Jason Garrett of Dallas Cowboys Refuses to Own Up to His Own Mistakes

Seems like every game the Dallas Cowboys have lost this season, head coach Jason Garrett blames everyone but himself.  Specifically his quarterback, Tony Romo. 

Why does he continuously make excuses for his own poor play calling and game management, but always seems to throw his franchise QB under the bus with things like, "We'll look at the good things we did today, and certainly the bad, including at the quarterback position..."?

Was it really necessary to specifically point out your much-maligned QB, despite the fact that he did nothing to lose the game? 

How about explaining why you run a shovel pass on 3rd-and-goal instead of throwing a fade to Dez Bryant, who had single coverage that was just begging for it? 

Oh yeah, he's got that covered, too. "We felt like when it was 13-13, it was important for us to come away with points and make sure we got three and went ahead in the game," Garrett said. In other words, he didn't have faith Romo could get away with not throwing an interception in that situation. 

I'll grant you that Romo has proved there are some situations in which you need to limit his ability to lose the game for you.  However, there are many situations where Romo has proved he can—and will—win the game for you.  He has to be given the chance with the game on the line. 

And at 13-13, the game was most definitely on the line.  

Even owner Jerry Jones, who made the colossal mistake in hiring a guy who was part of the problem last season instead of the solution, seems to be less than confident in his head coach who thinks he's also an offensive coordinator. "Whenever you get the ball into the hands of a player like Brady at home, you've got problems," Jones said. "We are up here on their field and we knew what the odds were, so we flipped a coin and it came up against us. We know what they are about and we knew what our challenge was here. We got it down to a coin flip at the end and if you were in a playoff game, you'd probably drive it home."

He added, "I would have like to have seen [a less conservative game plan]. That’s not second-guessing. We all would. We needed a couple of first downs at the end [of the game] but we knew good and well we’re gonna have to open it up and throw the ball a little bit to get any first downs and they knew exactly what they were doing defensively to shut the run down."

In those games that Romo apparently lost all by himself, overlooked is the fact Garrett made very poor decisions in those games that contributed to the loss.  However, does he want to point that out or shoulder his share of the blame?  Of course not—it's safer to let Romo take all the heat. 

At least until Romo plays well, and it's obvious the game was lost on coaching mistakes.  Then it becomes all too obvious who the real goat is.