University of Connecticut football coach Paul Pasqualoni, who served as defensive line coach and interim defensive coordinator for the Dallas Cowboys in 2010, used his former employer’s handling of success in 2009 as an example of what he doesn’t plan to do in his first year with the Huskies, who made it to their first-ever BCS bowl last season.
“It’s not something I ever believed automatically carries over,’' Pasqualoni said in a Q&A session with students, per Gerry Fraley of the Dallas Morning News. “Last year as we started the season with the Cowboys, they had won their first playoff game in quite a while, get into the season, we weren’t winning very many games because I think the decision was made, ‘Well we’ve come this far, we got this much done, maybe we can kind of pick up where we left off.’
“You can’t do that in this game. The game requires you to start over every single year. So we’re going to do that, figure out what our talents are and then go from there.”
Sure, Pasqualoni may be a little disgruntled. But he was right in the thick of things last year in Dallas, and it’s no surprise to hear him say that the Cowboys simply believed they’d be in the thick of things come January 2011 based on the fact that they enjoyed such success the prior year.