John Garrett Leaves Cowboys To Be Tampa Bay WR Coach

Todd Archer of ESPNDallas.com reports via Twitter that John Garrett has accepted the position of wide receivers coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

John Garrett is new WR coach at Tampa Bay. Now 3 openings on Cowboys staff: RB, TE, ST. People will criticize him but he is a good man.

— Todd Archer (@toddarcher) January 20, 2013

John Garrett, the brother of Cowboys coach Jason Garrett, had been the tight ends coach for the Cowboys for the last six years. In 2011, he interviewed for the then vacant offensive coordinator role for the Miami Dolphins, and reports at the time were that he was being considered for the job. The Cowboys then preempted the Dolphins' decision by promoting Garrett to passing game coordinator.

John Garrett had also applied for the head coaching job at the University of Delaware in recent days, but didn't get that job. He apparently had more success interviewing with Greg Sshiano in Tampa earlier this week. There are contradictory reports about John Garrett's motivations for the move: some reports claim the Cowboys' passing game coordinator was looking for a career advancement within the Cowboys organization and didn't get it, other reports suggest that the Cowboys wanted some new faces at the positions previously held by John Garrett.

Regardless of what ultimately drove the move, John Garrett was graceful with his departing statements:

"I want to thank the Cowboys and the Jones family for a fantastic six years as an assistant coach here," John Garrett said. "Just really enjoyed the staff, the coaches over the years and everybody in administration and really enjoyed coaching the players. My group, the tight ends, they're fantastic players, fantastic people, who love football and play with great effort and executed well and really appreciate all of them."

This adds an additional vacancy to the Cowboys' coaching staff that currently includes:

Special teams Coordinator (previously Joe DeCamillis)
Running backs coach (prev. Skip Peete)
Tight ends coach (prev. John Garrett)
Assistant strength and conditioning (prev. Walt Williams)

There's also still the possibility that the Cowboys could bring in an offensive coordinator.

It will be a busy week for the Cowboys at the Senior Bowl. Not only will they be looking at potential draft prospects, but they'll also be looking to fill the coaching vacancies during what is considered the largest job fair in the NFL.