I was away from the blog yesterday evening and didn’t get a chance to post about Jeff Ireland leaving. Luckily, you guys were here and didn’t miss it. Thanks for the diaries from some of BTB’s regulars, like boysandbosox here, and TrueBlue24 here. The latest news is that Parcells has fired Cam Cameron, thanks to Deke for posting that news here. That news surely means that Tony Sparano will get an interview for the coaching position in Miami and they might also decide to talk to Jason Garrett.
Tony Sparano and Jason Garrett will be interviewing with the Falcons on Friday.
Two Cowboys offensive assistants will be busy Friday with job interviews.
Offensive coordinator Jason Garrett and offensive line/assistant head coach Tony Sparano are scheduled to interview for the Atlanta Falcons head coaching position in Dallas.
There’s been no official word from Baltimore yet about trying to interview Jason Garrett.
Back to Jeff Ireland; here are my thoughts:
I’m happy for the guy, he deserved a chance at a GM position and surely wasn’t going to get it here. He, Parcells and Jones formed a nice troika here in Dallas that did a very good job of stacking this franchise with talent. Two of those guys are gone to Miami and I expect that within a few years they will have that franchise turned around and headed in the right direction.
As for Dallas, it appears that we will not bring in anybody new and will rely on in-house talent, especially for this year’s draft.
Jones said he doesn't plan on adding another scout to the staff before the draft.
It appears the Cowboys' assistant director of college scouting, Tom Ciskowski, will be in charge of handling the draft.
"Tom has always been very valued," Jones said. "We don't have a concern because we have Tom Ciskowski, and he's going to be doing what he's been doing and we have him under contract right now. That made this possible, too. We just hit the ground running on the draft and what we need to do this spring. I haven't sat down and talked with him. Right now, Tom is basically in charge of the college scouting."
In fact, Jones said he doesn't necessarily have to replace Ireland at all.
"I don't know," Jones said. "We have a director in college scouting (Ciskowski) and we have a director in pro scouting (Brian Gaine). I don't know that we need to replace Jeff.
We’ll see how things go. I’m a little worried about Jerry having such a prominent role in the draft without the counter-balance of the other two, but maybe he will continue to listen to his football people like he did Parcells and Ireland.
In the end, this is what happens to successful franchises. They get raided for talent. It happened to us back in the 90’s. Let’s just hope we do a better job of replacing people this time around.
Yesterday’s news was pretty good concerning practice and injuries. First, Terrell Owens is walking without a boot on his foot and everybody seems to have confidence that he’ll play next week. Also, all the other injured guys were back at practice with only Andre Gurode and Terry Glenn somewhat limited. But both of those were precautionary so it looks like we’ll have the full contingent of players available for the playoff game.