Jason Garrett Has Shown Us Nothing New

In the moments following the Cowboys somewhat surprising 38-35 overtime win at Indianapolis Sunday, I noticed a poll at the Dallas Morning News’ SportsdayDFW website regarding the status of interim head coach Jason Garrett.

The poll basically asks four questions and I’ll duplicate that poll here. Wait to vote until you’re done reading.

The poll asks this question: Was this win enough to make you a believer in Jason Garrett?

The options are as follows:

*I already wanted him to be permanent coach.

*This is enough proof! Hire him permanently.

*I’m still not convinced, but he still might be the guy.

*No way, Cowboys still need to hire a big name.

To my amazement, the leading option with 35.97 percent of the votes was the second above!

A close second at 34.8 was the third, much more appropriate and probably speaks volumes about how little knowledge many people have about football and about how emotional they are after a simple win that brings their team a whopping four games away from .500.

What amazed me the most was that fourth option above. Apparently, I fall into the vast minority of the near-two thousand votes at the time I looked. Only 4.39 percent feel that either a big name, or at least another coach, is needed to coach America’s Team.

This ranks right up there with people continuing to vote for for the same two political parties in this country that offer next to nothing in terms of representing the people.

In this contest, we saw essentially the same issues that have kept this team out of an NFC Championship Game for the entire duration that Garrett has been involved with this offense.

Let’s remember that upon his arrival in 2007, Dallas went 13-3 clinching home field advantage for the NFC Playoffs, yet failed to get so much as a single win in that tournament.

Since that season, we have seen volumes of big plays out of the Garrett offense and even a lot of points in numerous wins. But there’s also been a cascade of head scratching losses which could be blamed on everything from penalties to injuries to stupid play calls.

I suppose that everyone took notice of yet another bad exchange between center Andre Gurode and Jon Kitna in the first quarter? Granted, Kitna got it back and the Cowboys did score three on the possession with a David Beuhler 30 yard field goal.

Dallas did pick up a first down two plays later when Kitna hit Jason Witten for four yards to move the chains. But the potentially explosive errors just keep on coming in Garrett’s high risk offense.

Dallas running backs tallied up 183 yards on the ground against the Colts, yet Garrett struggled to cash in that rushing success at a point in which it should have been easy.

Near the end of that 18 play drive in the fourth quarter, the Cowboys ran nine plays inside the Indy 10 yard line. Of those plays, six came from the three or closer. During this sequence, Tashard Choice was stopped for no gain three times.

If not for the Colts unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Beuhler’s 24 yard field goal that would have given the Cowboys a completely useless two-point lead, Dallas certainly loses this game.

I realize that once the field gets this small, even the worst of run defenses can stack 8-9 defenders in the box in order to get a stop. This is when play action or a boot-leg, which Kitna certainly has the mobility to run, gets you that easy score. Somehow Garrett does not have a pulse for this way of taking advantage of defenses that have to sell out to stop the run.

And back to that decision to kick the field goal that temporarily put Dallas up by two: Where exactly was the value in that decision?

Few have been better than Manning at winning games with little time left if a score will do it.

Again, without that Colts penalty on the go ahead field goal, we’re probably talking about a 35-30 Colts victory as Manning needed just 2:09 to race Indy down the field for what luckily ended up only a game tying touchdown, thus leaving the Cowboys with an opportunity to take the game to overtime.

Yes, Jesse Holley had a major whiff of Colts receiver Taj Smith which allowed a Mat McBriar punt to be blocked and ultimately returned for a touchdown. Sure, we also saw a few of the types of penalties, such as holding and false starts that offered further complications to a game that Dallas should have won without needing overtime.

Beuhler’s missed field goal just before the half also did not help. These issues are not all Garrett’s fault but it still seems like these Cowboys find more and more creative if not dramatic ways to get in their own way.

I suppose that it’s rather telling that despite scoring 38 points as a team in this game, the Garrett-run offense only scored two touchdowns on the day.

It doesn’t seem right that after rushing 40 times in regulation and still having 35 points on the board that Dallas needed overtime to beat a banged up Indianapolis team that was banged up at several positions and also riding a two game losing streak into this game against New England and San Diego, respectively.

Don’t get me wrong, there were more positives in this game for Dallas than negatives. You had to like the play of Sean Lee in place of Keith Brooking and the big day for Choice in place of Marion Barber.

Nonetheless, problems still remain with this team as far as its overall performance against any team they face. Jason Garrett puts this in place on a regular basis.

Nothing over the course of Garrett’s first four games nor his last four of this season will offset the last four years, by the time it’s all said and done in 2010.