The Cowboys have 24 million reasons to not fire Jason Garrett, but with recent pointed comments about coaching being at least part of the team’s failures this year, it was worth wondering how safe he was.
Consider it settled.
“He’s safe,” Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones told Albert Breer of NFL Media. “Change isn’t always the right answer. We’re not big believers in it. Jason, a year ago, everyone thought he hung the moon. That’s the terrible thing about this business: You take one year, and change everything. This doesn’t faze us, it won’t faze us.
“We’re totally in with Jason. We’re totally in with our staff.”
While some degree of change is always possible — Stephen’s dad’s name is Jerry — any team that loses a good starting quarterback for the majority of the season is going to struggle. And the Cowboys looked promising enough last year that blowing it up would seem to be a mistake.
But there will be changes, beginning with the much-discussed backup quarterback position. After Brandon Weeden, Matt Cassel and Kellen Moore flopped, Weeden went on to win a game that put the Texans on the doorstep of the playoffs. That creates doubt about a system that only works for one guy, who happens to be 35 and gets hurt a lot.
“Why does Brandon go down to Houston and do fine?” Jones asked. “Ours is a system that’s ‘Romo-friendly,’ but is it not ‘other-quarterback-friendly’?”
That’s something coaches will have do address in addition to the personnel department. And with what could be a top-five pick in their pocket, they’ll have a chance to address it, which they haven’t done with a significant pick in decades.