FWST JFE: What happens next with these Cowboys is anybody's guess

By JENNIFER FLOYD ENGEL
jenfloyd@star-telegram.com

Seems like only days ago this Cowboy season ended amid cries of “the coaching staff was in place! The coaching staff is in place!” Continuity and cupcakes forever. Or was it “we know things must improve. The only way is to change things,” more demanding, more whatever, change, change, change?

I get my Cowboys off-season plans confused.

Obviously, they do too.

They seem to have deluded themselves into thinking they were oh, so close to being a Super Bowl team and are locked and loaded for next year. And then every once in a while, it hits them “Oh my gosh, we so underachieved this year. The Arizona Cardinals have jumped us” and then they randomly fire or cut somebody who everyone with even the slightest clue recognized should have been gone a long time ago.

The joke of a special teams coach. Fired 14 weeks too late.

The idiot Pacman. Cut two months after he should have been.

And Friday your Cowboys kicked off happy hour by firing defensive coordinator Brian Stewart because apparently players no longer respected him and he had zero power and his play calling stunk. So why, if this was true (and note my emphasis on if), did it take the Cowboys almost a month to fire him?

At this rate, they may get around to making a hard choice on somebody who really needs to go by mid-March. Who knows, maybe, Coach Cupcake by June.

Oh, never mind, the coaching staff is in place!

And they are a big happy family. Or kind of, not really since the Cowboys seemed positively indifferent to be losing OC Jason Garrett to St. Louis. Was that a sigh of relief or an “oh darn” emanating from Valley Ranch when the Rams decided not to hire The Redheaded Genius.

And therein lies what I see as the problem with the Cowboys offseason thus far. They seem to be changing simply to change, not because they are acknowledging big problems exist, not with any discernible plan in place, not with any clear vision.

You get the feeling Owner Jones does not quite no what to do next, after somewhat rashly deciding to bring Coach Wade back. Everybody knows this is a mistake. He has to too. And who knows Owner Jones may still flip flop. I am holding onto hope for a come-to-Jesus moment for him.

Until then, though, we have been treated to what feels a lot like an exercise in arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Nothing they have done so far, in my mind, has a chance to really fix what ails this team with the possible exception of dumping Read. Big problems existed, no matter what spin is coming from Valley Ranch and what we have seen from Valley Ranch so far hardly generates confidence this year will be better than the last.

So the coaching staff is (kind of) in place! TO is officially Larry Fitzgerald (lite). The RHG is back for another year (because all of the life boats were taken). What’s not to be excited about with this Cowboys team going forward?

So while I ponder what “the coaching staff is in place” actually means, let’s chow down on a helping of Monday Morning Musings.

1. Thanks to Cardinals WR Larry Fitzgerald for answering all of my TO apologists for me.

Dear TO apologist,

I have enjoyed hearing from all of y’all this week. Certainly your correspondence has been entertaining. I especially love you, Mr. TO Is The Best Player On The Cowboys Offense guy. Can you buy me what you obviously have been drinking heavily?

And I was thinking of you guys, OK, especially you Mr. TO Is The Best Player On The Cowboys Offense guy, while watching the NFC Championship. Did you see Fitzgerald? What I noticed is how he went up and got balls, how he caught almost everything near his hands, how he made plays and how he was everything you would want in a No. 1 receiver and how he was nothing like TO.

I plan to opine further on this in a big-girl paper column this week. Until then, love and kisses,

-- Jengel

2. A quick word about how agonizing firing his good friend Stewart must have been for Coach Wade: Go sell crazy elsewhere.

Wade always has been a coach willing to throw his assistants under the bus and Stewart has tire tracks on his back, from way back in October, to prove as much.

So why has this myth, that he was fired in Buffalo because he refused to fire an assistant, has become truth? What I know for sure is there are a lot of sides to this story and this image of Wade as a stand-by-your-man coach is giggled at by many.

3. DeSean Jackson second guess, No. 457.

I think I may have mentioned that the Cowboys somewhat stupidly passed on the Philly WR in the draft because he was not going to be an impact player immediately.

Obviously, they were wrong.

What was especially painful was watching Jackson tomahawk chop the ball out, forcing a fumble, after an interception. The dude now has made more big plays than Anthony Henry and Ken Hamlin did this year.

4. I am sore from watching the AFC Championship game.

The game was every bit as good as billed, a defensive battle. It was not that catches were not made or big runs not broken or touchdowns scored so much as every play had a price. You were going to get hit, and hard. The biggest example, of course, was the one late in the fourth that ended with Ravens RB Willis McGahee laying on the turf for a long, long time. It looks like he’ll be alright but, obviously, my thoughts and prayers go out to him. It was a clean, hard hit in a game full of them.

5. Whatever you think of The RHG, and I know a lot of you are really, really mad, we all agree that how St. Louis handled their scene was just wrong, right?

6. Did anybody else notice what all four final four NFL teams had had in common that is missing in your Dallas Cowboys?

Give up? Try studs at safety.

Philly has Brian Dawkins while Arizona--Adrian Wilson, Pitt--Troy Polamalu and Balt--Ed Reed. All of them bring toughness, not in the cliché swagger-around-with-a-snarl-on-your-face way so often confused with play making. What they do is challenge you on every. Single. Play. In various, game-changing ways.

Wilson and Polamalu have deserved reps as big hitters.

Polamalu and Reed cover a lot of ground. Reed also has great hands.

Dawkins has a way of being exactly where he needs to be and finding a way to make a play. All of them leave a mark on a game.

And Dallas has The Bad Roy Willy, Hamlin (thank goodness he and his big bag of nothing are signed long term) and a lot of young kids who try hard.

7. I am not celebrating with The Arizona Cardinals this a.m., or why I still hate Bill Bidwell.

People always ask me if I ever was a fan of any team. I admit my love and money go to Mizzou and I become a screaming, jersey-wearing freak during St. Louis Baseball Cardinals games. What I do not say is I used to feel this way about Bidwell and his Cardinals -- back when they were the St. Louis Football Cardinals.

I loved them, in a way only a really young kid who did not understand how abysmally bad they were could. I came by this naturally. My mom was a season ticket holder, a lover of all underdogs. Every home Sunday during football season, she’d put a meal in the crock pot and go.

I watched from home, hoping for a victory or at very least a good showing. They rarely did. It was ugly, an ugly only achievable through a cheapskate owner and his minor-league ways. I didn’t understand this back then, only that Bidwell had decided St. Louis was to blame for his ineptitude. So he moved them. And I may have cried.

OK, I did. I was barely 10.

And I never ever rooted for them again, unless rooting for fail counts (which I think it does). So go AFC.

8. And I think Pittsburgh wins the Super Bowl. Easily.

9. Your homework assignment was to psychoanalyze yourself and determine if the 9-6-1 Eagles and 9-7 Cardinals being in the NFC Championship game had you feeling better or angry?

We here at LBOH headquarters were inundated with emails again this week and what we learned is y’all are bitter and angry and mad and not at anything Eagle or Cardinal. Y’all are still furious with Owner Jones and Coach Cupcake and The RHG and anything and everything even remotely associated with the star.

So in no particular order, as we do every week, we present my favorite responses:

Michael E. Perez of Roanoke writes “really, this makes me feel more disappointed than angry or even feeling better that Dallas lost to them. These teams have the heart and desire to win and know the meaning of winning together. There is no ‘I’ in team, something Dallas has failed to recognize. I can’t convict the entire team of this mentality, but you know who is the usual suspects are. If anyone should be angry, it should be Jerry Jones, because once again, you have the most valuable sports franchise, sitting at home again” while Eric Cunningham of Sherman adds “If anyone in the Jock Kingdom feels out of sorts that the Eagles and Cardinals are in the NFC Championship game, they should complain directly to Owner Jones. The buck stops with him. He wants to be Mister All-Everything at “The Place Where Team Is Spelled I” aka Valley Ranch, so why aren’t the shortcomings being laid at his feet? The Eagles and Cardinals may not have as much talent as this bunch of malcontents and miscreants, but they are certainly better teams.

My favorite comes from Shrikant Jaiswal, Carlsbad, CA, who has been an overachiever lately. He writes “the fact that the Eagles and Cards are in the NFC championship made no difference to me. Watching those two teams play this past weekend was just a pleasure. I was fine with them winning until you asked this darned question. Then I had to stop and think and I realized - I AM NOW ENVIOUS OF THE BIDWELLS and JEFF LURIE AS OWNERS!!!! Those cheapskate Bidwells and that arrogant Jeff Lurie? AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Jen, I blame you. This is all your fault for asking this darned question.”

10. Your turn: What Cowboy move from this offseason gives you hope next season will be better? Please remember to include your name AND LOCATION for credit purposes. I am all about credit.