Death Star Could Be Just That

My what a week at Valley Ranch.  We all knew it was coming.  Everyone except Jerry could stomach what was inevitable.  He had to admit he was wrong.  When he hired Wade Phillips as his head coach back before the 2007 season, he made the statement, "I have to get this right."  It worked perfectly for about 16 games in 2007 and has been just full of disappointments since.  


First of all, Wade Phillips is a very likable guy. I would love for my son to go fishing with him or learn techniques in football from him.  I personally think he's a great defensive coordinator in the NFL. That said, great coordinators don't often have the persona to be a great head coach.  


"Military leaders aren't made. They are born. To be a good leader, you have to have something in your character to cause people to follow you. " - Jimmy Johnson.  


In other words, some people just don't have the qualities.  They possess the knowledge and work ethic...but they don't have "it."  That "it" is the ability to command the room.  That "it" is the ability to make people feel just a little uneasy.  Wade Phillips has an entirely different approach to that style of coaching.  He's the kind of guy that wants to treat each individual like a grown man and hopes that doing so will earn their respect.  That's all great until something happens and they don't respect you.  Then you're lost without a team to fight for you.


Jimmy Johnson - "The problem with the Cowboys is you're not really sure who the leader is — and therein lies the problem. Their players haven't answered to the head coach, and I think that's a problem."


Barry Switzer - "Everybody can get the mental and the physical down, but it's the emotional part," he said. "That's why coaches know they've got to go if that arrow is pointed down. And it was pointed down for Wade, big time. He knew he had to go."


Not to be a Wade basher, but if I were a player and hearing from him the same that I heard in press-conferences, I would not feel like I had to be accountable for anything.  Each press conference was the same rhetoric with excuse after excuse and thin-skinned past resume-touting and fuzzy stats to try and overshadow a loss.  Never once did I hear that something was unacceptable.  Never, until it was too late.


I really like Wade Phillips, but I don't like Wade Phillips' style of coaching.  It's just not for me.  I'm a guy that likes a clean crisp no grey area kind of football coach.  I want someone that will make me fear to watch the game film in hopes that he doesn't call me out on something.  I'm a fan of a coach that will not accept tardiness, laziness, or anything that can cause a team to not focus on the main goal.  I'm a fan of a coach that will make me do things that I don't want to do in order to achieve something I want to achieve.  That's what great football coaches do.  They aren't your best friend.  They aren't someone you would feel comfortable asking to take your kids fishing...not while playing for them anyway.  


It's much different than business.  Business leaders thrive every day with Wade's style.  But football is much much different.  Jerry Jones thrived as a shrewd businessman.  In business, you can cut corners and be called smart.  If you cut enough corners and still produce the goods, you're a genius and a lot of times filthy rich.  In football, you can't cut corners. If you do, you'll lose.  Every time.  This is why Jerry Jones has not been successful as a hands-on owner since he took over the franchise in 1989.  He will bring on ultra-talented athletes with extreme character flaws and thinks that it won't affect the team.  He's stated publicly that he doesn't believe in team chemistry.  He believes that winning cures all chemistry problems.  But first thing's first Jerry...you have to become a winner...and people with bad character don't tend to make great winners.


When Jones bought the team and named Jimmy Johnson the head coach, he also might as well have labeled him the General Manager as well because Jimmy was the football guy.  Early on, when anyone addressed the two and a football question came up, Jerry would always defer to Jimmy to answer any football question.  All of that changed when success came.  A lot of the success was credited to the Herschel Walker trade midway through the 1989 season.  And when most people credited Jimmy for that trade, Jones went nuts. He couldn't take it.  He made the famous drunken statement, "Any one of 500 coaches could coach this team to a Super Bowl."  That was it.  Jimmy was out.  And for good reason.  Jerry was then left to prove he could do it by himself without Jimmy and eventually hired Barry Switzer.


In walks Switzer and they won a Super Bowl in his second year and should have won two straight if it weren't for an awful 1st quarter in the NFC Championship game in his 1st year at San Francisco.  But nonetheless, Jerry had won a Super Bowl without Jimmy and expected everyone to rave about how brilliant he was.  Well, not so much.  Everyone still credited Jimmy for building that team.  Jerry grew more and more frustrated and saw that team dwindle away and grow old right in front of his eyes. The team that was a bunch of thugs with tremendous athletic ability had been hard-nosed coached into champions by Jimmy.  Jimmy also believed in ultra-athletic players even if they had bad character.  Because Jimmy knew that he could mold them into team players. Now, without Jimmy commanding their attention, the thugs were allowed to exist without penalty under Switzer and it cost them several more years of mastering the NFL.  I know...free agency and salary cap also depleted the greatest team known to the NFL, but also a lack of accountability to each other led to their demise.


"Jerry's talking about what we've got to do next year," Switzer recalled. "I looked at him — we'd already had a bottle of wine — and said, 'If we don't beat them tomorrow, the first thing you'd better do is fire my [butt] and hire yourself a new football coach.' It just shocked Jerry that I said that. I was serious. The arrow was pointing down."


Jerry went several years trying to find an answer that would give him the credit if they won and not have to turn over the keys over to someone that could eventually get all of that golden laced credit.  Chan Gailey, Dave Campo ran their course.  But everything changed when the Cowboys went to Houston.  And I mean, it ALL CHANGED.  I remember all Jerry could talk about for a month was how incredible Houston's new Reliant Stadium was and how he wanted that for the Cowboys.  It made him jealous and stir crazy and he had to have it or go broke trying to get it.

The envy of that stadium made him break down and hire Bill Parcells as head coach and turnover a lot of power to him.  If he were going to get the support and backing for a stadium like that, he had to have a winner.  So he made a deal.  And sure enough, by turning over the keys to a football guy for the first time since Jimmy, a new Dallas Cowboys had emerged from the scrap heap.  Parcells' drafting and signings still echo all through Valley Ranch to this day.  He was directly responsible for guys like Romo, Witten, Ware, Barber, Jay Ratliff who are virtually the cornerstones of this franchise still today.  Parcells had "it" and created a model of accountability and it was very successful in the direction it was headed.  I still say, if Romo got the snap down in Seattle, Wade would have never been hired.  But the ball sailed through his hands and Parcells sailed out of Valley Ranch.


But by turning the franchise around and making them competitive, the fanbase now would give Jerry support to build his dream football castle.  And in Arlington, they welcomed him with open arms.  And with the new stadium in the works, Jerry could now go back to running the entire organization again.  And that always spells trouble for Cowboys fans.


Phillips was hired and the accountability went out the window.  Players got lazy.  And here we are.  Offensive coordinator Jason Garrett will now be the interim head coach, but if you ask me...he'll be the last head coach Jerry ever hires for two reasons.  1.  Garrett is a fundamental accountability guy that will be successful here.  2.  Jerry has been hinting that his time is running out.  He's said on several occasions now that he doesn't know how much longer he'll be able to be a part of the Cowboys organization.  That can mean health, or that can mean finances.


You see, Jerry's new stadium, as grand as it is, comes with a hefty note payment.  Jerry has been doing all he can to fill it with college games, concerts, boxing events and anything else to try and bring revenue to pay for it.  And when you go 1-7 and no one shows up...you're in trouble.  Possibly BIG trouble.  It was greed and coveting that brought that stadium.  And success stories based on those elements are few and far between.

People say that Jerry will be forced to hire a big named head coach to ensure that people will be enticed enough to come to the games and spend money.  But I think they have just their big-named guy in Jason Garrett.  He's not big-named in 2010...but in 2020, he'll be either heralded as one of Jerry's greatest moves in keeping him or one of Jerry's list of growing blunders in getting rid of him to save the stadium.

Never underestimate the power of Jerry's ego. The only thirst he has greater than winning is being able to tell people he was right and should get credit. He hired Garrett before Wade and if he is successful, he can say his model still works. If he turns it over to Cowher or Gruden, he essentially admits his structure doesn't work. That's why Garrett will be here forever. He'll even rebuild with Garrett if need be. But he will not let his model of structure take the blame.

Now, with that knowledge, we must just hope that Garrett will take advantage of seeing first hand how to succeed and fail as a Jerry head coach under this odd structure of no chain of command (except for all roads lead to Jerry).

It really doesn't matter what Garrett has done as an offensive coordinator. It really doesn't...(BTW, he's been REALLY successful in his first three years here). He's being hired to be the head coach which has little to do with x's and o's football. It has everything to do with a mindset...an accountability manager. That's what his job is now...along with still having to be the OC.

I believe this is going to work and work really really well.  If it doesn't, the star could fall.