FanPost

Does Dallas have the best coaching staff in the NFL?

The memes, they are a changing.

Where does one start after the Dallas Cowboys dominated Seattle 30-23 yesterday in the place where Seattle has been nearly invincible over the last three years?

Why not start by busting the meme that the Dallas Cowboys routinely get outcoached?

To flip this script, is it fair to now ask: Does Dallas have the best coaching staff in the NFL?

To start off, Dallas has 4 coaches who are current or former head coaches in the NFL. Jason Garrett, Scott Linehan, Rod Marinelli, and Bill Callahan. One of them led the Oakland Raiders to the Super Bowl. I'm not going to do the full research here, but I wonder if any other current NFL teams can make this claim.

Let's look at those coaches for a minute.

1. Jason Garrett. At one point, a couple of years ago, I called for the firing of Jason Garrett.

Reason #1. The Cowboys have not improved under Garrett. His best year, BY FAR, was his first year. Since then, the Cowboys offense has been mediocre, at best. And the trend line for the offense with him as head coach is going down.

So my main gripe over Garrett was about him as an offensive coordinator. I also argued that the team didn't play disciplined football, and knew what needed to be done, but couldn't get it done. But my main beef was the pass-first orientation of Jason Garrett as playcaller.

In June, last year, when we heard that Jerry Jones had taken the playcalling away from Garrett, I thought this was a real plus. It wasn't a perfect solution, because Bill Callahan wasn't really any better at calling an offense than Jason Garrett. The team was still pass-first, and ran the ball pitifully few times. But the other thing I argued in that article was this:

Offensive coordinators can be replaced much more easily than Head Coaches.

And that's exactly what happened this offseason, when Scott Linehan was hired.

In the meantime, Jason Garrett was freed to do what he does best, organize and motivate the TEAM.

By moving Garrett to a walk-around Head Coaching position, it makes him more like Mike Tomlin in Pittsburgh, or John Harbaugh in Baltimore, or even Bill Belichek in New England. He can now be in charge of the TEAM and have replaceable underlings take responsibility for everything else. This is actually the ONLY way Dallas could position Garrett as a long-term solution at Head Coach.

Is there any doubt at this point that Jason Garrett is finally being recognized as the long-term solution at Head Coach? He's certainly grown into the job. As Bob Sturm wrote this morning:

And where do we credit Jason Garrett in all of this? I think it is fair to say that as a head coach, Garrett should be credited for how his team responds on Sundays to adversity that arrives. And, for that, he has found a way to get his team to shake their identity through 6 weeks of being the team that would always find a way to lose. Whether it is the Houston game last week, or this now famous win in Seattle, the team seems to shake off a horrific moment and still keep working.

That seems to now be his calling. Getting this team to not only fight to the end, but BELIEVE in itself enough that those fights now turn into sweet victories instead of crushing defeats.

2. Scott Linehan. What can we say about him?

Like Bob Sturm, I've been calling for years for Dallas to return to its roots and become a smash-mouth power running team, with everything else playing off that. Recall my argument for Brian Waters? Recall my railing against the stop-gap signings of Bernardeau and Livings? The 8 Dallas Super Bowl teams have always had at least 3 Pro Bowl O-lineman, and more often 4 or 5. Running the ball has always been the identity for all the great Cowboys teams.

So when Scott Linehan was hired, even though most thought it was a step up from Bill Callahan or Jason Garrett, I, along with many others, had doubts if he could call run plays to the extent necessary to reestablish Cowboy greatness.

Yet here we are after 6 weeks, tops in NFL in rushing, running the ball more than 50% of the time, imposing our will even against the best rushing defense in the league in their house!!

And, from such a dominant running game, an efficient passing game emerges. Tony Romo, bad back and all, has the highest QBR rating of his career -- BY FAR! It's at 80.5. Next highest was in 2007, the last time the Cowboys were this good, at 71.2.

And has anyone noticed how bad Detroit's offense seems to be without Linehan there to direct it?

3. Rod Marinelli. As amazing as Linehan's addition to the offense may be, the real Houdini act may be the one being turned in by Rod Marinelli.

From the team that gave up the most yards in the NFL last year -- 6645!! -- with big play after big play, and no coordination, what we saw yesterday in Seattle was a complete transformation. We gave up only 209 yards. 9 first downs. On the season, our yards per game rank us 15th, and our points per game rank us in a tie with Buffalo for 7th.

How is Marinelli doing it? With 100% effort, all the time, from everyone on the defense.

As I look at the games, the biggest difference seems to be at linebacker. Not only is Rolando McClain making a true difference, but so are Justin Durant, Bruce Carter, Anthony Hitchens, and even Kyle Wilber. That's 5 LBs who you are not afraid to play if someone goes down and you need next man up. It's not the Sean Lee show any more. It's a group effort from 5 guys who go all out, all the time.

But the secondary has also been transformed. No one wants to see guys hurt, but taking Mo Claiborne out of the group seems to have eliminated the weak link. We saw in Seattle yesterday how the secondary looks without any weak links. With everyone able to man up on receivers, and still rally forward to shut down Seattle's running game.

And along the D-line, Marinelli continues to get total buy in from his 8-man rotations. We've seen different guys plugged in each week, but they are guys who've been in training camp for the most part, so the line works in unison much better than it did last year when we kept signing street guys and playing them from week to week. Imagine how much better this line will get when DeMarcus Lawrence and Josh Brent join the team!! I don't put much hope on Amobi Okoye, but perhaps he'll be a plus as well.

Face it, this is a top-10 NFL defense. By the end of the season, it might be in the top 5.

4. Bill Callahan. If the transformed Dallas Cowboys are defined by their offensive line and league-leading rushing game, then the decision to retain Bill Callahan this offseason has to be chalked up as one of the shrewdest moves the Cowboys made.

Todd Archer and others fretted that keeping Callahan would have a malcontent on the staff, with too many cooks in the kitchen, etc.

I thought that was nonsense, and wrote as much here.

We all know what Callahan did as offensive line coach with the NY Jets. He helped them make the AFC Title game two years in a row with Mark Sanchez at QB!!

Think he's a malcontent now? I bet he's LOVING every minute of this team's resurgence.

There you have it. 4 current or former head coaches, leading a transformation of the Dallas Cowboys into a style of play that has always been the cornerstone of its success.

It's quite a story.

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