How Jason Garrett Murdered the Dallas Cowboys
by Mike Carley
"You don't win games on paper." Anybody who has been associated with any sort of athletic endeavor has had maxims such as this bellowed, preached or commented to them at some point or another.
However, it is this particular aphorism that applies most directly to the travesty that was the 2007-08 Dallas Cowboys.
There is a particular reason "you can't win games on paper" applies to the Dallas Cowboys, and it should be apparent to anybody with eyeballs and a semi-functional frontal cortex.
The level of underachievement, Romo injury aside, of this Cowboys team was historic.
It was unfathomable.
Last year's Cowboys team has to be arguably the most stacked team ever not to make the playoffs. However, they were only the most stacked team on paper.
The elephant in the room now becomes apparent: if the Cowboys looked so good on paper, how did a fully stocked Cowboys offense get blown out of the playoffs 44-6 by a Philadelphia Eagles offense on which every single offensive skill player outside of Brian Westbrook and Donovan McNabb would be a back-up in Dallas?
The "obvious" reasons have been beaten into the ground.
Romo is too reckless with the ball.
Terell Owens is a cancer.
Jerry Jones loves emasculating Wade Phillips in front of the team and the media any chance he gets.
Wade Phillips is the biggest figurehead since Queen Elizabeth II, or that King from Lord of the Rings who looked like he was made out of concrete and had the creepy dude make all the decisions for him.
Sorry, its easy to get carried away on the Wade Phillips subject.
However, while those might be the most obvious explanatory variables, they are also the easiest. Any lazy sports analyst can sit in their recliner and place the blame for an underachieving team on the quarterback (KNEE JERK: "A quarterback gets too much credit for wins, and too much blame for losses. Told you there were a lot of them.)
Any unobservant critic can point to the "cancerous" player with a checkered history and bust out six columns in an hour and a half without the slightest shred of research.
Any somnolent pundit can bluster about the head coach of an underachieving team and march out the same cookie-cutter objections that have been attributed to failing head coaches for decades.
However, Wade Phillips really was only responsible for the defense (Jerry Jones is the head coach; everybody knows that).
The Cowboys' defense ended up ranked eighth overall, was home of the NFL sack-leader in DeMarcus Ware, and after about week four, played solidly for the rest of the year.
Unquestionably, the underachievement of the 2008 Dallas Cowboys was due to an absolutely stacked offense that was run into the ground by a stubborn and hubris-infused offensive coordinator whose unwillingness to change or adapt any of his schemes to the adjustments of the defense wasted possibly one of the most talented offenses ever assembled.
I believe there are three components to any team's (or in this case, offense's) success:
The Roster
"You don't win games on paper." Anybody who has been associated with any sort of athletic endeavor has had maxims such as this bellowed, preached or commented to them at some point or another.
However, it is this particular aphorism that applies most directly to the travesty that was the 2007-08 Dallas Cowboys.
There is a particular reason "you can't win games on paper" applies to the Dallas Cowboys, and it should be apparent to anybody with eyeballs and a semi-functional frontal cortex.
The level of underachievement, Romo injury aside, of this Cowboys team was historic.
It was unfathomable.
Last year's Cowboys team has to be arguably the most stacked team ever not to make the playoffs. However, they were only the most stacked team on paper.
The elephant in the room now becomes apparent: if the Cowboys looked so good on paper, how did a fully stocked Cowboys offense get blown out of the playoffs 44-6 by a Philadelphia Eagles offense on which every single offensive skill player outside of Brian Westbrook and Donovan McNabb would be a back-up in Dallas?
The "obvious" reasons have been beaten into the ground.
Romo is too reckless with the ball.
Terell Owens is a cancer.
Jerry Jones loves emasculating Wade Phillips in front of the team and the media any chance he gets.
Wade Phillips is the biggest figurehead since Queen Elizabeth II, or that King from Lord of the Rings who looked like he was made out of concrete and had the creepy dude make all the decisions for him.
Sorry, its easy to get carried away on the Wade Phillips subject.
However, while those might be the most obvious explanatory variables, they are also the easiest. Any lazy sports analyst can sit in their recliner and place the blame for an underachieving team on the quarterback (KNEE JERK: "A quarterback gets too much credit for wins, and too much blame for losses. Told you there were a lot of them.)
Any unobservant critic can point to the "cancerous" player with a checkered history and bust out six columns in an hour and a half without the slightest shred of research.
Any somnolent pundit can bluster about the head coach of an underachieving team and march out the same cookie-cutter objections that have been attributed to failing head coaches for decades.
However, Wade Phillips really was only responsible for the defense (Jerry Jones is the head coach; everybody knows that).
The Cowboys' defense ended up ranked eighth overall, was home of the NFL sack-leader in DeMarcus Ware, and after about week four, played solidly for the rest of the year.
Unquestionably, the underachievement of the 2008 Dallas Cowboys was due to an absolutely stacked offense that was run into the ground by a stubborn and hubris-infused offensive coordinator whose unwillingness to change or adapt any of his schemes to the adjustments of the defense wasted possibly one of the most talented offenses ever assembled.
I believe there are three components to any team's (or in this case, offense's) success:
The Roster
posted by The Gryphon at 8:14 PM
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