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I'm happy to announce that, after an extended hiatus, the much-revered FanPost of the Week Awards have returned! We have been treated to a veritable cornucopia of terrific FPs in the past two weeks. Since the Cowboys-coverin' media had focused largely on the Dallas offense, specifically the issue of the team's playcaller, as you may imagine, a great many of our members opted to engage with these issues.
Before moving on to our larger discussion, I would be remiss not to single out one of our most loyal members, sexililkitti, for her superb "Way of the Rooster" series, in which she looks at Jason Garrett, his "RKG" philosophy and the team's current leaders in the locker room. As with "KITTI's KORNER," her ever-expanding archive of ruminations upon former Cowboys greats, each of the posts in the "Rooster" series is insightful and well crafted. Wanna catch up with Kitti's work? Grab a beverage and a snack and go here to see her entire oeuvre.
One of the biggest offseason stories here in Cowboyland had been the matter of which coach will be calling plays this season. In Jason Garrett's last two interviews, both of which came after Jerry Jones informed the media that, in fact, it would be Bill Callahan who would call plays, this has come to a head, leading to a firestorm among local media types. To many of us, this feels like a non-story, and doubly so because the basic offense isn't changing. One of this week's honorable mentions, ketom1220, strikes right at the heart of the matter, in a FanPost entitled, "Does Playcalling Really Matter?" K-12 offers a cogent, four-point summation of the issue, concluding that it's much ado about nothing. Check it out!
Attacking this from a different angle is our first runner up, the always insightful VA, who doubles down on ketom's post, offering eight salient points why having Bill Callahan call plays is good for Jason Garrett. All of these are shrewd; the one that really caught my attention, however, was this:
Contrary to most of what has been written, this move SOLIDIFIES Garrett's Head Coaching role; it doesn't undermine it. Per point 3, if the Cowboys offense doesn't work, it will be mostly Bill Callahan's fault, not Jason Garrett's. And if the Cowboys offense works better, Jerry Jones won't be thinking about elevating the much older Callahan to Head Coach, because all he will have shown is that he's good at calling plays, not that he's good at running a team. The same goes for the guys on the defensive side -- Kiffin and Marinelli. If they get the D in ship shape, that doesn't mean they can also be Head Coaches. Both are really too old for the job, and neither has any proven worth as a Head Coach. Kiffin's never done it, and Marinelli failed at it.
As a result, VAFan argues, Garrett can not only be a "walkaround" head coach, and tend to the Herculean task of cleaning up the organization, but puts himself in a John Harbaugh-esque win-win situation: if the offense fails, Callahan, not Garrett, will get the axe. Interesting take, indeed. Go ahead and read it now; I'll wait.
Now that you've returned, join me in welcoming this week's winner to the ranks of former FPOTW greats (including current front page writers Archie, Joey and Coty). In a superbly-crafted post, CowboyWay cites a maxim of John Wooden's, that "little things make big things happen," using it as a way to frame his argument that the Dallas offense will succeed not only because of its stars, but because of the role players who will make small but vital contributions. He identifies four such "role dawgs": Dwayne Harris, James Hanna, Cole Beasley and Lance Dunbar, offering a quick scouting report on each player and drawing upon the thoughts of respected analysts to support his claims.
If you had a chance to read my post on Monday, in which I noted that a key element of the Cowboys "new" offensive system would be the diversity of different types and skillsets, then you know that the players on whom CW casts his spotlight are precisely those who will contribute to this diversity. The fact that all of them are developing has to give us a shot of confidence moving forward.
Join me in congratulating CowboyWay and all the rest of this week's top FanPosters! Ever wonder how you'd look sporting FPOTW laurels of your own? Hit the FP pages and write something and you could be joining them (and maybe even Archie, Coty and Joey) sooner than you think!
