The Cowboys have finally all gotten on board with the switch in offensive play callers from head coach Jason Garrett to offensive coordinator Bill Callahan, which means it is time to shift the question from the name of the man making the calls to what the change means for the offense.
Wide receiver Dez Bryant reports that it doesn’t mean a whole heckuva lot. Bryant said that there haven’t been any substantive changes to the offense as a result in the shift to the responsibilities of the coaches, with the only noticeable difference coming in terms of the intensity level of practices.
“To be honest, it doesn’t feel any different,” Bryant said in an interview with TheLandryHat.com, via the Dallas Morning News. “It still feels like the same Coach Garrett’s system, and I think that’s really what it is because I’m running the same exact plays and everybody else is, too. I think the only thing that’s changed is the intensity level he’s been bringing every day in practice.”
There was never much doubt that the amount of time spent talking about who will be calling plays was going to be disproportionate to the amount it wound up transforming the offense. The Cowboys weren’t installing a new system and they didn’t bring in a slew of new players, so there’s little surprise that things are exactly the same for Bryant and his teammates.
As with almost every team in almost every season, the fate of the Cowboys will come down to the players’ ability to execute the plays that Callahan calls even though there’s been an outsize amount of attention paid to the calls themselves.