Garrett Seems Safe; Season Evaluation Starts Tuesday

[Cowboysrule122]

David Helman
DallasCowboys.com Staff Writer

IRVING, Texas – If his season-ending press conference was any indicator, Jason Garrett is seemingly safe in retaining his place as the Cowboys’ head coach. What the Cowboys will do with the rest of their coaching staff is the question still unanswered.

Garrett spoke to the media Monday evening following a day of exit meetings, both with the Cowboys’ roster as a whole and on an individual basis. In the course of closing the Cowboys’ third consecutive 8-8 season, Garrett said he had many productive conversations – including with his boss, Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones.

“Positive conversations -- and again we’re focused on doing our jobs as coaches,” Garrett said. “That’s my job, to focus on doing my job as the head coach of this football team the best I can. That’s all of our coaches’ jobs and all of our players’ jobs. That’s really what our intentions are on.”


Those comments seem to echo Jones’ from Sunday night, in the moments following the Cowboys’ season-ending loss to Philadelphia. Jones has repeated several times in the past six weeks that he had no intention of replacing his head coach, who is 29-27 since taking over the job late in the 2010 season.

“I have spoken at a little bit of a more appropriate time here three or four weeks ago, which I said at the time that I was with Jason, and I thought that his future and what he was going to be doing with us was good,” Jones said Sunday night.

If Garrett’s future is secure, then the process of deciding the rest of the staff’s future begins Tuesday. The Cowboys’ coaching staff spent the full day Monday closing out the 2013 season – a step Garrett said was necessary before continuing toward next season.

“We’re not 24 hours out of playing our last ballgame, so today was about meeting with our players, both individually and collectively in a team meeting and doing exit physicals and exit meetings with them,” he said. “Starting tomorrow we’ll go back and start evaluating a lot of different things, schemes that we use, the personnel evaluation will go on here over the next couple of weeks.”

Garrett declined to comment on whether those evaluations would lead to changes within his coaching staff. The Cowboys’ defense, in its first season under the guidance of Monte Kiffin, finished last in the league in yards allowed with an average of 415 yards per game.

With offensive coordinator Bill Callahan in charge of playcalling, the Cowboys’ offense finished No. 16 in the NFL in yards per game – though they did score a fifth-best 27.4 points pergame.


“I don’t w ant to make those evaluations right now. We’ll step back and evaluate the whole thing,” Garrett said. “Evaluate our offense, our defense, our special teams, how we do things as a staff in a lot of different ways and how we can make it better.”

Kiffin said Sunday following the Eagles game that, were it up to him, he’d like to continue his tenure in Dallas.

“I’m proud to be a Cowboy, and I’d like to have another shot next year,” Kiffin said. “We’ll see. I just coach one game at a time, and I just want to coach another game.”

It remains to be seen how that will play out. Garrett declined to elaborate on the decision-making process for his coaching staff. But with the Cowboys’ season now closed, those decisions are now the focus.

“Again, I don’t want to get into those conversations right now. We spent today visiting with our players,” Garrett said. “We’ll start evaluating what we’ve done over the course of the season tomorrow.”

 

[Cowboysrule122]

Jon Machota ‏@jonmachota 33s
Jerry Jones on @1053thefan: "I've had recent years where I have thought we had more talent on the field than we did this year."

 

[Cowboysrule122]

Jones: Garrett to coach Cowboys in 2014

By The Sports Xchange



IRVING, Texas -- Jason Garrett will remain head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, and owner Jerry Jones said he never considered making a change.

"I think what is important here is I haven't given any consideration," Jones said Tuesday on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas. ""I like what we're doing, I like what he's doing as a head coach. Yes we are going forward."

The Cowboys finished with an 8-8 record for the third straight year and are at home for the playoffs for a fourth straight season. Garrett is 29-27 in three-plus years as head coach.

"It is unbelievable, unthinkable really for me to be sitting here three years in a row and this game ended up putting us at .500 and this game eliminating us from going to the playoffs," Jones said Sunday. "I had thought that some of the changes we had made this year would put us in better shape. It's extremely disappointing for our fans. This is very disappointing. There's no feel-good in this loss, because there was a lot at stake obviously not the least of which is getting to come right back here next week and play. We're very disappointed."

Regarding the future of coordinators Bill Callahan and Monte Kiffin, Jones was vague while seemingly offering modest support to Kiffin.

"I think you've got to assume that their contract status is their decision until we do different," Jones said. "Whatever their contract status is ... whatever it is it is.

"We had a rough year but we didn't have a rough year because of coaching in terms of our defense."
Tight end Jason Witten and defensive end DeMarcus Ware have seen the Monday after a loss to end the season, knocking the Cowboys out of the playoffs one too many times.

It doesn't get any easier or any better to deal with.

"It is a disappointing season, ending 8-8," Ware said. "I mean, you get tired of it. After a while, each year, you feel like you lose something. It's something that you lose from each one of the years, so it's like, how do you come back from that."

Said Witten: "Obviously, it's a disappointing day, to be in this situation, not preparing for a playoff game. Everybody's disappointed. Every time you experience this, it's been tough. It's something I hope I never have to experience again. But, yeah, this one was really tough. To get there three years in a row and come up short, it hurts. Ultimately, we've got to do a better job."

Neither Witten nor Ware have the answers of what it will take for the Cowboys to get out of their mediocre funk and get over the hump.

Ware doesn't even know if the Cowboys' front office has all the right answers.

"I don't think there is always for sure a road map, but you got to have a road map early," Ware said. "You can't have it late. You got to start that road map right now. You have to start all the way from watching games to getting ready for getting surgeries or whatever you need to get, getting healthy, all the way to OTAs, knowing what's going on. It goes all the way through the offseason to make sure that once training camp hits you know everything is right."

Witten put it on the players. He said they just have to find a way to play better when it matters most.

"I really do think that you just have to obviously play better," Witten said. "Throughout seasons, there's games we can go back and look at and circle and say if there's different outcomes in those games, you're in a different situation. I think a lot of teams would probably say that across the league, so you can't use that as a crutch and an excuse. You ultimately across the board, players have to play better and give yourself a chance to win those games."

Garrett told his team following last week's victory against the Redskins how much proud he was of them and their ability to fight through adversity.

He repeated those remarks in a somber post-game locker room following the loss to the Eagles. The Cowboys played without starting quarterback Tony Romo yet came close to upsetting the Eagles, foiled by a last-minute interception from backup quarterback Kyle Orton.

"Obviously, our goal is to make the playoffs," Garrett said. "We had a great opportunity to win the division here. I thought our team fought and battled through adversity all year and having this game to give ourselves a chance to win. I told them again, I'm proud to be a part of the group."

Garrett, however, said fighting hard and not making the playoffs is not good enough. The goal is to make the playoffs and the Cowboys came up short again.

"At the end of the day we didn't get the job done," Garrett said. "We have to look at ourselves in the mirror and see how we can take the next step."

 

[Cowboysrule122]

Jones Reaffirms Faith In Garrett; Focus On Players

Rowan Kavner
DallasCowboys.com Staff Writer

IRVING, Texas – Owner/general manager Jerry Jones left no doubts about the future of head coach Jason Garrett.

Jones reaffirmed on 105.3 FM “The Fan” that he had made his decision to retain Garrett and that it wasn’t a decision he made recently. He said he decided that several weeks ago and that he likes what Garrett’s doing as a coach.

“One thing that’s a positive here is we’ve been in it,” Jones said. “We’ve been in it the last three years. Jason’s been on this staff going on seven years now. But we have been in it, during his time as head coach, we have been in it, right there playing for it, in the last game for the last three years.”

Jones said there’s a positive to competing and being in the mix in the division in the final week every year, but he also said he’s right there with fans wanting more than 8-8 and not having to play for a division title in the last game every year.

“That’s where we can have improvement,” he said.

With the news that Garrett would return, the attention now focuses on the future of the other coaches and coordinators. Jones said in this business, players and coaches can lose their jobs if they don’t get the job done with or without a contract, but he wouldn’t get into the specifics of many of the coaches’ contracts.

Jones said he was pleased he had defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin and offensive coordinator Bill Callahan this year. That’s despite the Cowboys finishing last in the league in total defense and questions popping up throughout the year regarding the offensive play-calling.


The owner didn’t specifically state that those coordinators will stay next year, but he said to assume the coaching staff’s contract statuses will remain intact until they decide differently. He said those coordinators mentioned previously are still under contract.

“When we got them, I’ve never had as many people talk about, ‘Well, boy, you have really upgraded or, not upgraded would be the word, but you have really added a plus to the coaching staff,’” Jones said. “Now we had a rough year, but we didn’t necessarily have a rough year because of coaching, in terms of our defense. All that will be considered as we look forward.”

He also said the Cowboys won’t have the changes in the coaching staff area that they had last year. As far as what decisions will be made, Jones said he will look at that with Garrett going forward, but they haven’t discussed that in depth yet.

“We’ve made some philosophical changes this year with (Tony) Romo and his influence that he has in the offense,” Jones said. “We’ve made some changes regarding the philosophy of the defense. We need to practice that, we need to improve that, to the extent we can add personnel, which we certainly can through the draft.”

Most of Jones’ focus now seems to be on personnel rather than coaching. He said he’s had recent years where he thought the talent on the field was greater than it was this year, specifically because of the injuries the team sustained, but he also thought the team should have had more success with Romo on the field for 15 of 16 games.

“But when I look at the challenges that we had, frankly, and the numbers of players we had to bring on the roster and get on the field in a relatively short amount of time that for the most time weren’t a part of rosters or maybe aren’t going to be a part of rosters this year, I think we did a pretty good job getting the team out there under the circumstances,” Jones said. “Having said that, one of the things you look at is your depth.”

 

[LAZARUS_LOGAN]

Jon Machota ‏@jonmachota 33s
Jerry Jones on @1053thefan: "I've had recent years where I have thought we had more talent on the field than we did this year."

And yet, you've yielded the same results. But instead of firing the main culprit... you fire an RB coach, a WR coach, an ST coach, and a DC.

 

[Bob Sacamano]

Watch the evaluation Jason comes up with for the offense is that he needs to be in charge of the playcalling again. And he'll find no bigger supporter than Jerry Jones.

 

[Omegasupreme]

He was the playcaller. Every play was the same play from all previous years. Garrett has served the same menu for all occasions and defenses. But this year in particular, Dallas has developed a nut allergy to their head coach which keeps most of the plays on his menu from having any of their intended success.