Why is that? The rest of the locker room is full of RKGs.

When I say "Yes, I'd replace him when an Andy Reid or Sean Payton become available because they are clear upgrades," they spin out of control, accusing me of just protecting him, frothing at the mouth about how that's not good enough.

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Andy Reid has been available during the last seven years. So has Jim Harbaugh. Were you for hiring them at the time?

And no, I don't give him credit for Dak. Dak is an incredible worker and leader, just as he was at MSU where he took a longtime also-ran to #1 in the country for a few weeks. Just because everyone missed on him doesn't mean he was suddenly developed here into something he wasn't before.

Now if we had Connor Cook like we really wanted and we'd had the year we did last year? Then I'd give Garrett some credit. I don't give him credit for Dak.

Chocolate Lab said:

It is Linehan's show, though.

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Except it's not Linehan's show. Garrett is the head coach. Linehan doesn't do anything without Garrett's approval.

Yes, Linehan injected some much needed new ideas into our scheme, and the results have been wonderful.

Garrett is still in charge. If Garrett wanted to go pass happy, Linehan would have to go pass happy.

Garrett either changed and doesn't love pass happy anymore, or he realized his own pass happy tendencies and smartly brought in a counterbalance.

Or, and this is waaaaaay more the case than the Garrett haters want to admit, most of the pass happiness was a relic of a time when the OL sucked and couldn't run block for shit.

Yes, we know.... the Green Bay loss where he continued to pass despite being up big in 2013. Before Zack Martin was there and when Frederick was just a rookie.

Most of the "pass happy" complaints since then are really more situational fan nitpicking than any institutional lack of run game commitment.

mschmidt64 said:

Except it's not Linehan's show. Garrett is the head coach. Linehan doesn't do anything without Garrett's approval.

Yes, Linehan injected some much needed new ideas into our scheme, and the results have been wonderful.

Garrett is still in charge. If Garrett wanted to go pass happy, Linehan would have to go pass happy.

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I guess you missed 2013 when Garrett quietly took back playcalling from Callahan and then the following offseason, Jerry stepped in and took playcalling away (again) and said that wouldn't happen again.

Chocolate Lab said:

Andy Reid has been available during the last seven years. So has Jim Harbaugh. Were you for hiring them at the time?

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Andy Reid was available for exactly one offseason of the past 7 and yes, I said I would support firing Garrett for Reid at the time.

Harbaugh was only available after 2010, with Garrett coming off of his interim stint, so no, there was no reason to go out and get Harbaugh at that point. Then he was available after 2014 when we were coming off a 12-4 season. I doubt he's been truly available since being at Michigan.

If Payton hits the market, and Garrett is coming off missing the playoffs, I will be fine with that change as well.

If Garrett goes 12-4 again and is in the divisional round, and Payton hits the market, Garrett isn't going anywhere. And I won't exactly be up in arms about not replacing him even though I'd acknowledge Payton is probably better.... you don't really fire coaches coming off 12-4 years.

And no, I don't give him credit for Dak.

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Yes, and you are wrong.

There is no other way to say it.

Dak is an incredible worker and leader... so are a bunch of NFL players who don't pan out.

He's also incredibly talented and yes, people just missed that.

But he wasn't such a sure-fire thing that there was no coaching required. Saying otherwise is the height of foolishness.

What's more, you don't even believe it. Any other situation you would give a ton of credit to the coach. You are just saying it because, you know, fuck Garrett.

But the Cowboys definitely tweaked their offense to Dak's strengths last year, so right there, I know he was the benefit of good coaching and not just superior talent, which makes you wrong.

Chocolate Lab said:

I guess you missed 2013 when Garrett quietly took back playcalling from Callahan and then the following offseason, Jerry stepped in and took playcalling away (again) and said that wouldn't happen again.

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So Jerry is Jason's boss?

Kinda like Jason is Linehan's boss.

Interesting.