Watkins - Jones: Jason Garrett a 'premier asset'

[h=1]Jones: Jason Garrett a 'premier asset'[/h]Updated: May 24, 2013, 12:25 PM ET
By Calvin Watkins

Dallas Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones said coach Jason Garrett is not coaching for his job in 2013 despite coming off consecutive 8-8 seasons.

"Well, no, no he's not ... to the last question: Is Jason coaching for his job? No," Jones told the NFL Network in an interview from the NFL's spring meetings in Boston that aired Wednesday.

"What we're doing is taking the assets that we have, and Jason being right at the top and certainly our premier asset, and we're using them to the best of our ability," he said.

Garrett is entering the third year of a four-year deal with the Cowboys.

It's been a difficult offseason for Garrett, who had to allow his brother, tight ends coach John Garrett, to leave the Cowboys. John Garrett is now the tight end coach with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Garrett is also thinking about giving up the play-calling duties to Bill Callahan or another coach on the staff. Jones said this move was in the making for several years, but a final decision hasn't been made.

After the Cowboys' season ended with a loss to the Washington Redskins, Jones fired defensive coordinator Rob Ryan. Garrett had developed a strong relationship with Ryan.

The Cowboys eventually hired Monte Kiffin. Ryan is now the defensive coordinator with the New Orleans Saints.

"We've been disappointing the last two years," Jones said. "8-8 won't get it. Nobody more so than him. We're going to take what we've got, as an example -- [quarterback Tony] Romo's great experience, ability, decision-making, all of those things, and we're going to try and win more ballgames."

He's a Toxic Asset.

Reporters have no balls. Follow up the question.

"How many years will Jason Garrett have to continue to lose and still keep his job?"

"Is Jason Garrett the only coach in the league who doesn't have to win to keep his job"

Anything like that.

After the Cowboys' season ended with a loss to the Washington Redskins, Jones fired defensive coordinator Rob Ryan. Garrett had developed a strong relationship with Ryan.

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That's not true, according to previous reports.

1bigfan13 said:

That's not true, according to previous reports.

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Yeah, from what I heard he and Garrett never saw eye to eye and Garrett was helping to shove him out the door.

Clay_Allison said:

Reporters have no balls. Follow up the question.

"How many years will Jason Garrett have to continue to lose and still keep his job?"

"Is Jason Garrett the only coach in the league who doesn't have to win to keep his job"

Anything like that.

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Well, the aforementioned awesome Jeff Fisher posted seasons of 7-9, 8-8, 8-8, and 8-8 before making the playoffs. Everyone's favorite Jon Gruden also went 8-8 twice before making the playoffs in his first ever head coaching stint in Oakland.

Should we go more current? How about Gary Kubiak? The hell with two seasons.... Kubiak went: 6-10, 8-8, 8-8, 9-7, and 6-10. He went FIVE years without winning! How did he keep losing and manage to keep his job?! He's still employed! Or maybe Ron Rivera.... he followed up his inaugural 6-10 season with a stunning 7-9 season... someone should ask Jerry Richardson why Rivera is the only coach who doesn't have to win to keep his job.

I could go on and find example after example, but by now it should be obvious that if a reporter asked such a question, it'd be stupid and the only source of the question would be an obvious agenda.

Coaches often do not get fired after two 8-8 seasons to begin their careers and in fact sometimes go on to have some significant successes.

So there is no reason to ask "why is Garrett the only coach who doesn't have to win to keep his job" since that statement is in fact, demonstrably 100% false.

I'm sure now that I've pointed out the stupidity at play here, I will be accused of "making excuses for Garrett" when in fact I am simply pointing out Clay's ridiculous over-the-top completely false assertions that Jason Garrett is the only coach in league history to have two straight 8-8 seasons and then keep his job.

This is why we have to have these arguments over and over again. It's nonsense like this. I never argued with anyone for saying "Garrett has to do better," or "Garrett has been average so far" or "Garrett needs to win or we'll have to change coaches," or anything like that, which are all statements which are actually true.

These debates mostly happen when someone makes some wildly inaccurate statement (see above) and then tries to pretend that Garrett is some horrible coach, which he is not.

Just. Can't . Help. Himself.

Garrett's coaching record does not bother me as much as his coaching style.

- The constant slow starts.

- Not knowing when to challenge a play.

- Abandoning the running game.

- Routinely being out-coached by any halfway decent Def-coordinator.

Those are the things that bug me about Garrett. I just don't think he's the type of coach who is a difference maker. I think he's the type of coach who has to have elite talent in order to compete.

I could never see him taking an team of average talent, like our Cowboys, and coaching them to 11 or 12 wins.

I always say, parity reigns supreme in the NFL and in most cases the coaches are the difference between 7 wins and 11 wins.

That's why the Cowboys have been a .500 team recently. They have average talent and an average coach. I believe if we had a better coach that same squad from last season probably wins 10 or 11 games.

I think there are very few coaches who could get this offense over the hump with the OL in the state that it has been in. That being said, I admit Garrett has done an average job so far and in all likelihood we're going to need another franchise-direction-changer head coach and Garrett does not seem to be it. Jerry retains too much power in this situation.

But put Garrett in Baltimore and that team still wins the division every other year. Maybe they don't win a Super Bowl, but in a functional environment he remains employable. He wouldn't be weighing the team down explicitly.

Funny that you mentioned Baltimore, since he screwed up our game against them with his sorry game management. Just like he did against the Cardinals in 2011. If we had won those games, he would have had two winnings seasons. It's almost like there's a correlation between bad coaching and not going to the playoffs.

Its really sad how far this franchise has fallen. Here is some perspective for you, we have won 1 playoff game in 17 years and STILL have played in more postseason games than any other team.

That's a testament to how truly dominant the Cowboys have been at times. We will never see it again and its JJ's fault.

Really, its almost criminal, what he's done.

townsend said:

Funny that you mentioned Baltimore, since he screwed up our game against them with his sorry game management. Just like he did against the Cardinals in 2011. If we had won those games, he would have had two winnings seasons. It's almost like there's a correlation between bad coaching and not going to the playoffs.

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Every coach has a handful of things that they do that cost them games occasionally. If you think back hard enough, you'd remember them about Wade, about Parcells, about any coach who coaches in the league.

Though I fail to see how it's funny that I bring them up. It's not exactly ironic or anything.

mschmidt64 said:

Every coach has a handful of things that they do that cost them games occasionally. If you think back hard enough, you'd remember them about Wade, about Parcells, about any coach who coaches in the league.

Though I fail to see how it's funny that I bring them up. It's not exactly ironic or anything.

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Wade made a handful of bone headed decisions, especially in 2010, and he was rightly dismissed after the team lost faith in him.
That being said the teams last playoff win/appearance came off the strength of Wade's defense. While Garrett was struggling to establish a consistent attack with a nearly mistake free Romo. If you'll recall Wade coached two straight shutouts against the Skins and Eagles to storm into the playoffs after coaching up the team to defeat the undefeated (and eventual super bowl champion) Saints in the Superdome. That's way more than anything Garrett's done in his career as a coach or coordinator. Parcells' contribution to this team is so big, we're still riding the talent to mediocre seasons, instead of 5-11s.
The point is, the Garrett hasn't done anything to benefit his team, (unlike Wade and especially unlike Parcells) and he's done stuff that actually cost his team games. That makes him a liability to this team, and he should be replaced by someone who actually has things on his resume that isn't just having a dad who's a friend of Jerry Jones.

I guess you had to be there.

townsend said:

Wade made a handful of bone headed decisions, especially in 2010, and he was rightly dismissed after the team lost faith in him.

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Every coach has them. Wade was not a bad coach because he challenged a bad play here or there or because he screwed up a 2 minute drill (he did).

He was a bad coach because his jack off style led to the downfall of this team and anyone who bothered to look at his record knows that he leads his teams straight into the gutter. Which he did here, because he's incapable of providing the type of direction a team needs to not fall apart.

That being said the teams last playoff win/appearance came off the strength of Wade's defense. While Garrett was struggling to establish a consistent attack with a nearly mistake free Romo. If you'll recall Wade coached two straight shutouts against the Skins and Eagles to storm into the playoffs after coaching up the team to defeat the undefeated (and eventual super bowl champion) Saints in the Superdome. That's way more than anything Garrett's done in his career as a coach or coordinator. Parcells' contribution to this team is so big, we're still riding the talent to mediocre seasons, instead of 5-11s.

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Forgive me for not elevating a 6 game run of Wade's defense over the year-in, year-out top 10 yardage producing offense. That's not "nothing" as much as you'd like to say it is.

Wade is a good coordinator in his own right. I'm not taking that away from him.

But Garrett is a good coordinator too.

And he hasn't proven that he inevitably leads a team to completely fall apart and end worse than when he got there.

So he is what he is. An average coach.

The point is, the Garrett hasn't done anything to benefit his team, (unlike Wade and especially unlike Parcells) and he's done stuff that actually cost his team games.

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Yes, but that point is incorrect. Garrett does run this offense, and with a legit OL it's scoring would be much closer to matching it's yardage (since a bad OL inevitably weighs down scoring statistics). He gets credit for that output.

I think we should keep Garrett forever so we can be good at offensive yardage and nothing else.

Yes, but that point is incorrect. Garrett does run this offense, and with a legit OL it's scoring would be much closer to matching it's yardage (since a bad OL inevitably weighs down scoring statistics). He gets credit for that output.

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This is where you differ from the rest of the board. (and possibly reality) Yards, that don't correlate with significant time of possession, or scoring, aren't indicative of good coordination. Romo and his HOF tight end, as well as a great compliment of receivers earned us those yards, Garrett made them moot by stalling drives with shitty play calling. (see paragraph below)
Certainly a better line could have enabled a more successful offense, but the 2008-09 lines weren't terrible. They weren't as bad as the lines of high scoring teams like Green Bay or Arizona (of the same era.)
Romo was putting up plenty of yardage in 06 and the offense was managing to score points as well, and if you'll recall that great 06 line nearly killed Bledsoe in Philadelphia and New York. The difference was in better offensive coaching (by committee) presumably Sparano was a huge part of that. Even though I failed to appreciate him while he was here.

Garrett's coordination flops are diverse and heavily indicative of his poor ability to understand what does and doesn't work in an offense. From his love of passing to the sideline for a loss of two (or a pick six), to his swing pass to Marion Barber for a loss of 4. In the game I mentioned where we shutout the Redskins, Garrett turned over the ball on downs by running Barber into Albert Haynesworth (the only good player in a redskins uniform) consecutively on 3rd and 4th down. Then there's so many times he abandons the run because he loses patience and tries to play tecmo bowl.

Dismissing all of his shortcomings, and then just pointing to yards, is a poor defense of a poor coach, with a poor performance record, and you're "other coaches make mistakes too, so that makes all criticism invalid" is just mindbogglingly incorrect.

Clay_Allison said:

I think we should keep Garrett forever so we can be good at offensive yardage and nothing else.

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Well, very few coaches would be good at getting this offense to produce at a high scoring level without an offensive line.

But just as soon as you find that elite team building head coach, I'm with you.

Until then....... firing him for Lovie Smith doesn't make much sense.

townsend said:

This is where you differ from the rest of the board. (and possibly reality)

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I'm differing from reality. From the duo who has been telling me that Garrett wasn't even responsible for the yards. How can you even be taken seriously on the subject?

Yards, that don't correlate with significant time of possession, or scoring, aren't indicative of good coordination.

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It doesn't necessarily indicate bad coordinating either. Because it could indicate, as is the case here in Dallas, that the OL sucks.

In this case, anyone who has a brain knows and accepts that our OL makes it very, very difficult for our offense to score in the redzone and finish drives. Or milk out long time consuming drives with sustained running attacks because every ten seconds it's either letting a blitzer come free for a loss of yards or committing a false start penalty. Hence it relies on big plays because it cannot overcome it's own OL's constant mistakes to put together long drives.

That's a talent issue, not a coaching issue. It's not Jason Garrett's bad game planning when he calls a run and it gets blown up in the backfield for a three yard loss.

You keep trying to say it's coaching.... It's not. It's talent.

Garrett might be responsible for the talent. You might have an argument there, which is why I keep saying yes, we need a team builder.

You couldn't be more wrong, however, if you think that our scoring stats wouldn't be very close to matching our yardage stats with even an average OL.

It's very simple. When you don't have an OL, you can't run the ball. We have unarguably one of the worst run blocking lines in football. Because of that fact, we can't finish drives off with runs in the redzone. As a result, we're forced to throw in the redzone more, which is much less efficient since the defense is crammed into a smaller portion of the field.

These things are facts. It's how football works. It's like how when you have a shitty DL, your corners will look like garbage, that is a fact too.

So since I know we have a bad OL, I know our scoring stats are suffering because of it. So I also know that with a proper OL, Garrett's "coordinating" would be producing top 10 yardage and scoring stats that would, as a matter of absolute necessity because it's how football works, be better than they have been, which means they'd be close to matching those top 10 yardage numbers.

Which means you wouldn't have much of an argument about his offensive coaching.

So until you acknowledge that.... you remain wrong.

You can bitch about him not putting enough focus on finding the right OL if you wish. There is probably something to that.

The argument that he can't run an offense is moronic and false.

Dismissing all of his shortcomings, and then just pointing to yards, is a poor defense of a poor coach, with a poor performance record, and you're "other coaches make mistakes too, so that makes all criticism invalid" is just mindbogglingly incorrect.

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He doesn't have a poor performance record, he has an average performance record. His win-loss record is average. His game management or time clock management blunders have been about average (go look at Andy Reid if you think otherwise). His offensive scoring stats have been about average, and his offensive yardage stats are actually well above average.

So really there is nothing to say he's been poor. In fact, his offense has been consistently good and the only reason the scoring stats don't match is because of offensive line talent, not coaching.

You seem to keep forgetting that fact.

Any valid criticisms of him that you've named, I've said maybe that's correct. Such as the idea that he doesn't value OL personnel. That could be legit (though since he's not the GM, we don't know for sure). Or that he does need to improve his game management skills.

Your insistence that he doesn't know how to coach offense is demonstrably false, though. He has the yardage numbers, and the scoring numbers are a direct result of the OL talent. It would be like asking him to win with Quincy Carter at QB. Same thing. Not possible unless you are an elite coach like Bill Parcells. He could be doing a great job and you wouldn't be able to see it in the results because the talent is unable to execute the gameplan.

That is what has happened here with our OL. All the skill position players are less effective because the OL is weighing them down and has been for years. The coordinator can't even call the plays he wants to because he's scheming around his OL's weaknesses (Bob has stated this is the case many times).

And yet our coordinator still manages to put up top yardage numbers. That's not "glossing over" his coaching weaknesses. It's evidence that as an offensive coach, he is capable of taking good talent and getting results. Now all he needs is an NFL-competent OL and the scoring would fall into line (because that's how the game works, improve the line and TOP and scoring will go up).

mschmidt64 said:

Well, very few coaches would be good at getting this offense to produce at a high scoring level without an offensive line.

But just as soon as you find that elite team building head coach, I'm with you.

Until then....... firing him for Lovie Smith doesn't make much sense.

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Scoring defense and turnovers would be nice and his teams would be good at that.

mschmidt64 said:

I'm differing from reality. From the duo who has been telling me that Garrett wasn't even responsible for the yards. How can you even be taken seriously on the subject?



It doesn't necessarily indicate bad coordinating either. Because it could indicate, as is the case here in Dallas, that the OL sucks.

In this case, anyone who has a brain knows and accepts that our OL makes it very, very difficult for our offense to score in the redzone and finish drives. Or milk out long time consuming drives with sustained running attacks because every ten seconds it's either letting a blitzer come free for a loss of yards or committing a false start penalty. Hence it relies on big plays because it cannot overcome it's own OL's constant mistakes to put together long drives.

That's a talent issue, not a coaching issue. It's not Jason Garrett's bad game planning when he calls a run and it gets blown up in the backfield for a three yard loss.

You keep trying to say it's coaching.... It's not. It's talent.

Garrett might be responsible for the talent. You might have an argument there, which is why I keep saying yes, we need a team builder.

You couldn't be more wrong, however, if you think that our scoring stats wouldn't be very close to matching our yardage stats with even an average OL.

It's very simple. When you don't have an OL, you can't run the ball. We have unarguably one of the worst run blocking lines in football. Because of that fact, we can't finish drives off with runs in the redzone. As a result, we're forced to throw in the redzone more, which is much less efficient since the defense is crammed into a smaller portion of the field.

These things are facts. It's how football works. It's like how when you have a shitty DL, your corners will look like garbage, that is a fact too.

So since I know we have a bad OL, I know our scoring stats are suffering because of it. So I also know that with a proper OL, Garrett's "coordinating" would be producing top 10 yardage and scoring stats that would, as a matter of absolute necessity because it's how football works, be better than they have been, which means they'd be close to matching those top 10 yardage numbers.

Which means you wouldn't have much of an argument about his offensive coaching.

So until you acknowledge that.... you remain wrong.

You can bitch about him not putting enough focus on finding the right OL if you wish. There is probably something to that.

The argument that he can't run an offense is moronic and false.



He doesn't have a poor performance record, he has an average performance record. In fact, his offense has been consistently good and the only reason the scoring stats don't match is because of offensive line talent, not coaching.

You seem to keep forgetting that fact.

Any valid criticisms of him that you've named, I've said maybe that's correct. Such as the idea that he doesn't value OL personnel. That could be legit (though since he's not the GM, we don't know for sure).

Your insistence that he doesn't know how to coach offense is demonstrably false, though. He has the yardage numbers, and the scoring numbers are a direct result of the OL talent. It would be like asking him to win with Quincy Carter at QB. Same thing. Not possible unless you are an elite coach like Bill Parcells. He could be doing a great job and you wouldn't be able to see it in the results because the talent is unable to execute the gameplan.

That is what has happened here with our OL. All the skill position players are less effective because the OL is weighing them down and has been for years. The coordinator can't even call the plays he wants to because he's scheming around his OL's weaknesses (Bob has stated this many times).

And yet our coordinator still manages to put up top yardage numbers. That's not "glossing over" his coaching weaknesses. It's evidence that as an offensive coach, he is capable of taking good talent and getting results. Now all he needs is an NFL-competent OL and the scoring would fall into line (because that's how the game works, improve the line and TOP and scoring will go up).

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Just call your shot and say Garrett will be greatness somewhere else so we can all laugh at you later. He's your new Mo Clarett and Troy Hambrick. He won't even be a good coordinator in another spot and I'm calling that right now so tell me I'm wrong or admit that he sucks.