FanPost

Enough blame to go around in Dallas

This year the Cowboys went from Super Bowl hopefuls in their own stadium, to scouting who they will draft in the top of the draft in what seems like a month. While it’s easy to blame the coach for the fundamentals, there is more than enough blame to go around in Dallas. Wade Phillips was fired, because it would have been impossible for Jerry Jones to fire everyone on the roster. What makes the Dallas disaster so confounding, though, is the core of a team that won 33 games under Phillips the last three seasons -- including two NFC East titles, and last season, the first playoff game in 14 years -- returned utterly intact, with 20 of 22 starters back to build on its accomplishments. All is not lost though; the Cowboys may be seen in Dallas in the Super Bowl, just at the after parties.

The collapse in Dallas is mind boggling, the dropped passes leading to interceptions, the bad tackling, and all the blown coverage’s. Three straight games surrendering at least 35 points, they have a take give differential that ranks 3rd in the NFL. Mike Jenkins, who was believed to be an emerging star at corner, has given up countless pass interference penalties. Make no mistake about it Jason Garret deserves his share of the blame for this debacle. Jason Garret hasn’t been able to get the run game going, or at least has shown no faith in it working. Jason Garret has believed that they can win games, with Tony Romo just slinging the ball down the field every drive, well this approach clearly isn’t working, and won’t work. He has two capable backs that would work in the right system, but Garret has had a hard time sticking to the running game, granted the terrible offensive line doesn’t help.

Jerry Jones deserves much of the blame, because he can’t seem to take a hands off approach with this team. He is a bigger than life figure who, takes too much of the attention away from his team. He made terrible roster cuts on special teams just to save money, and these decisions have cost them games. Including at the end of the Titans game, when they let Marc Mariani run 73 yards down to the 6, setting up a touchdown that would lose the game for the Cowboys. When you have a team as talented as the Cowboys and you are not winning, the owner has to make changes and make them quick, before the season is a complete disaster. Listen, it is apparent to us all that some coaches have "juice" and some don't. All the Cowboys players rave about being able to play for Wade Phillips, but maybe that’s because he wasn’t tough enough on his “superstar” players.

The secondary is terrible; here are the quarterbacks the Cowboys have faced this season: Donovan McNabb, Jay Cutler, Matt Schaub, Vince Young and Brett Favre. While these are all great quarterbacks they all tend to thrown into coverage’s and the Cowboys only have one interception in these games. Brett Favre usually throws an interception every time a wrangler commercial comes on.

I think we can all now agree that Tony Romo is not a “franchise” quarterback. He ranks 7th or 8th at best in the NFL. So to put the blame on Romo would be to overrate his ability at quarterback. I was never a fan of his quick side armed release, his passes are easily batted down at the line of scrimmage, and his receivers have a hard time seeing the ball when it’s released. Someone should have shown Tony Romo the proper way to throw a football, but that should have been done a long time ago. He has been getting Williams more and more involved in the offense, which is a good sign for the Cowboys moving on. He was never drafted to be “the guy” and he isn’t a guy that’s going to lead the league in any particular statistic. He is a good quarterback just not a “great” quarterback, for anyone to call him overrated, simply gave him more credit than he deserved.

Let’s be clear Wade Phillips was never meant to be a head coach, he was a great coordinator who got misplaced on the sidelines. To blame the coach would be too easy on a team that has problems across the board. He isn’t one of the top coach’s in the NFL, bottom-line he never was and he never will be. He inherited a great team and he was put in there to, make sure these guys do their jobs and don’t fall apart. So while Wade Phillips may have gotten the ax in Dallas, the fault of the team continues to be pointed at a guy that wasn’t the main problem

Another user-created commentary provided by a BTB reader.