Wade Phillips and Jason Garrett Should Be Fired by the Dallas Cowboys

No matter how you frame it, this is not a pretty picture. At the beginning of this season most prognosticators had picked the Dallas Cowboys to play at home in the Super Bowl in February.

Sitting at 1-4 and 2.5 games behind division leaders Philadelphia and New York (as well as Washington if the Redskins win the Sunday night game) the only thing the Cowboys can do is look forward to next season.

Mechanical flaws can be easily overcome with tweaks to the game plan or to the personnel attempting to execute that game plan. Mental flaws cannot be overcome so quickly. That is what this team has become: one giant undisciplined mental nightmare.

The mental issues do not just stop with the players. For instance, late in the fourth quarter against the Vikings on 3rd-and-1 and the score tied at 21, Tony Romo drops back and throws an interception to E.J. Henderson at the Viking 30-yard line (at least he hit him in stride).

Most of the time you would say Henderson made a phenomenal play by baiting Romo into throwing that pass. However, Romo should have never been in the position to throw that interception in the first place. The Cowboys were five for five on 3rd- or 4th-and-1 in the game. Why would the coaching staff call a play with that much risk involved? What could they have possibly been thinking?

That seems to be a question that gets asked more and more each week.

Another question: how can a professional sports team lack so much discipline? Not only are they committing a large number of penalties, they are committing a large number of stupid penalties.

Just last week they were penalized for excessive celebration against the Titans. That penalty ultimately led to the Marc Mariani kickoff return that set up the Titans' winning touchdown. And what does Miles Austin do today? He gets an excessive celebration penalty after the Cowboys' first touchdown.

Do these guys not watch tape during the week? Can they not see how foolish they look every Sunday?

It all comes down to one thing: discipline. This team has none, and it is time to make changes. You do not want to wait to make changes during the offseason when there is less time to prepare. Discipline is already a problem; you do not want to add execution to the list of issues too.

It is time for Jerry Jones to pull the plug on the Wade Phillips/Jason Garrett show. They had their chance. They have turned one of the most talented teams in the league (if not the most talented) into the biggest joke in the league.

The question is who would want to come into a situation in the middle of the season like this? Obviously you cannot change schemes midstream but you could at least instill some discipline. A lot can happen in a short time with talent like this.

With the right personality maybe the new guys could actually pull a wild-card playoff spot out of this season. But I doubt it. With three losses in the conference already they would need to win at least 10 of the next 11 to get to 11-5 and eliminate any potential tie-breaker issues.

Bill Cowher and Jon Gruden are great coaches, not magicians. Besides, these two guys are probably smart enough to stay away from a situation like this. But something has to change.

Finishing the season with Phillips and Garrett will only sour these players and their mental outlook. Wasting talent such as this and losing games the way they do can have farther-reaching implications than just this season.

Let me put this into perspective. At 1-4 the Cowboys are just past the first quarter of the season. Can you imagine the Miami Heat, with all of their talent, just past the first quarter of their season with a similar winning percentage and a 4-17 record? Yeah, neither could I.

It is time for a change.