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By Bob Sturm Jul 29, 2019
As you know, I am a creature of habit. On the day when the Cowboys will put on the pads for the first time and engage in light skirmishes between offense and defense (the weekend featured football primarily against “air” rather than each other), I offer you my thoughts on the team in the same way I have done for as many years as I can recall. This is my “Off to Oxnard” column. Consider it my own personal State of the Cowboys address. Unlike the team’s official effort Friday, mine will be free of questions from anyone except those voices in my head, who remain inquisitive about how the next several months will play out.
That is the real trick, of course: Having any idea where this journey will take us. We all have thoughts and ideas and have begun to size up the competition, but the true beauty of a new season is found with the same anticipation of stepping into a theater for a movie you have been anticipating or cracking open a highly-recommended book. You have no idea what is about to happen but cannot wait to find out.
This is my 22nd Dallas Cowboys training camp. As proof of the first sentence in this article, here is the 2018 version of this exercise. You can also find the 2017 version, the 2016 version, the 2015 version and the 2014 version (if you care to review how we really “know nothing, Jon Snow.”) As you would assume, I have many more versions available, but those should keep you plenty busy.
When I start my next trip around the Cowboys calendar, as the kids are all buying school supplies to start their next journey through a school year, I always think it is appropriate to include and update “the paragraph” to demonstrate what these 21 previous trips have given. I have covered the Cowboys since 1998 and have made this very trip to camp for roughly two weeks every time since. Hope is always packed, but so is the general feeling that this team has been stuck in a bit of a rut that entire time. The optimism of a new season and the reality of how things usually work around here wage a war for your views on what the next season might hold for all of us. The fact that there is a certain Groundhog Day element to Cowboys training camp every year is hard to fully ignore, because the change from the top is very slow and deliberate. Jerry Jones does not care for sudden change in the way he runs his franchise, and therefore we enter a 10th season of the Jason Garrett administration (and a ninth full season). With it, let’s take an updated look at “the paragraph.”
Here is the 2019 version:
The reality is hard to ponder. We’ve seen 21 seasons since that 1998 Training Camp, and just nine (43%) have resulted in playoff football of any sort. Just six (28%) have included NFC East Divisional Titles, which finally exceeds the number the Cowboys won consecutively from 1992-1996 (five). They have not come close to consecutive divisional titles since that streak ended. In 12 playoff games over 21 years, just three (14%) of those special years contained playoff victories – 2009 vs the Eagles, 2014 vs the Lions and 2018 vs the Seahawks, all home wildcard wins. And the real killer: At no point in those 21 seasons since that day in Wichita Falls have the Cowboys been to an NFC Championship Game (0%), let alone a trip to the Super Bowl (0%).
Some may wish to re-read that last part if you can fathom it all. It is a literary kick in the pants.
During that stretch, the Cowboys have seldom been a bad organization. Their 178-158 regular-season record over that stretch is actually 11th-best in the NFL during this arbitrary sample size. But the trouble is as such: The ten teams above them in the standings have combined for 17 Super Bowl trophies since then, and the only team in the top 10 to not win it all is Minnesota.
There is nothing wrong with being 11th-best in a 32-team league. The problem, as we know, is all about the playoff wilderness the Cowboys organization has endured since they last captured their own trophy in Super Bowl 30. This is the 24th year since then, and if you look at those standings in terms of playoff wins you see the Cowboys sitting tied in 22nd place (with Oakland) with four post-season victories. Flip it over to win percentage in the playoffs, and you drop to a tie for 26th place (with Washington). There was a time you didn’t mind being compared with Washington and Oakland, but all three teams have gone through a few disappointing decades.
And now, the real rough one. Since Super Bowl 30, this organization sits as one of only eight teams to not play in a conference championship game. This means that any playoff wins they have accumulated are all in the wildcard weekend. For 24 seasons, they have never even won a game in the divisional round in a league where parity seems to be everywhere.
The Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Houston Texans, Detroit Lions, Washington Redskins and, yes, the Dallas Cowboys are the eight teams to not reach the NFL’s final four in the last 24 years.
It certainly isn’t lost on anyone how long it has been around here, which is why a great number of DFW sports fans will roll their eyes at how the entire media machine starts running at high speed. The Cowboys’ season is beginning in earnest, and the entire industry will cover every single moment of it in a way that no other local team can compare to. Frankly, neither can nearly any other NFL franchise.
That is just the way it is. The Cowboys will eventually rise again, and the media world will certainly not miss it when it happens. [HR][/HR]
The question is not whether that rise will happen. It will. The question is whether we are witnessing that presently with this young group of very talented football players, or if it is another false dawn in the chronology that we will look back at and shake our collective heads.
The big one, though, for me as it pertains to July 29, 2019 is this: Will Jason Garrett be here in 12 months when we write this exact piece in 2020?
It is certainly a fair question to ask, as the sixth-longest-tenured coach in the NFL and the second-winningest coach in Cowboys history enters yet another season where we wonder if this is his do-or-die campaign in charge.
Garrett is entering the final year of his last big extension, one he earned at the end of the 2014 season (which I believe had a similar do-or-die mantra). That deal reportedly pays him $6 million per season from 2015-2019. Since we are now in an age where Jon Gruden has hit $10 million per season and Bill Belichick is over $12 million, Garrett’s salary does not rank as highly as it did when he signed, but he is still right at the edge of the sport’s top 10.
We also know that in this sport with a tight salary cap, a team with all of the money in the world can hire any coach they want. Heck, they can hire any group of coaches. The Cowboys can afford to pay their coordinators $10 million a season if they want — not to mention poach the best general manager. The Cowboys can literally hire any brain trust they want and still profit more than anyone else, so those of us aware of the finances on some casual level know that it isn’t just about Jason Garrett being the coach. It is more about what Dallas could probably do if they committed to adding the very best non-players at every spot in the organization.
As we look ahead over the next several months, I am struck by three things in the back of my head when it comes to Garrett’s grasp of the head coaching spot as he enters his own contract year:
That is what makes this season so incredibly pivotal. With all of the chaos of contracts and the futures of Ezekiel Elliott, Amari Cooper, and Dak Prescott (not to mention Byron Jones, Jaylon Smith, etc)., we could easily argue the big one is receiving much smaller headlines.
(Troy Wayrynen-USA TODAY Sports)
What does a successful year for Jason Garrett even look like?
It doesn’t appear Jerry fully knows, to be honest, as he tap-danced around his answers a few days ago. It might be one of those deals where you will know it when you see it, but it is somewhat vague on the surface at this point.
The biggest hurdles he has on his plate? Well, you could argue making sure everyone keeps their eyes on the prize of the biggest objective is front and center. And what is that? We should hope that once everyone gets their money straight, helping this team reach the NFC title game and perhaps even a Super Bowl is the only thing that truly matters.
But if there is anything that would represent ominous clouds on the horizon in 2019, it would be that all we have heard for months is contract talk. Is the Zeke holdout a big deal? Well, not really. I don’t need him participating in football activities at the moment anyway, but you can believe that most veteran players are wondering what will happen and how it will affect them. That is why you can’t actually view the Zeke situation as just affecting him. Byron Jones knows that an extension for everyone in front of him affects him. So does Jaylon Smith. La’el Collins hasn’t even been mentioned, and he is a starting right tackle in his own contract year.
Finite amounts of cap room — and a franchise that has to identify the keepers and the discards — will eventually cross the mind of every single player who has their own story, family and future to consider. We know this to be true, and we have seen it cause issues in other rooms. We also know that this is where the coach can be a real difference-maker. He can bring everyone together and convince all to leave their concerns outside the room and galvanize things wonderfully. Or he can be of no help whatsoever. Perhaps, in this case, they will find some common ground knowing he is in the exact same spot.
In other words, it sure seems to me that there is a recipe here for a very disjointed, drama-filled and distracted 2019 if the Cowboys become splintered or isolated in their own dramas. And much of that will fall to Jason Garrett. Can he keep the room’s eye on the prize amidst so many of the top personalities all choosing their own adventures and “looking out for No. 1” in their journeys? This is why contracts are best done from March through June, when leverage is lower and feelings are calmer. Trouble is, people are never motivated to make deals when everyone is calm.
The optimistic view would then be that everyone is focused and giving 110 percent to improve their own situations. This would, we assume, improve the collective product. But one false move could provide another iteration of the 2008 locker room implosion. That was a very talented and capable team that fell on its face because there were too many “keeping it real” personalities and agendas. As a result, their season ended in a circus of chaos and a 44-6 hide-tanning in Philadelphia, a phenomenal underachievement of a year where promise abounded in August. (And was televised on HBO’s Hard Knocks!)
Is this the year they string together the elusive back-to-back playoff campaigns? Perhaps the first repeat winner in the NFC East in 15 years? Maybe even the first NFC Championship Game in 24 years?
If so, you can write down a five-year contract extension for Garrett and, perhaps, the dawn of some special times around here.
If not, you can assume that this will be the end of Garrett’s road here. I might argue the stakes have never been higher in the coach’s 10 seasons in Dallas.
In short, I would argue there is massive variance in this season’s potential outcomes. The 2019 campaign could go in any number of possible directions, and you can talk yourself into just about any of them.
Stay tuned. Either way, things are about to get entertaining this fall.
By Bob Sturm Jul 29, 2019
As you know, I am a creature of habit. On the day when the Cowboys will put on the pads for the first time and engage in light skirmishes between offense and defense (the weekend featured football primarily against “air” rather than each other), I offer you my thoughts on the team in the same way I have done for as many years as I can recall. This is my “Off to Oxnard” column. Consider it my own personal State of the Cowboys address. Unlike the team’s official effort Friday, mine will be free of questions from anyone except those voices in my head, who remain inquisitive about how the next several months will play out.
That is the real trick, of course: Having any idea where this journey will take us. We all have thoughts and ideas and have begun to size up the competition, but the true beauty of a new season is found with the same anticipation of stepping into a theater for a movie you have been anticipating or cracking open a highly-recommended book. You have no idea what is about to happen but cannot wait to find out.
This is my 22nd Dallas Cowboys training camp. As proof of the first sentence in this article, here is the 2018 version of this exercise. You can also find the 2017 version, the 2016 version, the 2015 version and the 2014 version (if you care to review how we really “know nothing, Jon Snow.”) As you would assume, I have many more versions available, but those should keep you plenty busy.
When I start my next trip around the Cowboys calendar, as the kids are all buying school supplies to start their next journey through a school year, I always think it is appropriate to include and update “the paragraph” to demonstrate what these 21 previous trips have given. I have covered the Cowboys since 1998 and have made this very trip to camp for roughly two weeks every time since. Hope is always packed, but so is the general feeling that this team has been stuck in a bit of a rut that entire time. The optimism of a new season and the reality of how things usually work around here wage a war for your views on what the next season might hold for all of us. The fact that there is a certain Groundhog Day element to Cowboys training camp every year is hard to fully ignore, because the change from the top is very slow and deliberate. Jerry Jones does not care for sudden change in the way he runs his franchise, and therefore we enter a 10th season of the Jason Garrett administration (and a ninth full season). With it, let’s take an updated look at “the paragraph.”
Here is the 2019 version:
The reality is hard to ponder. We’ve seen 21 seasons since that 1998 Training Camp, and just nine (43%) have resulted in playoff football of any sort. Just six (28%) have included NFC East Divisional Titles, which finally exceeds the number the Cowboys won consecutively from 1992-1996 (five). They have not come close to consecutive divisional titles since that streak ended. In 12 playoff games over 21 years, just three (14%) of those special years contained playoff victories – 2009 vs the Eagles, 2014 vs the Lions and 2018 vs the Seahawks, all home wildcard wins. And the real killer: At no point in those 21 seasons since that day in Wichita Falls have the Cowboys been to an NFC Championship Game (0%), let alone a trip to the Super Bowl (0%).
Some may wish to re-read that last part if you can fathom it all. It is a literary kick in the pants.
During that stretch, the Cowboys have seldom been a bad organization. Their 178-158 regular-season record over that stretch is actually 11th-best in the NFL during this arbitrary sample size. But the trouble is as such: The ten teams above them in the standings have combined for 17 Super Bowl trophies since then, and the only team in the top 10 to not win it all is Minnesota.
There is nothing wrong with being 11th-best in a 32-team league. The problem, as we know, is all about the playoff wilderness the Cowboys organization has endured since they last captured their own trophy in Super Bowl 30. This is the 24th year since then, and if you look at those standings in terms of playoff wins you see the Cowboys sitting tied in 22nd place (with Oakland) with four post-season victories. Flip it over to win percentage in the playoffs, and you drop to a tie for 26th place (with Washington). There was a time you didn’t mind being compared with Washington and Oakland, but all three teams have gone through a few disappointing decades.
And now, the real rough one. Since Super Bowl 30, this organization sits as one of only eight teams to not play in a conference championship game. This means that any playoff wins they have accumulated are all in the wildcard weekend. For 24 seasons, they have never even won a game in the divisional round in a league where parity seems to be everywhere.
The Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Houston Texans, Detroit Lions, Washington Redskins and, yes, the Dallas Cowboys are the eight teams to not reach the NFL’s final four in the last 24 years.
It certainly isn’t lost on anyone how long it has been around here, which is why a great number of DFW sports fans will roll their eyes at how the entire media machine starts running at high speed. The Cowboys’ season is beginning in earnest, and the entire industry will cover every single moment of it in a way that no other local team can compare to. Frankly, neither can nearly any other NFL franchise.
That is just the way it is. The Cowboys will eventually rise again, and the media world will certainly not miss it when it happens. [HR][/HR]
The question is not whether that rise will happen. It will. The question is whether we are witnessing that presently with this young group of very talented football players, or if it is another false dawn in the chronology that we will look back at and shake our collective heads.
The big one, though, for me as it pertains to July 29, 2019 is this: Will Jason Garrett be here in 12 months when we write this exact piece in 2020?
It is certainly a fair question to ask, as the sixth-longest-tenured coach in the NFL and the second-winningest coach in Cowboys history enters yet another season where we wonder if this is his do-or-die campaign in charge.
Garrett is entering the final year of his last big extension, one he earned at the end of the 2014 season (which I believe had a similar do-or-die mantra). That deal reportedly pays him $6 million per season from 2015-2019. Since we are now in an age where Jon Gruden has hit $10 million per season and Bill Belichick is over $12 million, Garrett’s salary does not rank as highly as it did when he signed, but he is still right at the edge of the sport’s top 10.
We also know that in this sport with a tight salary cap, a team with all of the money in the world can hire any coach they want. Heck, they can hire any group of coaches. The Cowboys can afford to pay their coordinators $10 million a season if they want — not to mention poach the best general manager. The Cowboys can literally hire any brain trust they want and still profit more than anyone else, so those of us aware of the finances on some casual level know that it isn’t just about Jason Garrett being the coach. It is more about what Dallas could probably do if they committed to adding the very best non-players at every spot in the organization.
As we look ahead over the next several months, I am struck by three things in the back of my head when it comes to Garrett’s grasp of the head coaching spot as he enters his own contract year:
- Sean Payton and Drew Brees could very well be wrapping up their era in New Orleans in 2019. Payton, of course, has 2020 left on his deal, but buyouts are not a very big issue for a motivated coach and franchise. If Payton wants this stage and the Cowboys still have designs on him, I am pretty sure that door will be open soon enough.
- Bob Stoops is currently coaching football in Arlington, Texas, at the age of 58 and has already answered two very important questions for another frequently-mentioned target of the Cowboys affections: He remains interested in coaching football and appears willing to live in DFW.
- Kris Richard has been very impressive in his first year with the Cowboys and has already had chances to interview for head coaching jobs. Surely, the idea that the franchise can hold on to him next season is sort of an either/or situation. Either Garrett stays, as the season has been great and Richard will be grabbed elsewhere — or Garrett is fired and Richard would be a leading candidate to become the new head coach.
That is what makes this season so incredibly pivotal. With all of the chaos of contracts and the futures of Ezekiel Elliott, Amari Cooper, and Dak Prescott (not to mention Byron Jones, Jaylon Smith, etc)., we could easily argue the big one is receiving much smaller headlines.
(Troy Wayrynen-USA TODAY Sports)
What does a successful year for Jason Garrett even look like?
It doesn’t appear Jerry fully knows, to be honest, as he tap-danced around his answers a few days ago. It might be one of those deals where you will know it when you see it, but it is somewhat vague on the surface at this point.
The biggest hurdles he has on his plate? Well, you could argue making sure everyone keeps their eyes on the prize of the biggest objective is front and center. And what is that? We should hope that once everyone gets their money straight, helping this team reach the NFC title game and perhaps even a Super Bowl is the only thing that truly matters.
But if there is anything that would represent ominous clouds on the horizon in 2019, it would be that all we have heard for months is contract talk. Is the Zeke holdout a big deal? Well, not really. I don’t need him participating in football activities at the moment anyway, but you can believe that most veteran players are wondering what will happen and how it will affect them. That is why you can’t actually view the Zeke situation as just affecting him. Byron Jones knows that an extension for everyone in front of him affects him. So does Jaylon Smith. La’el Collins hasn’t even been mentioned, and he is a starting right tackle in his own contract year.
Finite amounts of cap room — and a franchise that has to identify the keepers and the discards — will eventually cross the mind of every single player who has their own story, family and future to consider. We know this to be true, and we have seen it cause issues in other rooms. We also know that this is where the coach can be a real difference-maker. He can bring everyone together and convince all to leave their concerns outside the room and galvanize things wonderfully. Or he can be of no help whatsoever. Perhaps, in this case, they will find some common ground knowing he is in the exact same spot.
In other words, it sure seems to me that there is a recipe here for a very disjointed, drama-filled and distracted 2019 if the Cowboys become splintered or isolated in their own dramas. And much of that will fall to Jason Garrett. Can he keep the room’s eye on the prize amidst so many of the top personalities all choosing their own adventures and “looking out for No. 1” in their journeys? This is why contracts are best done from March through June, when leverage is lower and feelings are calmer. Trouble is, people are never motivated to make deals when everyone is calm.
The optimistic view would then be that everyone is focused and giving 110 percent to improve their own situations. This would, we assume, improve the collective product. But one false move could provide another iteration of the 2008 locker room implosion. That was a very talented and capable team that fell on its face because there were too many “keeping it real” personalities and agendas. As a result, their season ended in a circus of chaos and a 44-6 hide-tanning in Philadelphia, a phenomenal underachievement of a year where promise abounded in August. (And was televised on HBO’s Hard Knocks!)
Is this the year they string together the elusive back-to-back playoff campaigns? Perhaps the first repeat winner in the NFC East in 15 years? Maybe even the first NFC Championship Game in 24 years?
If so, you can write down a five-year contract extension for Garrett and, perhaps, the dawn of some special times around here.
If not, you can assume that this will be the end of Garrett’s road here. I might argue the stakes have never been higher in the coach’s 10 seasons in Dallas.
In short, I would argue there is massive variance in this season’s potential outcomes. The 2019 campaign could go in any number of possible directions, and you can talk yourself into just about any of them.
Stay tuned. Either way, things are about to get entertaining this fall.