Garrett Postmortem Thread...

[data]

No condescension or sanctimony here.

Just Smitty is not allowed to do it.

No, this is sarcasm. Calling us uninformed and then saying a more nuanced review is necessary is condescending and sanctimonious.

Can you pat us on the head and encourage us to sound out the letters in our head before reading it aloud?

 

[Cowboysrock55]

I don't even care about Garrett anymore. It's like arguing over the career of Bobby Carpenter. Just doesn't seem important anymore, just glad he is gone.

 

[bbgun]

When you take a step back, though, John Wilkes Booth was a terrific actor. Let's not let that factoid get lost in all this.

Quivering in our knickers. Clutching our purses. The deepest, darkest secrets are about to be unveiled to the world.

is pd a time traveler from the 1860s?

 

[boozeman]

I literally just said why a more nuanced approach is necessary. Anyway, no point in continuing to go around and around.

I'll defer to Sturm at this point, who so far much more closely mirrors my take than he does the rest of this board's.

Bullshit.

Sturm made it clear he had plenty of opportunities to deserve his firing. Not once, all of these years, did you ever suggest anything of the kind. So just because he is not as adamant that the guy was a pathetic joke, his opinion aligns with your's?

 

[data]

is pd a time traveler from the 1860s?

I like to role-play. Spices things up, ya kno

 

[Chocolate Lab]

God damn. Like a dog with his bone.

 

[NoDak]

The only difference between Wade Phillips and Jason Garrett is that Garrett managed to keep the team from cratering for a longer period of time and had a personal relationship with the Jones family, which perhaps helped diminish Jerry's influence on the draft/personnel decisions.

That's it.

Their tenure in Dallas was damn near identical (2 NFC divisional appearances/NFC East titles, 1-2 playoff record for Phillips in 4 years, 3 divisional appearances/NFC East titles, 2-3 playoff record in 9 for Garrett, winning % was similar) while outside of Dallas Phillips has a history of being a top tier, near elite coordinator. We'll see if Garrett can do the same.

Garrett also didn't have one of his coordinators purposely trying to sabotage him, either. There was also a lot of offense vs defense squabbling going on back then, too. Which only hastened the blowup and shutdown.

 

[Simpleton]

I literally just said why a more nuanced approach is necessary. Anyway, no point in continuing to go around and around.

I'll defer to Sturm at this point, who so far much more closely mirrors my take than he does the rest of this board's.

I read your post and as far as I can tell there's no legitimate reason for a more "nuanced discussion" aside from you wanting to feel personally validated about a topic that has no bearing on anything moving forward, and is irrelevant to the organization's past aside from being a black mark on its history.

Why does a coach like Garrett, who never accomplished anything of note and 20 years from now will be remembered for nothing but squandering opportunities long ago, deserve "more nuanced discussion"?

Discussing the career of a guy like Romo, who likely would've won a Super Bowl if he played for a high-performing organization like New Orleans or Baltimore or Pittsburgh, and whose career was cut short by injuries (partly due to Garrett's half-assed attempt at prioritizing the OL with signings like Livings and Bernadeau) deserves "nuanced discussion".

Arguing over which shade of average some random HC that accomplished nothing and never showed even an indication that he was anything better than average is just nonsense to make you feel better about defending him for years.

The funny thing is that you've somehow twisted Sturm's opinion, which includes wanting him fired 7 years before he was finally fired, into some sort of affirmation of your stance, which it is not. Just because he doesn't call Garrett a fucking moron and treat him with the same vitriol, which he literally can't without harming his professional reputation, doesn't mean he has the same opinion as you.

He wanted him fired in 2012. He insinuated that he should be fired repeatedly for years thereafter. Read between the lines and tell me if you think he'd be here arguing about how Garrett deserves some sort of mild credit for his wholly uninspiring decade in Dallas.

 

[data]

I read your post and as far as I can tell there's no legitimate reason for a more "nuanced discussion" aside from you wanting to feel personally validated about a topic that has no bearing on anything moving forward, and is irrelevant to the organization's past aside from being a black mark on its history.

Why does a coach like Garrett, who never accomplished anything of note and 20 years from now will be remembered for nothing but squandering opportunities long ago, deserve "more nuanced discussion"?

The lengths to avenge a butthurt ego...

 

[Genghis Khan]

The funniest part might be referencing thursday's article as some sort of validation when it looks like it is the lone positive piece in a 5 part series. In other words, 20% of the series is positive and 80% is negative, but hey nuance.

Meanwhile Sturm needs two days just to highlight the worst fireable offenses.

 

[Smitty]

The funny thing is that you've somehow twisted Sturm's opinion, which includes wanting him fired 7 years before he was finally fired, into some sort of affirmation of your stance, which it is not. Just because he doesn't call Garrett a fucking moron and treat him with the same vitriol, which he literally can't without harming his professional reputation, doesn't mean he has the same opinion as you.

It actually very much does mean just that.

Maybe you don't understand my opinion fully. Or Sturms.

 

[Rev]

Going to pass

 

[Smitty]

No, this is sarcasm.

No, it's fucking condescension.

 

[Cowboysrock55]

No, it's fucking condescension.

Does your wife ever conplain that you argue about everything?

 

[Smitty]

Bullshit.

Sturm made it clear he had plenty of opportunities to deserve his firing. Not once, all of these years, did you ever suggest anything of the kind. So just because he is not as adamant that the guy was a pathetic joke, his opinion aligns with your's?

Not sure how you can continue to misinterpret this other than deliberately.

First of all, I absolutely did suggest that he be replaced over the years. I simply was against a blind firing and coaching search because I felt his positives were enough that I did not want to come up with another Dave Campo or Wade Phillips. Given that we basically hired Mike McCarthy within a few mere hours of the determination that Garrett would be gone, it feels like we did exactly that (a targeted replacement), so in that sense I feel vindicated that this was the right approach. We now have a coach we can feel confident is top-notch. If we could have done so earlier (say after 2017) I would have felt exactly the same and supported that. As a specific example if we had lept at Andy Reid when the Eagles fired him after 2012, the year Sturm says he would have fired Garrett, you would have heard no opposition from me, was that the replacement they had lined up.

Secondly, Sturm is outlining his flaws in a series this week as well as his positives, of which, he says, and I quote, "Jason Garrett did many things very well." The entire point of this never ending idiotic debate is that Garrett is NOT the "pathetic joke," he is often painted to be here, so yes, Sturm's documentation of his mistakes are not met with opposition by me - I agree with them, and NOT the clown takes that frequently pop up on this board. I can't guess at what Sturm thinks in unpublished form, I can only go by what he prints, and what he prints I am conceding is a very fair critique of the Garrett era that I would at this point MOSTLY agree with.

I'm not gonna sit here and say I would have fired him outright after 2012 or 2013 (other than, as listed above, if we had gone after someone like Reid) (and hence why I said I MOSTLY agree with Sturm's take), but certainly I was fine with looking for upgrades as of 2015 or so. But the bottom line is that we are getting a fair look right now at his tenure, which is certainly more credible than the hot takes you'll find in the last few pages of this thread. Which again, is the cause of most of the debate on this topic.

 

[Simpleton]

It actually very much does mean just that.

Maybe you don't understand my opinion fully. Or Sturms.

Maybe not, or maybe you don't understand most other peoples opinions.

I don't think anybody legitimately thinks Garrett is the worst HC ever. He was a bad HC, he shouldn't have made it past 3-5 years and if he hadn't nobody would remember him as anything different than Phillips, which he isn't as far as on the field production.

The main reason he gets so much animosity is because of the extended timeframe and the stubbornness/refusal by the front office to get rid of him, which is completely deserved, even if at least half the anger should be directed towards Jerry, etc.

 

[Smitty]

Maybe not, or maybe you don't understand most other peoples opinions.

I don't think anybody legitimately thinks Garrett is the worst HC ever. He was a bad HC, he shouldn't have made it past 3-4 years and if he hadn't nobody would remember him as anything different than Phillips, which he isn't.

The main reason he gets so much animosity is because of the extended timeframe and the stubbornness/refusal by the front office to get rid of him, which is completely deserved, even if at least half the anger should be directed towards Jerry, etc.

Well maybe people should say what they mean instead of posting hyperbole.

 

[Simpleton]

Well maybe people should say what they mean instead of posting hyperbole.

I don't think I ever said he was the worst HC ever, I think he was below average and should've been fired after 2017 at the absolute latest, although 2012 or 2013 would've been perfectly justified as well.

It all ended up well enough with McCarthy, but nobody knows what the opportunity cost actually is if we would've gotten rid of him in 2017, let alone 2012 or 2013. I'm never going to defend Garrett just because he managed to take some extremely talented rosters and put up a Wade Phillips-esque resume over a decade.

 

[Cotton]

Not all the time, but just every once in a while I feel like I'm posting at the Zone.

 

[Smitty]

I don't think I ever said he was the worst HC ever, I think he was below average and should've been fired after 2017 at the absolute latest, although 2012 or 2013 would've been perfectly justified as well.

It all ended up well enough with McCarthy, but nobody knows what the opportunity cost actually is if we would've gotten rid of him in 2017, let alone 2012 or 2013. I'm never going to defend Garrett just because he managed to take some extremely talented rosters and put up a Wade Phillips-esque resume over a decade.

But I'm not "defending" against anything you said verbatim in that post above. I have no issue with you saying any of that - even if I'm saying I wouldn't have PERSONALLY fired him after 2012 or 2013 absent someone like Reid (or, like a that-timeframe McCarthy) being brought in.

It's the down-the-rabbit-hole ridiculousness like trying to make every last thing a moratorium on the last administration's failures. Newsflash: He had a seat at the table for personnel decisions and they were on average pretty good decisions. That by itself was shown that it can get you a bounce or two away from a Championship game. This most recent trend of trying to say McCarthy is the one responsible for us nailing the draft, and that the last regime failed at the draft, is silly and is contradicted by the entire claim that the team was super talented and it was a Garrett failing that he didn't get enough out of the talent.

Everyone is in a race to find the Garrett bogeyman in everything. And the reason why a nuanced perspective is important, to get back to your other question, is so we can know who was good at what and where the ACTUAL failings are, so we can direct our angst to the RIGHT parties. If the coach is doing something right and other things wrong, at the end of the day he has to be accountable, no doubt, but at the same time, maybe the coach needs better support elsewhere so you can keep him for the things he IS doing well.... or so that you don't make the same mistakes with the next coach, who also deserves a fair shake.

McCarthy has been a top 10 coach in this league and I have all the hope in the world for him, but he also got stale in Green Bay. If he doesn't instantly come in and improve us dramatically there will be questions abounding. But maybe those questions don't need to involve throwing McCarthy out with the bathwater but instead revolve around questioning who is doing the player selection, who is interfering with practices, or who he's been asked to consider for assistant coaching positions on either side of the ball.

I will also reiterate another point no one ever wants to consider: What we want is of no consequence, what Jerry wants and will do is what is important. And "suffering" through not firing Garrett after, say, 2015, means we had to "suffer" a pretty exciting year and a divisional round playoff appearance in 2016 and through an exciting playoff win and a divisional round playoff appearance in 2018, finally culminating in a coach we all feel great about in Mike McCarthy being hired for 2020, with hopes that he could be here 10 years and win a Super Bowl. He's that caliber of coach.

Here's the coaches hired in 2015: Adam Gase (fired), Ben McAdoo (fired), Chip Kelly (fired), Mike Mularkey (fired), Hue Jackson (fired), Dirk Koetter (fired), and Doug Pederson (Super Bowl winner).

Given that we were not gonna be hiring Pederson as he was a Reid disciple bound for Philadelphia on that pipeline (and I'm frankly not convinced he's that good anyway), the question is not a matter of "Are any of these fired coaches better than Garrett?" (which I'd argue essentially NO), it's, was it worth suffering through Jason Garrett to get Mike McCarthy in 2020 instead of these assholes? You hire a guy like that in 2015 or 2017 and it's very possible that McCarthy is not your head coach right now. This was ALWAYS the point behind the targeted upgrade approach.