AIKMAN SADDLES COWBOYS BOSS WITH STRUGGLES
Dallas’ owner/GM the only constant since franchise’s glory years in early to mid-’90s
News and views from around the NFL with Week 10 underway:
1. Hall of Fame ex-Dallas quarterback and Fox analyst Troy Aikman slams his old team
News: The day after Dallas was clobbered at home Monday night by the Tennessee Titans, Aikman — who led the Cowboys to three Super Bowl championships in the 1990s, the first two under head coach Jimmy Johnson and only a few years after Jerry Jones bought the club — said the following on a Dallas radio station:
“It hasn’t always mattered who the head coach has been. I’d say there has to be a complete overhaul of the entire organization. You just can’t simply replace head coaches and say, ‘Now it’s going to be better.’ No, it’s been shown that it’s not better. And you have to address how everything is being done.”
View: Wow. Aikman’s bang-on criticism had most Cowboys fans down in Texas no doubt drawlin’: “It’s ’bout time!”
Jason Garrett has been head coach of the Cowboys for exactly eight years, taking over in Week 10 of 2010. His record? 70-58 (.547) with only three winning records over an entire season and one playoff victory. Alas, it’s but a continuation of an unwavering trend in the Jones-without Johnson era of Cowboys football. Aikman’s right.
Garrett is the club’s sixth head coach since Jones forced Johnson out after the 1992-93 championship seasons. The first, Barry Switzer, won at a .625 clip over four years and won a Super Bowl with Johnson’s carry-over, starpacked roster in 1995. Switzer’s four successors before Garrett, combined, went 101-99 (. 505) and won one playoff game from 1998-2010.
The two principal constants? Jones as the owner and Jones as the general manager. Either he does not possess self-awareness or he does, but remains in stubborn denial he’s the problem.
A good friend who has been a close observer of the Cowboys since the ’70s is convinced the source of Jones’ continuing failures is he convinces himself his hand-picked roster is so good it’s always just one or two effective players away from winning a Super Bowl. In reality, it’s always much farther away.
This is why Jones keeps making these trade-away-the-future swaps or cap-strapping freeagent signings. He just did it again by giving up a first-rounder to Oakland for an underperforming Amari Cooper.
Wouldn’t you love to know what went through Jones’ mind Monday night after the newly acquired Cooper caught a few nice passes, including the Cowboys’ first touchdown, only to see his team get thumped 28-14 by the visiting Titans, a team that hadn’t scored more than 20 points in regulation all season?
Cooper makes Dallas better. But minimally. Only three teams in the NFC have a worse record than the 3-5 Cowboys, who can’t see the Super Bowl with a telescope.
But then even if Jones accepted that he should grudgingly delegate management of the football operation, this probably would stop him: the idea that his successor might have more success. Then everyone, not just some, would conclude that he was the biggest problem all along in Big D.
Thus, don’t expect anything to change.
2. Matt Patricia fires his inherited special teams co-ordinator News: Eight games into his first season as the Detroit Lions’ head coach, Matt Patricia fired Joe Marciano, the club’s top special teams assistant since 2015. Detroit’s coverage teams have been dreadful. The Lions rank last in punting and overall only three other clubs’ special teams have been penalized more than Detroit’s. View: The Lions’ last remaining holdover co-ordinator from the Jim Caldwell regime, Jim Bob Cooter on offence, can’t be feeling especially secure. If Patricia fired Marciano so soon, when Lions fans are more upset by far with the performance of the offence, then imagine the pressure on Cooter to get his offence fixed and fast.
One week, Cooter chooses not to run the ball much and the offence is stagnant. The next week, quarterback Matthew Stafford has no time to throw. The next week everything clicks. No consistency, no identity.
The Lions are 3-5. Hard to see Cooter returning for 2019 unless his offence catches fire.
3. NFL fines Miami and its head coach for key injury list omission News: SI.com reported this week the league fined the Dolphins $30,000 and head coach Adam Gase $15,000 for inaccurately reporting to the NFL in Week 6 that quarterback Ryan Tannehill was a full participant in Thursday’s practice that week, when in fact he missed some first-team snaps. The team listed Tannehill as a full practice participant on the Wednesday and as limited only on Friday before categorizing the quarterback as questionable (rather than doubtful or out) for that week’s game against the Chicago Bears.
Brock Osweiler wound up being announced as Miami’s emergency starter shortly before game time and has started under centre ever since.
View: What provides a bigger competitive advantage: when imperceptible amounts of air are removed from your quarterback’s footballs (and naturally so, by the colder outdoor temperature, not surreptitiously by equipment staff ) or when you deliberately attempt to hide from this week’s opponent the true nature of your starting quarterback’s injury, an injury so debilitating it winds up sidelining him for weeks?
In the NFL’s eyes, it’s the former.
The league in 2015 not only fined the New England Patriots $1 million for Deflategate (33 times more than the Dolphins’ injury list fine), but also docked New England its 2016 first-round and 2017 fourth-round draft picks and, of course, suspended quarterback Tom Brady for four games “for conduct detrimental to the integrity of the NFL.”
Look, everyone knows the league’s injury reports are about as accurate on the whole as the readjusted halftime air-pressure readings of Brady’s footballs taken on that infamous night in January 2015, during which the readings — thanks only to post factum junk science — magically and conveniently made the measurement from the second of two gauges go from compliant to non-compliant on eight of 11 New England footballs.
It’s time the NFL cracked down far harder on actual detrimental conduct to the league’s integrity: injury list manipulation.
It hasn’t always mattered who the head coach has been. I’d say there has to be a complete overhaul of the ... organization.