midswat
... soon
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2013
- Messages
- 4,241
Question: Where do you start to place blame or who gets the majority of it for the Cowboys?
Ed Werder: Well I thought after the game, Jerry Jones made an interesting admission when I asked him in the hallway in front of other media people... I asked him after the game how surprised he is that Dak and the offense have failed so completely without Ezekiel Elliott, and he said, "I'm surprised. We all know it shouldn't be that way. Zeke's important, Zeke makes it better, but to a man around here, we all know it shouldn't be to this degree at all."
To me, that suggests that the blame is on the front office with those responsible for putting together a roster that should be able to absorb some of these injuries and not fall apart on both sides of the ball as we've seen the Cowboys do. And it falls on the coaching staff that has not been able to figure out any sort of consistent offense that can routinely score points and allow games to be competitive. So to me that's Jerry saying that's on me and this is on Jason Garrett and the coaches. He seems to be absolving the players for the most part.
On talking about Jason Garrett's overly positive attitude, and Dak Prescott accepting responsibility for lack of production
Werder: When you're in charge, and it's your responsibility to fix something, then I don't think you can downplay the situation like Jason habitually does. He shows no alarm, and his approach, while it's his approach and it's who he is - it's genuine, to me it doesn't inspire among people in your fan base who have doubts that you recognize the depth of the problem and should be trusted to fix it. Whereas when Dak stands up there and says, "Hey, this is the biggest football crisis of my career, no question about it," then you have little doubt that at least he has a grasp what the problem is, what the reality of the situation is, and Jason just doesn't do that.
To me, I appreciate that Dak realizes publicly what we all see, and I think the Cowboys have historically offended the public many times by refusing to acknowledge what we all know and see by suggesting that, "you know, you guys don't play the game. You're not in our meetings. You don't really understand what's going on. Just trust us on this, you're wrong."
For example to make my point on Jason Garrett, his personality's genuine, and he is what he is, but we've all seen Bill Parcells and Jimmy Johnson who are giants in the coaching industry in the NFL, and have won multiple Super Bowl rings react more badly when their teams won and didn't play the way they wanted them to than we've seen Jason Garrett after some of the most humbling defeats this organization has ever known.
This franchise, even when it was an expansion team under Tom Landry that went winless in their first season, they didn't fail like this on offense, and Jimmy Johnson's 1-15 team didn't fail like this. The team that quit and got Wade Phillips fired didn't fail like this. So to stand up there like this is any other loss, that bothers me a little bit.
Ed Werder: Well I thought after the game, Jerry Jones made an interesting admission when I asked him in the hallway in front of other media people... I asked him after the game how surprised he is that Dak and the offense have failed so completely without Ezekiel Elliott, and he said, "I'm surprised. We all know it shouldn't be that way. Zeke's important, Zeke makes it better, but to a man around here, we all know it shouldn't be to this degree at all."
To me, that suggests that the blame is on the front office with those responsible for putting together a roster that should be able to absorb some of these injuries and not fall apart on both sides of the ball as we've seen the Cowboys do. And it falls on the coaching staff that has not been able to figure out any sort of consistent offense that can routinely score points and allow games to be competitive. So to me that's Jerry saying that's on me and this is on Jason Garrett and the coaches. He seems to be absolving the players for the most part.
On talking about Jason Garrett's overly positive attitude, and Dak Prescott accepting responsibility for lack of production
Werder: When you're in charge, and it's your responsibility to fix something, then I don't think you can downplay the situation like Jason habitually does. He shows no alarm, and his approach, while it's his approach and it's who he is - it's genuine, to me it doesn't inspire among people in your fan base who have doubts that you recognize the depth of the problem and should be trusted to fix it. Whereas when Dak stands up there and says, "Hey, this is the biggest football crisis of my career, no question about it," then you have little doubt that at least he has a grasp what the problem is, what the reality of the situation is, and Jason just doesn't do that.
To me, I appreciate that Dak realizes publicly what we all see, and I think the Cowboys have historically offended the public many times by refusing to acknowledge what we all know and see by suggesting that, "you know, you guys don't play the game. You're not in our meetings. You don't really understand what's going on. Just trust us on this, you're wrong."
For example to make my point on Jason Garrett, his personality's genuine, and he is what he is, but we've all seen Bill Parcells and Jimmy Johnson who are giants in the coaching industry in the NFL, and have won multiple Super Bowl rings react more badly when their teams won and didn't play the way they wanted them to than we've seen Jason Garrett after some of the most humbling defeats this organization has ever known.
This franchise, even when it was an expansion team under Tom Landry that went winless in their first season, they didn't fail like this on offense, and Jimmy Johnson's 1-15 team didn't fail like this. The team that quit and got Wade Phillips fired didn't fail like this. So to stand up there like this is any other loss, that bothers me a little bit.
