Did Cowboys' Garrett make a mistake in hiring Rob Ryan?
By
Randy Galloway
It's not a win-this-week, win-next-week, win-out-or-else situation
for Jason Garrett. Nor
should it be. Garrett's job is safe. As it should be.
But we're disappointed in
Red J, aren't we? OK, I don't speak for you.
I'm disappointed in Red J.
And that's speaking as a Garrett believer, a believer that
all things considered, he's the right man for Valley Ranch and the
right man for Jerry. The head coach of the Cowboys has multi-tasking
headaches. There's the job, with the always overblown expectations,
and then there's Jerry, with the always overblown football ego.
Garrett, I thought, could handle both, and as I've mentioned before,
the Cowsheep should really, really say a football prayer for Jason.
If Garrett fails,
God
knows who the next head coach would be for Jerry. A good guess,
however, would be a cheap puppet show returning to Valley Ranch.
Granted, a personal belief in Garrett slipped considerably because
of what happened after the loss in Arizona, and then again the week
after that loss. Garrett did not publicly hold himself accountable
in a situation where he obviously made a mistake, and that's
extremely disappointing. This is a guy who I thought would never dig
himself an accountability hole. Get over it, I tell myself. And I'm
working on getting over it, but admittedly, that failure caused a
faith slippage that still nags, much more so than the last two
losses and the sudden skid in the divisional standings. OK, that's
just me. But a bigger issue has also surfaced regarding Garrett, and
there's uncertainty from here on how far to go with this one. Did
Garrett make a mistake in hiring Rob Ryan as his defensive
coordinator? Garrett, by the way, did hire Rob. As he promised last
January, on the day he gave Jason the head coaching job, Jerry did
not force any assistant coaches on Garrett. It was a show of respect
by Mr. Jones few past coaches have been granted. Only two, to be
exact. Jimmy and Big Bill. We've seen defensive slippage building
for months. Then we saw a total collapse Sunday night against the
Giants. There are two sides to the Ryan blame game. Is it his
scheme, or is it defensive talent, meaning a lack of? Easy answer:
It's some of both.
For one thing, have we ever seen a longer stretch of "average" from
one DeMarcus Ware? In that Giants game, to say Ware was "average" is
fudging. He was awful, but he was also playing injured. But it's
been weeks since he's been great, and the last time Ware displayed
his old form was in Philly in late October. He was, however,
displaying old form in a blowout loss that had an outcome decided by
halftime. Ware's slippage obviously doesn't involve talent. But do
we blame scheme? It seems we should just blame Ware. Overall, Rob's
defense appears totally disorganized at times, clueless at others.
I've never seen so many players waving arms and shoving teammates
into another spot as the ball is about to be snapped.
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