The 2010 Dallas Cowboys: Whose Team Is It Anyways?

We have 2 head coaches right now who work independently. Not saying it’s right, but that’s the reality of it.

he’s not, by far, the only NFL coach to run a team that way. Sean Payton does something similar with his D-Coord. And there are benefits to it, for example, it reinforces the the OC as an authority figure.

That said, he’ll probably be a little quicker on the trigger going forward when he’s uncomfortable with the call.

I can hardly keep up with all the front page writing now! Good job fellas.

The whole situation is backward, but it’s the way Jerry wants it. Jerry is the HC.

I noticed during the ’Skins game there was a key timeout and Romo came to the sideline to confer with Garrett. Kitna and others huddled around but I noticed that Wade purposefully stayed out of that loop. He stood about 6 feet away, alone and looking toward the field.

I thought it was odd at the time…the head coach acts like he’s uncomfortable to join in. I forgot about it because I was caught up in the chaos of the game, but your post made me remember it.

Does anyone else remember seeing that?

I think Aaron hits the nail on the head.

There’s a now tangible disconnect between the offensive and defensive coordinators, as pointed out by Jim Vance, that the head coach needs to bridge.

thanks : ).

I think Wade just blew the decision made just before half time to save time on the clock. That’s all. The Cowboys don’t have to reinvent their entire coaching philosophy to cure that problem. Wade said it was his fault. It was his fault. Problem solved and lesson learned. Now we have fifteen games we can go out and try to win, or we can stand right here a pee on Wade some more.

I was going to do a Bright-side-of-the-Washington-Loss-type post, but screw it.

Atta boy!!!!

with at least part of your opinion. You seem to be advocating that we revert to a control the clock offensive philosophy, and let our dominant defense control the game. There are at least two major problems with this line of thought: 1) Our defense is not as dominant as it should be, mainly because it consistently fails to force turnovers. Until they can, they will never be the 1985 Bears or the 2000 Ravens. 2) As OCC (and Raf before him) has excellently demonstrated over and over, this team is simply unable to dominate the game by embarking on long, slow, yardage-eating, time-sucking grind-it-out drives because it (and specifically the OL) is not disciplined enough to avoid the type of drive-killing mistakes (penalties, sacks) that allow teams to dominate the ball for long periods of time.

IMO, the only reason that we can run the ball successfully is because of the the threat of the big play. That’s why we we move the ball so successfully in the green zone, but get bogged down in the red zone – there’s no threat of a big play in the red zone. And once opposing defenses don’t have to game-plan to stop our big plays, they can focus on shutting down our rather ordinary run game.

So if we change our offensive philosophy to allow the defense to dictate tempo more, we run the risk of robbing the D of its effectiveness. Trying to force a power-running, clock-controlling game plan on a team that is ill-equipped to run it will result in far too many 3 and outs. Too many 3 and outs creates a tired defense. A tired defense is no longer a dominant one.

He owns all the shiny toys. His style and character permeate the organization. I do think he has created this situation with the whole “heir apparent” attitude towards JG, and I think Jerry is more involved in the game planning and coaching of this team than just about any other owner (with the possible exception of the Oakland Zombie). Jerry can either continue things the way they are and hope it works out, or he can give Wade more support and back off himself.

I don’t really expect much to change. Jerry just believes in his own opinion too much. In a sense, his business success is part of the problem, because he thinks building the greatest fanchise in the NFL is the same as leading it.

However, I think JG is better.

-the offense was #2 last year, the defense was #9.

-more importantly, in passing efficiency (as measured by ANPY/A) the offense was #3. ANPY/A allowed by the defense was #17 (and for a team that supposedly can rush the QB, they allow a lot of long 3rd downs).

http://www.bloggingtheboys.com/2010/8/24/1636409/stats-ill-watch-closely-this

-Wade is working with the NFL defensive player of the year and lots of 1st round draft picks. JG doesn’t have Peyton Manning. JG’s best players are 2 UDFA that were developed: Romo and Austin. Take a look at the spreadsheet below. It’s instructive.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Aq_pzudn-VEDdGlIUFlybjJSbXRRUVpvVVFhYW1LZHc&hl=en

Luckily, I think that Jerry Jones has learned his leason about letting gifted offensive coaches get away. Like Randy Moss taught Jerry not to pass on superstar WR, I suspect that Sean Payton taught Jerry not to let an OC who can build a top passing game get away.

Let me preface this whole thing with this: I’m not on the sidelines during games, and I don’t know anything that goes on during a game behind the scenes or on the sideline. This is just the way I imagine it works.

Since we don’t have a dedicated head coach to be a liaison between the OC and DC, I don’t think there’s an awful lot of time for Phillips and Garrett to be talking to each other during a game – Phillips is either calling defensive plays or adjusting his game plan while the defense is on the field, and the same goes for Garrett and the offense. While their unit is on the field, Phillips or Garrett are probably 100% focused on the field. When their units aren’t on the field, they probably leave each alone (see previous sentence) and work on things that went wrong last time their unit was on the field, or help special teams.

I just can’t think of any point during a game when those two could get together, other than halftime, or maybe a timeout, that Garrett and Phillips could talk about the team game plan. I would think timeouts, unless called for the specific purpose of letting Garrett and Phillips talk, fall under the OC/DC being focused on their unit on the field.

Yes, Phillips is the head coach, and yes, he (rightly) gets the blame for the team winning/losing the game. I don’t think he approves individual plays on the offense as they’re called during the game (see above point). For individual plays, I hold the corresponding OC/DC responsible. I doubt Phillips even realized we went for it until it was too late, especially in this case where he assumed we would take a knee (everyone knew we should’ve taken a knee on the last play of the 1st half). I don’t expect Phillips to be aware of, or involved in, individual plays run by the offense. He shouldn’t need to be, Garrett is big boy, has been in football all his life, and should know what plays to call. Isn’t he the most highly paid assistant coach in the NFL?

I know it’s difficult to choose just one play that wins or loses an entire game. If I was forced to choose, I would pick the last play in the 1st half as what I hold responsible for losing the game. Romo should have thrown it away. Choice should have just fallen on the ground. But really, none of that would’ve mattered if Garrett had just made the call to take a knee. We go into the half down 3 points instead of 10, and the rest of the game is entirely different. I can’t say we would’ve won, but I like the odds a lot better.

Garrett tried to be too smart for his own good, and paid the price for it. Maybe he’ll calm down on the crazy play calls now, and run an offense that knows what its doing. I can list several signs that the OC is either calling plays too complex, or thinking too hard about play calls. How many times do we barely get the ball snapped before the play clock runs out? We took a timeout before the last play of the game, and did you see the confusion on the field even after the timeout? Receivers going to the wrong side of the field, Romo having to direct them. That falls on the OC. If your players didn’t go to Princeton like you did (pretty sure none of them did), then plan accordingly.

No excuse, when we have this much talent (and skill, after reading OCC’s post), as to why we run such ridiculous plays. Not like the opposing defense tries to anticipate those plays, they probably know that they just implode on their own without much of their help (why would you want Barber to try to pass??).

If I haven’t made it blindingly obvious, I blame Garrett for this loss. Completely. 99% of the time I feel that Phillips should and does take responsibility for winning or losing games. Just not this game though.

Tashard Choice makes it a moot point if he doesn’t struggle to gain extra yards, or if he just holds on to the ball. He should take the blame.
The Cowboys offense is aggressive. They purposely put pressure on the defense. They are generally successful. And the end of the first half is a negative to that philosophy. That was too aggressive. But it is TC’s fault. And I am glad they are aggressive. I don’t think it’s broken.

But Wade has veto authority, which he should have used. That’s more likely a personality foible than hierarchical dysfunction. He does know the play calls because he has the HC headset. More likely, with the D not on the field he wasn’t paying close enough attention. Wade was correct in that he took responsibility for what is now so clearly a mistake about to happen – in failing to over-rule the call. Similarly, JG is correct in admitting his own lapse by calling a play that had no business being called once the circumstance change – the penalty was accepted after being initially refused.

In 4 Quadrant Leadership, the degree of autonomy is dictated by the manager to team members based on technical competence and enthusiasm for the task. The problem is – it was JJ, not his manager that put JG in the 4th Quadrant. Wade cannot take back authority he did not grant.

neither one is great at anything. how can any OC have that kind of talent & go straight downhill, after 3 years of drinking this kool aid i’ve seen enough of both these clowns.
 once the change comes everyones going to be like “why this, why now?” once they see the results they’ll wonder why it didn’t happen earlier.
 Superbowl contenders win late in the 4th quarter & the playoffs, they don’t lose against a horrible Redskins team on national TV to open the season. if there lucky, 10-6 & bounced out of playoffs like last season.