Jason Garrett was the Cowboys’ biggest obstacle to greatness

Jason Garrett is out as head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. It was not for a lack of opportunity.

The sideline general of America’s Team ended his career with just one losing season, but only two playoff wins to show for nearly a decade of hard work. Under his guidance, the Cowboys won the NFC East in three of the past six seasons and held the league’s top record in 2016. Despite all that, owner Jerry Jones never got to host an NFC Championship Game in Dallas — hell, he never even made it that far in the postseason.

That was the rub with Garrett: his innate ability to coach a good football team wound up being the Cowboys’ biggest obstacle toward being a great one. The head coach was only blow-it-up bad once in his Texas tenure, and that was a season in which Tony Romo missed 12 games. One year later, he shook off another Romo injury and pushed his team, led by fourth-round rookie Dak Prescott, to a 13-win campaign.

That accomplishment bought Garrett some much-needed goodwill. It also stands as his high-water mark as an NFL head coach, and it ended with a one-and-done postseason. So how should we remember the Garrett era in Dallas?

If you gave Garrett the keys to the kitchen and a moderately stocked cupboard, he could turn a bunch of random supplies from the pantry into a three-star meal. An 85-67 career regular season record — the rough equivalent of a 9-7 record every year — is proof of that.

As Blogging the Boys’ Dan Rogers pointed out last spring, one of Garrett’s biggest strengths was his ability to fend off a rebuild despite overseeing a transitional era in Dallas. Garrett was able to plan around injuries and free agency losses to build a competitive team throughout his nine-plus years at the helm. He had winning records with Romo, Prescott, and (for his first eight games as the team’s head coach) Jon Kitna behind center.

He also had a knack for pulling out big performances when he needed them the most. Three straight 8-8 seasons from 2011-13 put him on the hot seat, but a 12-win 2014 put him back on the throne. He was rewarded by 2015’s 4-12 record with a draft haul that featured five different starters, including Prescott, Ezekiel Elliott, Jaylon Smith, and Maliek Collins. He took his Cowboys to a new level in the years that followed, but never made the leap from “intimidating on paper” to “intimidating in the playoffs.”

Why?

Garrett was great at devising gameplans to suit the pieces he had. But when dynamic variables were added to the mix, his effectiveness nosedived. The often robotic head coach struggled to deviate from his blueprints when opponents presented unforeseen challenges that forced him into uncomfortable situations.

In 2019, that manifested in several ways. An offense that ranked second in the NFL in efficiency, per Football Outsiders DVOA metric, couldn’t find its way past the Patriots or Saints in games where those two teams were held to 13 and 12 points, respectively.

Those losses were emblematic of the Cowboys’ season. While defensive collapses often doomed Garrett’s Cowboys in the past, he found ways to lose this fall even when his ‘D’ played well. Beating the Cowboys this season was typically accomplished by limiting the offense early and daring them to adjust.

Garrett’s 2019 offense scored just 6.1 first-half points per game in its losses. Prescott, for as much as he improved this season, had more interceptions (four) than touchdowns (three) in the opening halves of those eight games. While the offense improved in the second halves of those games, averaging 10.8 points in the third and fourth quarters, it could never flip an “L” to a “W.”

Garrett’s Cowboys, with first-year offensive coordinator Kellen Moore calling the shots, were also predictable. Dallas’s commitment to “establishing the run” has become meme-worthy. Since drafting Elliott in 2016, the Cowboys have called running plays on 58.5 percent of their first downs. The rest of the NFC East, for comparison, ran on first down 49.5 percent of the time.

Sure, you can explain some of that away thanks to a winning team working to grind down clock, but the Patriots — the NFL’s winningest team from 2016-2019 — only ran the ball 54.5 percent of the time on first down in that span. Opposing defenses knew what to expect from Garrett, even when he dialed back his run-heavy tendencies to 53.5 percent of first downs this fall.

The fact that Prescott performed so well while attempting 70 more passes than his next most pass-heavy season is more evidence Garrett should have changed tacks sooner. Prescott’s 8.2 yards per attempt were a career high. He had the second-best season of his career in terms of both passer rating and QBR despite being asked to do more.

Instead of leaning on a promising young passer, the Cowboys ran themselves into a lot of second- and third-and-long situations from which they struggled to recover. A team with a Pro Bowl big three of Prescott, Cooper and Elliott only managed to go 8-8 in 2019.

The offense was especially problematic next to a defense that was better on paper that it was as a product. The Cowboys were a borderline top 10 team when it came to opponent yards gained and scoring, but by DVOA they ranked outside the top 20. The shaky passing trio of Josh Allen, Sam Darnold and Mitchell Trubisky combined to throw for six touchdowns, more than 800 yards and a 116.7 passer rating against them. All things considered, that may be the most damning statistic of the Cowboys’ season.

Except maybe this: Dallas went 1-6 against playoff teams in Garrett’s last season.

According to Fox Sports’ Jay Glazer, Dallas has agreed to terms with former Green Bay Packers head coach Mike McCarthy. McCarthy, more than a year removed from being fired by the Packers, has a Super Bowl ring to his credit, but is tainted by his waning effectiveness in Green Bay (and the Pack’s subsequent resurgence without him). In 13 seasons with the Packers, he went 125-2-77 (.618) as a head coach. McCarthy might not be that much different than Jones, when looking at the two coach’s careers:

Like Garrett, his tenure as longtime head coach of a storied NFL franchise was always defined by the feeling he should have done more. His career as the Packers’ head coach outside that magical 2010 playoff run featured a 6-8 postseason record (.428 winning percentage). Aaron Rodgers’ career peaked over the six years that followed — he won two MVP awards, led the league in passer rating twice, and threw 210 touchdown passes in 88 games — but McCarthy could never get him back to the promised land.

Now let’s take a look back at this team’s last coaching hire.

Jerry Jones’ reaction to good, but never great results under a defensively minded head coach in Wade Phillips (.607 winning percentage in Dallas) was to hire a rising coach with an offensive background in Garrett, who aced his interim tryout and parlayed that into nine seasons. Now Jones will try to rectify good, but never great, results under an offensively minded head coach (Garrett had a .563 win percentage).

The Cowboys are loaded with offensive talent, and could use someone who is capable of finally turning their star-studded, but inconsistent, defense into a powerhouse. That may suggest turning to a former defensive coordinator for the head coaching job, but recent NFL trends indicate Dallas will instead try to level up Prescott’s offense and bank on a dynamic DC to sort out the other side of the ball. Of the last 14 NFL head coaches hired, nine previously served as offensive assistants.

Dallas hosted a handful of candidates all hoping to lead the Cowboys’ renaissance on both sides of the ball. McCarthy will inherit what’s likely the best available roster that a free agent coach can find.

Garrett’s near decade in charge produced few highs and few lows, and instead created a football purgatory in Dallas that wasted some MVP-caliber performances. McCarthy now inherits a roster filled with young players entering their primes (and a scheduled arrival in salary cap hell when those players demand higher salaries). Coaching the Cowboys won’t be an easy task, but when the other options for a prospective head coach include the Browns, Dallas has to be considered an oasis in this winter’s coaching desert.