Cowboys News: Jason Garrett, Jerry and Stephen Jones reportedly to hold second meeting Tuesday

Source: Cowboys’ Jerry Jones to meet with Jason Garrett again Tuesday - Todd Archer, ESPN

Nothing got done on Monday, but the main principals involved in the Cowboys coaching situation will reportedly meet again today to maybe reach a resolution.

Garrett met with Jerry Jones after the coach and owner/general manager briefly met with the players around lunchtime Monday, but by the end of the business day, it was passed on that there would be no news conference at The Star, regarding the coach’s future and the owner’s potential plan for 2020.

Garrett is scheduled to meet again with Jerry Jones and his son, Stephen, Dallas’ executive vice president, on Tuesday, a source told ESPN, confirming a report by the Dallas Morning News.

With talks ongoing, Monday felt like any other wrap-up to a Cowboys’ season with players stuffing giant gray trash bags with their belongings, saying goodbye to their teammates, meeting with their position coaches and undergoing exit physicals.

Enough is enough! Jason Garrett as Cowboys head coach is a lost cause, and Jerry Jones knows it - Tim Cowlishaw, DallasNews.com
The Dallas News columnist exhibits a firm grasp of the obvious.

Here is what he did say that has meaning.

“I haven’t made a decision in a certain area [head coach] in a long time. I don’t know that I’d call those decisions difficult, but they are thought out. They are designed to help us be a winning team, have someone that represents the Cowboys in a way our fans expect,’’ Jones said.

And as much as the owner-general manager raves about Garrett’s character and demeanor, he understands that a team that scores 30 points half the time, a team with a 4,900-yard passer, a 1,300-yard rusher and two 1,100-yard receivers, and a team that has far better health than the one that ran it down for the NFC East crown should do better than 8-8.

“It’s unbelievable that we blew people out and then couldn’t get out of our own way at times,’’ Jones said.

Giants coach candidates: Jason Garrett, Matt Rhule among possibilities - Art Stapleton, USAToday.com
The fate of future former (future former?) Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett draws speculation.

The Cowboys are expected to part ways with Garrett, whose contract expires at the end of this season. He’s very familiar with Giants ownership having played quarterback here from 2000-03, and has strong New Jersey roots having grown up on the Shore. If Gettleman is retained, Garrett fits the mold of an old school coach who is certainly accustomed to yielding power to team brass, considering his time in Dallas with Jerry Jones. The questions with Garrett will be centered on criticism that he failed to get the most out of a talented roster on several occasions during his stint with the Cowboys.

What went wrong for 2019 Cowboys, and what consequences will follow? – Jon Machota, The Athletic
Machota with the day-after post-mortem.

The 2019 Cowboys were given six golden opportunities to win the NFC East: at New Orleans, at the New York Jets, at New England, Thanksgiving Day against Buffalo, at Chicago and at Philadelphia. The Cowboys needed to win one.

They lost all six.

They really didn’t play with the type of effort in those games that has been on display from Cowboys teams in the past. Those efforts are why no one on the outside envisioned the team making a deep playoff run, even if they snuck into the postseason.

The players talked all season about controlling their own destiny. They never took advantage. And because of that, they can expect to have a new head coach.

The Morning After: Cowboys fade to black in 2019. It’s time for a new script. – Bob Sturm, The Athletic
The Sturminator weighs in with the long-term view.

This time, Jason Garrett will not survive. Let’s be honest, I have written about this so many times — and this change is so overdue — that there are barely fresh ways to say it. But it is tough to feel bad when you have the top coaching spot on the most visible team in all of football — one with virtually endless resources — and you last nearly a full decade on top without ever winning even a bronze medal. Garrett appears to conduct himself as an integrity-filled professional with earnest beliefs and principles, but he is also running a franchise that needs someone with a real clue of how to rise from mediocrity. He clearly did not. He presided over nine full seasons and managed to miss the playoffs six times. It is incredible that he was afforded anywhere close to that long, to be honest, but by the time he missed in his first, second and third years at the helm, it was definitely time to look elsewhere. But Jones thought he might have found his Tom Landry, which is probably all you need to know about the owner’s football acumen.

Alas, Jason Garrett was just Wade Phillips with better interview skills. He was unable to juggle the constant interference with the main job of a head coach: squeezing every last drop of potential out of a team where the players can lose focus if you don’t demand they stay locked in. The glitz and glamour of the Star and the life of being a Cowboy can quickly influence a professional football player that their brand and their agenda is all that really matters. If that happens too often, then we are sitting here every year wondering why the team’s final product never seems to add up to the sum of its parts, let alone exceed it.

Dallas Cowboys: Awful season couldn’t have come to a more perfect end - Andy Nesbitt, ForTheWin
Sunday perfectly captured the frustrations of the 2019 Cowboys.

While the Raiders have their “Just win baby” the Cowboys slogan should be “Shoulda, coulda, woulda” because they continue to be the ultimate tease in the NFL.

There really couldn’t have been a more fitting end to this underwhelming season for a team that looked really good in flashes and really blah in others.

Sunday was an example of how good this team could be and what a waste this year was. Sure, it was against the lowly Redskins who have been looking forward to going on vacation for weeks now, but still, Dallas looked way too good on Sunday for things to be coming to an end.

Dak Prescott threw for 303 yards and 4 touchdowns. Ezekiel Elliott rushed for 122 yards and a touchdown. Three receivers had at least 81 yards receiving.

That was what the team was supposed to look like every week. Instead, they couldn’t get things done or rise to any sort of challenges in tough losses to the Patriots, Bills, Bears, and Eagles down the stretch.

An emotional Jason Witten apologizes to fans as Cowboys miss out on trip to the playoffs - Calvin Watkins, DallasNews.com
We may have witnessed future Hall of Famer and Ring of Honor member Jason Witten’s final game.

Witten said he’ll speak with his family before deciding whether he wanted to return for a 17th NFL season.

“I’ll take a few days and figure out what’s next,” he said. “But as I said to you guys a year ago, when I retired, to have the opportunity for 16 seasons to put on the helmet and run on that field, with a star on your helmet, that’s an opportunity of a lifetime and I’ so thankful to everyone in the organization.”

If Witten’s career does end he has 1,274 catches for 13,482 yards with 76 touchdowns. Witten is just two touchdowns away from becoming the Cowboys all-time leader in touchdown receptions behind Dez Bryant.

The Cowboys Are Facing Their Most Important Offseason in Years - Danny Heifetz, The Ringer
The Ringer’s Heifetz as tracked the Cowboys all season and sums up the season well.

The Cowboys started the year 3-0 and quickly looked like the cream of a weak NFC East crop, but they rarely could get their offense and defense on the same page in the same game. They held a Drew Brees–less Saints team to 12 points in Week 4, but their offense scored only 10. They dropped a shocking game to the Jets in Week 6, got creamed by the Bills on Thanksgiving in front of the largest American television audience since the Super Bowl, and then were blown out in an embarrassing Thursday Night Football game to Mitchell Trubisky and the Chicago Bears in Week 14. Still, the Cowboys could have won the NFC East by beating a depleted Eagles team in Week 16, but Dallas showed up unprepared and head coach Jason Garrett got got outcoached by Doug Pederson.

It’s a disappointing end to a profoundly disappointing decade for Garrett, who will most likely not be retained now that his contract has expired. Dallas is one of the five most talented teams in the league but won’t be one of the 12 teams competing in the postseason. Jason Garrett has consistently gotten less out of his teams than the sum their parts since taking over as the head coach in 2010, and this season was the perfect example. Like each of Garrett’s first three full seasons, the Cowboys had the chance to clinch the NFC East in the final two weeks of the season, failed, and finished 8-8.

Reality Sets In For Cowboys At Season’s End - Staff, DallasCowboys.com
The folks over at the Mothership take stock.

For the third time this decade, the Cowboys missed the playoffs the year after winning the NFC East. Last season, the club finished 10-6 and won nine of 12 games decided by one score. This season they lost six of seven games decided by one score, including three in the final six weeks.

“So many big games where we didn’t get the win where we should have in our minds,” linebacker Jaylon Smith said. “But they made more plays than us throughout the year.”

Questions all season have centered around the job security of head coach Jason Garrett in the final year of his contract. After the game, Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones wouldn’t get into speculation about Garrett’s future at this juncture.

But the Cowboys have plenty of decisions to make about their roster as well. That’s why Sunday carried so much disappointment beyond the reality of no playoffs. The 2019 Cowboys, as a whole, will never be together again. Change on some level is inevitable year to year in the NFL.

Spagnola: And In The End, Just Not Good Enough - Mickey Spagnola, DallasCowboys.com
Even Mickey Spagnola can’t find a silver lining.

And get this, from a team standpoint, the Cowboys offense finished with the most total yards in franchise history (6,904), the most passing yards in franchise history (4,751) and the Cowboys finished with the No. 1 offense in the NFL (431.5), the first time they’ve had the top offense in the league since 1977 when they won Super Bowl XII.

Yet these 2019 Cowboys finished only 8-8. Yep, 8-8 for the fourth time in the last nine years.

No winning record.

No NFC East title.

No playoff appearance.

No joy here in the AT&T Stadium locker room early Sunday evening, despite beating the Washington Redskins in the season finale, 47-16, upholding their end of the Week 17 bargain in an effort to win back-to-back NFC East titles. But unfortunately the Giants only teased them needing a favor to beat the Philadelphia Eagles, letting a 17-17 game with 2:05 left in the third quarter get away, the Eagles winning 34-17 and consequently the East at 9-7.

Cooper Expects To Improve On Career Season - Staff, DallasCowboys.com
Amari Cooper thinks he can do better.

Entering an offseason full of question marks, Amari Cooper has all the appearances of a receiver who fits on the Dallas Cowboys. Cooper achieved career highs in touchdowns and receiving yards playing alongside Dak Prescott. Monday, following the end of the team’s season, Cooper said that he felt good about his connection with Prescott, but individually, Cooper wasn’t satisfied with his own production.

“I wouldn’t say I hit my potential this season,” Cooper said. ”I thought I could have accomplished a lot more, but I didn’t. It’s a good reason to go back to the drawing board.”

Ultimately, Cooper recorded 1,189 yards and eight touchdowns, which is an impressive season for any receiver. But Cooper’s criticism of himself came down to what much of the public pinpointed as the same problem for the 2019 Cowboys at large.

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