FanPost

Jason Garrett should be on the Hot Seat!

Gothcha! I confess this is a click-bait title. But hear me out. For all the "woe is Dallas" talk that has circulated over the last three losses, most of the blame has focused on the defensive meltdowns, or the increasingly inept play of Brandon Weeden. Very little seems to have been written pointing the finger at Jason Garrett. I'm here to say that's where most of the fingers need to be pointed.

Let's face it, Jason Garrett isn't going anywhere. He has a new 5-year contract. He's rebuilt the roster from an aging one with no depth to one of the youngest in the NFL, with depth in lots of places. He helped get the Cowboys out of cap hell. He's been elevated from an offensive-coordinator head coach to a walk-around guy, and this new role suits him much much better.

But Dallas also has only 1 playoff berth to show for 4 full seasons of Jason Garrett as head coach, and is in the precarious position of being only 1 for 5. So I'm not sure Garrett has earned the complete benefit of the doubt on some of the decisions he has made. And these have been costly.

1. The Brandon Weeden mistake

Brandon Weeden was signed when Dallas still had Kyle Orton on the roster. Kyle Orton, like Jon Kitna before him, was a reasonably accomplished starting QB at one point, who in later years slid into a backup role. Dallas also tried the draft and develop model with Stephen McGee, but when this didn't pan out, the team's better approach was to have a competent former starting QB veteran serve as Tony Romo's backup. And this was critical because, unlike Eli Manning who has been indestructible, Tony Romo has missed lots of games to injuries in his career.

Enter Brandon Weeden. The only good thing that could be said about this signing was that he was cheap (while we were trying to get out from under salary cap issues), playing for the veteran minimum while trying to keep his career afloat. I think he was signed to run the practice team while Romo recovered from a bad back, with Dallas really intending to continue with Kyle Orton once he ended his holdout. However this went down -- and blame can certainly be pointed at Kyle Orton -- Dallas was left with only Weeden behind Romo for the last two years. And this is where Jason Garrett really screwed up.

We've all read the quotes from Garrett about how much confidence they have in Weeden, blah, blah, blah. It's NONSENSE. Brandon Weeden is NOT a competent NFL QB, and it shouldn't take anyone more than 5 minutes to figure that out. Yet Dallas rolled the dice with him, not just one year (when you could argue they were blindsided a bit by Orton's holdout), but two, AFTER they had seen with their own eyes that he really can't cut it.

I think there is finally NO QUESTION among the fans that Brandon Weeden is incompetent, regardless of how much he's puffed up his stats with endless checkdowns to RBs. The problem is, this should have been readily apparent to Jason Garrett and the Cowboys front office, and there is no way they should have risked this season on him. (Indeed, one could argue he cost us dearly last year. Had we beaten either Washington or Arizona, we would have had home field and not had to play in GB.)

This mistake is squarely on Jason Garrett's shoulders. Sure, the front office acquires players. But there's no question that Garrett could have made it known that Weeden wasn't acceptable as the team's backup.

The team finally realized the mistake once Romo went down for 7 weeks, and we rushed into a trade for Matt Cassel. Cassel, though he costs more, perfectly fits the Jon Kitna - Kyle Orton backup QB model Dallas used for several years. Someone like him -- or a draft pick like Jimmy Garoppolo -- should have been Dallas's choice going into the year, and not as a panic move after Romo went down. It wasn't, and a potential Super Bowl season is at serious risk because of this horrific mistake.

Lastly, while this mistake is on Garrett, so is the only remedy the team has -- to start Matt Cassel against the Giants after the bye. Todd Archer suggests that Garrett may risk losing the locker room if he doesn't make this move. I agree.

(After I wrote this, I read this Bob Sturm article on the subject. Highly recommend it.)

2. The RBBC mistake.

Similar to the Brandon Weeden mistake, I think Jason Garrett should also be held accountable for the lack of a running game so far this year.

I'm not hear to rehash the DeMarco Murray loss. That was unfortunate. Without a deal for Dez Bryant, Dallas couldn't franchise Murray, which was the only way to keep him once Philly came in with what would have been a cap-busting offer. The only other way to have kept Murray would have been to extend him BEFORE 2014.

So, Murray's gone. What do you do? Well, the Cowboys and Jason Garrett, just like with Brandon Weeden, kept feeding us nonsense that everything is going to be OKAY.

It's NOT OKAY. The running game scares NO ONE. Load up the box, and pretty soon we'll give up the run because we won't have enough first downs to keep running the ball.

Sure, you can blame the loss of Dez Bryant, and especially the loss of Tony Romo, for making the running game harder. It certainly is.

But to my mind the problem with the running game is that it has fundamentally changed from a power attack with a running back who's looking for contact at the end of runs to punish defenders, to a finesse attack with running backs looking to slither through holes. This kind of attack does NOT intimidate ANYONE. Just think of Seattle with Marshawn Lynch or the Niners when they were good with Frank Gore or the Cowboys last year with DeMarco Murray. That's what the Cowboys had, and gave up.

With Murray gone, the Cowboys could have sought a bruising back to replace him. Instead they went with Darren McFadden, who's last 3 seasons showed he was one of the worst RBs in the NFL. He still seems to have speed, but for whatever reason, he isn't able to translate it into much on the field.

They also elevated Joe Randle to lead back, even though he ran with a completely different style than DeMarco Murray, made dumb comments like "left meat on the bone," and has defied his coaches by reaching the ball out with one hand at the goal line in the middle of a scrum (which led to McFadden being used much of the rest of that game).

At the end of preseason, after essentially NO PRODUCTION from this group of running backs, the Cowboys seem to have realized their mistake when they traded a conditional 6th rounder for Christine Michael, a bruising back selected in the second round who had made his own mental errors to start his career. This guy certainly had the pedigree that we lacked in Randle, but what could he show behind the Dallas offensive line?

Turns out, we still have NO IDEA. What have we done with Christine Michael over 5 games? First 3 games he was inactive. Last two games he's had one carry in each game in short yardage. In the first game, the blocks were missed and he was stuffed. This last game, he got six yards on 3rd and 1. And that's it.

Why not use the guy in garbage time yesterday to see what he might have? No. That's McFadden's job, apparently. Why not try him after Randle was benched for the risky ball-reach TD in New Orleans? No. Again, all the carries fell to McFadden.

I've written multiple times that this is a serious UNDERUSE of a guy who has the potential to revive the moribund Dallas running game. I believe that starting Christine Michael is almost as important as starting Matt Cassell after the bye. Cassell is going to need a running game to succeed, and Randle/McFadden are NOT IT. Randle has value, but he should play the Lance Dunbar role. McFadden should remain as a backup when Michael needs a blow. This is the ONLY lineup that has much hope, IMHO.

Will Jason Garrett have the guts and foresight to make this change? I predict it WILL happen sometime this season, and the results will show it should have happened sooner. The question is -- how soon? That's totally on Garrett.

3. The Lance Dunbar mistake

I place the injury to Lance Dunbar about 80% at the feet of Jason Garrett, who should never have risked such a valuable asset as a kickoff returner. The other 20% goes to Dunbar, who shouldn't have run that ball out.

When you have Lucky Whitehead on your roster, you should use him in his best roles -- kick off and punt returner. Don't risk injury to irreplaceable players Lance Dunbar and Cole Beasley, both of whom have small frames vulnerable to getting hurt in the high-speed collisions that often happen on returns. But NO, Garrett and company decided not to trust Whitehead. My answer to that? If you couldn't trust Whitehead, then you should have gotten someone to play those roles you COULD trust. There was lots of time before the season started to do it. We didn't, and we're paying a heavy price. I put this on Garrett.

Unfortunately, there really isn't a remedy, as Dunbar was a singular talent. However, I think Joseph Randle could at least try to fill some of these roles if Michael is moved to lead back. Will Garrett see it? We shall see.

4. Getting outcoached in the games

Garrett won the battle of head coaches in the Giants game, mostly because the Giants made huge mistakes that allowed Romo and Dallas to pull that game out of a hat at the end. And they befuddled the Eagles in winning that coaching battle. But the games since have been another story.

Against Atlanta, Dallas devised a clever attack that worked for the first half. But Garrett blundered clock management in letting Atlanta have enough time to get 3 points before half to cut Dallas's lead to 28-17. After half time, it was ALL Atlanta. They adjusted, and we never figured out how to move the ball (or stop them).

Against New Orleans, I would say the coaching was pretty even, and not great. But should we have seen the situation that led to NO's overtime TD and stopped it in time? A time out would have allowed our sub to get in position. Even yelling to Gachkar to get down would have accomplished the same thing.

Against the Patriots, we had a sound defensive game plan, but absolutely NOTHING on offense.

This narrative has followed Garrett for some time. He shed it for the most part last year. Is it making a comeback?

Conclusion

Dallas is in deep trouble at the moment. Who can help get them out of the team's funk? Jason Garrett.

If we can rally and make the playoffs, Garrett will deserve a tremendous amount of credit. But if we fail, the buck also has to stop with him.

As I said in another thread: Jason Garrett's job is not on the line, but his legacy is.

Another user-created commentary provided by a BTB reader.