The Plan

The recent changes on the O-Line cannot be by chance, but a part of a multi-season plan to win the Super Bowl in 3 years.

These are the reasons I think are indications of this plan. 

Jason Garrett being a very intelligent and with formal education man should have studied 3 of the most successful teams in recent years: the Patriots, the Saints and the Eagles. These teams use their players to the team’s advantage contrary to the Cowboys politics of letting the players use the team for their benefit. This was not a player thing but promoted by the owner (the most recent examples are Marion Barber, R Williams, L Davis). So the result of these politics is a lots of starters which earn a lot of money and must play because they earn a lot of money and obviously you cannot sit on the bench a player if he make millions and millions of dollars because is very bad PR.

But Jason Garrett convince JJ to change this politics by selling him a plan to win not this season, maybe not the next one, but to become a real contender to the Super Bowl within 3 years.

The first step is to address the offensive unit. Garrett knows his offense team perfectly and also the offensive coaches, so last season he start to plot a plan for the offense line with the kind of player he need and with the support of Hudson Houck to help him with this task. The draft of 3 O-line players and the promote to the first team of several of these rookies and new player is the result of this. To my opinion the Gurode cut was the indication that JG and HH are ahead of their plan, when JG and HH saw the new players on the pre-season they decide to cut Gurode, a movement I thought was planned for next season.

The second step the defensive unit will be addressed next season on the next draft by RR so I expect next season to cuts ties with Brooking, Newman, Olshansky and probably James. So RR needs to perfectly know the defensive unit and plot a plan to make the correct changes and draft based on the plan of  RR and JG. So the next draft will be heavy on defense in my opinion.

In two drafts Jason Garret will change the way the offensive and the defensive units looks and plays with a lot of emphasis in winning games and not on Pro-Bowls. This is the way the Patriots, Saints and Eagles build the team (except this year Eagles, but that’s another post). But how this translate on winning and losing games, well JG sell this season to JJ as transition, where no making the playoff is not a failure, but the change on the things are conducted on and off the field in the real challenge. This season the Jason Garrett way (Cowboys Way as he call it) must be installed on every part of the organization and for this he needs to sell it and get help from players, coaches and, very important, from Jerry Jones. This seems to be working at this point.

Next season: Fruition. The offensive is solid, the o-line allows the plays JG wants to run and the QB, RB and WRs helps the o-line to do their job. The defensive in other hand will run the full RR scheme now with the kind of players he needs, the defensive unit will have a mix of veterans and rookie players. This season the objective is the playoffs and win at least one game in the playoffs.

On 2014 season the Cowboys will have his first season as “real” Super Bowl contenders and they will have a real shot to the Super Bowl every season after that if they continue with the simple rule of taking advantage of the players talent and reward the player for what you do now instead of reward the player for what he did in the past.

PS. Please forgive me for my English since is not my native language

Thanks

Mario Rodriguez

Monterrey, Mexico