For anyone who thinks Wade is an adequate HC, I ask you: even if Wade were 7 years younger, would any NFL team now hire him as a head coach if he were on the open market? Obviously no. I’m not even sure Wade is a good coordinator in the absence of a HC who creates a disciplined organizational culture. I don’t hate on Wade for the aesthetic reasons that some do (Tony Sparano and Rex Ryan are also fat, and I’d much prefer them as coaches.) And I even think Wade’s firing might (marginally) improve our chances this season. So why in the hell am I rooting for him to finish the season? Read on…

1)       Wade’s fecklessness as a coach is symptomatic of a broken organizational culture that can’t be righted by his firing.  Fact: the Dallas Cowboys coach is the NFL equivalent of the Governor of Texas. Both positions lack institutional powers that others in their positions do have. Wade didn’t hire (and can’t fire) his own coordinators; in fact, one of them was hired before him! When Wade is cagey about whether Austin will start or just “play more,” does anyone doubt that it’s not really his decision, but rather some combination of Jason and Jerry’s? When Jerry publicly exonerates Alan Ball for his Leodis McKelvin-esque stupid play, is there any room for Wade to even privately tell the team “stupid penalties like this will not be tolerated”?

2)       Not even the 1992 version of Jimmy Johnson could instill organizational discipline with the constraints Wade has. And Wade is no Jimmy Johnson. Look, the players all know what we know. The real power in the building isn’t Wade, who has to ask the GM permission to fine a player for crying out loud. Were Jerry a Steinbrenner-level tyrant, discipline instilled from the owner’s box might just work. But Jerry is no Steinbrenner. Wade’s nice guy personality exacerbates this problem, certainly. But the institutional constraints on the Cowboys’ coach virtually guarantee that only a go-along personality like Wade would accept the job in the first place. So the structural deficiency that makes discipline tough isn’t removed by removing the Head Coach.

3)       The most plausible replacement scenario—Garrett—gives us only a marginally better chance to win this year. No matter how good Garrett is--and I think he’s going to be at least a Sean Payton-level success as a head coach in this league—he can’t correct the negative habits of the organization overnight. He can’t instantly have coordinators who are accountable to him. (Remember, Garrett wanted to hire Mike Solari as the O-Line coach, but Jerry did what he always does and went with the familiar Hudson Houck.) Garrett certainly is not going to have the ear of the defense, which is the unit that is most underachieving. I think Garrett would be less likely to hurt the precious feelings of the players than Wade is, but again, the effects of that change aren’t going to bear instantaneous fruit.

4)       If we’re not going to make a deep playoff run under any coach in 2009, it would be better for us to miss the playoffs. Two reasons, in ascending order of importance:

A)      Since Jerry took over the draft room, we’ve been consistently good when picking in the Top 15 (think Ware) and bad when picking after (think Spencer and Carpenter). Picking towards the top of the draft is no guarantee of success, but you’re way more likely to find an instant impact player at the priority positions (LT, pass rusher, D-Line, CB) when picking up front.

B)      If we go 10-6 and lose a sloppily-played first round game at Minnesota, Jerry will convince himself that a new coach here and a Julius Peppers trade there are all we need. If we go 8-8, Jerry is more likely to do what he almost did last season: bring in someone like Reeves to add value to the front office, and stop “chasing shiny things” in personnel decisions.  

5)       Jerry’s fundamental weakness as a GM—and it animates nearly all of his major errors—is the Quick Fix Mentality. I admire Jerry’s lust for Super Bowl trophies, and disdain for finishing anywhere else. But he learned the wrong lessons from the Charles Haley and Deion Sanders acquisitions. Both of those guys would have been Hall of Famers even if they’d never been Cowboys, and both of them came onto loaded, pre-salary cap rosters with an established pecking order. Jerry’s attempts to duplicate Chucky/Deion are behind the Galloway and Roy Williams trades, behind the T.O. and Pac Man acquisitions, and even behind his tendency to overpay vets like Newman and Adams and one-year wonders like Hamlin whose age and/or spotty track record make them unlikely to continue to play at a Pro Bowl level. His quick fix mentality is behind most of our drafting mistakes, from the “reach to fill a need drafts” (Carpenter and Spencer are just modern versions of the drafts that produced Dwayne Goodrich and Shante Carver) and the “take risky players with huge upside” philosophy in the 2nd round that produced Antonio, Quincy, and Martellus. This mentality is the reason why we always have a top heavy roster, with a Rob Pettiti for every Leonard Davis, and virtually nothing in between. Even in an injury-free year like 2007, injuries are inevitable in the NFL, and when injuries bit us at the wrong time (Owens’ ankle, Romo’s thumb), we didn’t have the through-the-roster talent to compensate for stars’ playing at 85%. That the top of our roster is good is testament to Jerry’s strengths of (sometimes) listening to his scouts and charming free agents. That the bottom of our roster always sucks is testament to Jerry’s “upside” fetish and the fact that he personally adds zero value in player evaluation. Jerry needs to do the hard work of evaluating the top of the roster, stocking the bottom of the roster, and getting a coaching staff that is not just a collection of random parts.

6)       I have hope that the 1997-2009 Cowboys will be like the 1982-1995 Yankees. It’s easy to forget now, but the careers (if not the personalities) of George Steinbrenner and Jerry Jones are eerily similar. Both took charge of the flagship franchise in their sport when it was at its low ebb. Both were criticized as out-of-their-depth rubes when they started, but used out-of-the-box thinking and big balls to bring their franchises back to the top. Both feuded with their most successful coach (Jimmy is Jerry’s Billy Martin), both began to micro-manage personnel decisions in favor of flash, and both spent a decade desperately chasing the “perfect” manager/coach (Bucky Dent=Dave Campo) when the problem was them all along. Both were still semi-successful in their exile from championships (the ‘Boys have been to the playoffs a lot, and the Yanks had a lot of good teams and Hall of Famers from ’82-’95.) In 1992, Steinbrenner got suspended for paying for dirt on Dave Winfield, and Gene Michael took over personnel in his absence. He developed Jeter, Bernie, Mariano, and Posada, and brought in the tyrannical Buck Showalter to clean the decks. When Steinbrenner returned in 1993, he quit micro-managing personnel, and used his money and the force of his charming-when-needed personality to convince free agents and valuable veterans without a ring (Boggs, Clemens) to become Yankees. 1996-2001 were a return to Yankee dominance. I hope that the near-hiring of Dan Reeves and the Stephen-inspired jettisoning of T.O. are not mere P.R. moves, but changes in Jerry’s mentality that are his “Gene Michael moment.” The history of owners in any sport who get overly involved in personnel is not good. When an owner makes himself GM in title or de facto, he creates a GM with no accountability to an owner above him and inherent power to intrude on the prerogatives of the coach that works below him. Of the owners who do business this way (Bidwell, Brown, Snyder, Davis, Jerry), Jerry is by far the best GM. He doesn’t need to give up all of his control, just enough of it.