Albert Breer:
What is holding up the Cowboys’ divorce with Jason Garrett?
The longer Jason Garrett remains the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, the longer Jerry Jones has to wait to begin requesting interviews with future candidates. There are three different scenarios that I can imagine at the moment:
• Garrett is legitimately making a push to save his job, and it’s working. A pair of two-hour meetings on Monday and Tuesday did not result in his ouster, while
a head coach was hired in Washington and a flurry of interview request permission slips began to blanket every front office in the league. Jones is behind the scenes trying to figure out a way to spin this to an obviously dejected fanbase hoping for a change.
• Jerry Jones knows who he wants to be the Cowboys’ next head coach and is waiting for that person to give him the green light. This would be a more sensible answer if we’d written this a week ago, back when Dan Mullen was still preparing the Florida Gators for the Orange Bowl and Lincoln Riley was still getting the Oklahoma Sooners ready for
a beatdown against LSU. Unless scattered reports of Clemson offensive coordinator
Tony Elliott making the leap are true, or Jones is making some wild play for the trifecta of Ed Orgeron, Joe Brady and Dave Aranda at LSU (which, honestly, would be an incredible staff; I would hire Aranda to be a head coach in the NFL now), it would be hard to fathom what exactly for what he’s waiting. Bye weeks for top coordinators are coming up (Greg Roman, Don Martindale, Eric Bienemy, Mike McDaniel, etc.), and the window to get in line is closing fast.
• Jones is emotional and knows he’s running out of time but doesn’t care. Maybe he’s worried Garrett would walk right out the door and into a five-year deal with the rival Giants, which is a thought he’s expressed publicly before. Maybe he simply cares for Garrett and can’t bring himself to do it. Maybe there is an element of allowing the dust to settle, believing that good coaches will still be available outside of the frantic window and they’re worth waiting for.