Stewie, Garrett, TO, Wade, and everything in between

The Valley Ranch circus never ends. It must be fascinating to be a reporter that covers this team. You don't even have to try to go look for stories. So lets see, this week we have:

Brian Stewart

I was a little surprised hearing about his firing yesterday. True, in the second half of the season he was reduced to Ryan Leaf (i.e. clipboard holder) without a 'tude, but if Wade is going to be calling plays next year as well, then who will want to take this DC job? Stewie always came off as a guy that wanted badly to be respected by his players but was just never taken seriously. Remind anyone of someone else on the coaching staff? Yeah, its not a coincidence. It points to a much larger issue of there being no respected heirarchy on this team. If you want to get to the bottom of the issues of what ails the supremely talented Dallas Cowboys, you can start there. Which takes me to the big story of the week.

Garret vs. TO

This belief that TO is holding the team back is nonsense to me. While his "throw me the damn ball" media outbursts may be a distraction, its far down the list as far as I'm concerned if you want to talk about how 9-7 happened. While writing this entry, news broke that the Rams have hired Steve Spagnuolo from the Giants despite Garrett traveling to St. Louis yesterday for a 2nd interview/job offer/whatever speculation Adam Schefter wants to throw against the wall. That news makes what I'm writing about somewhat irrelevant. However, there is still this issue of Garrett apparently throwing his perceived might around at Valley Ranch and demanding that TO be released or else Jason's going to take his toys and go home. However, this power play seems to have failed miserably as apparently he has no head coaching offers. So... where does that leave the Cowboys. Garrett can no longer say its me or TO because where is he going to go? Such is life at Valley Ranch.

I wasn't really worried about losing Garrett. If it was TO or Garrett, I think I'd take TO. I'm not going to pretend that I've reviewed game film or broken down Garrett's playcalling tendencies and can thus provide X and O commentary about why he sputtered as an OC this year. However, I can see pretty plain as day that we weren't getting the ball to playmakers. I don't care if we played good defenses in December. The point of having a good offense is not to put up 35 on the 49ers, but to score enough points to help your team out when you're up against the best. Starpower on offense did not equate to an elite offense this year. This has been a downward trending offense since last December. Dare I say the league has caught up to the boy genius? And dare I say the boy genius hasn't shown the chops to properly adjust? He got flat worked by Dick Lebeau, Rex Ryan, and Jim Johnson. I'm talkin Pat Riley vs. Avery Johnson style. If you don't believe me just listen to the players. When Ray Lewis talks openly about how simplistic your offense is and how he was able to call out your plays before you ran them and when DeShea Townsend says he knew exactly where Witten was going to be on the pick six you have problems. The most telling piece of evidence came after the Philly game though. When TO complains about the offense people brush it off as TO being TO. But when your franchise QB who never deviates from the company line makes veiled but pointed comments about being out gameplanned and outsmarted... ruh roh. The moral of the story here is that Garrett is in no position to be throwing his weight around and drawing lines in the sand.

Michelin Man

Poor Wade. I think he still has a job because Jerry didn't have enough faith in Garrett to promote him to head coach. Wade has so little respect that immediately after saying that next season he would try and run a tighter ship and command more respect, Bradie James, a team captain no less, promptly stated that he didn't buy it. Make no mistake, the man can coach a defense. However, if this team wins next year under Wade, it will be talent overcoming lack of other intangibles as opposed to Wade doing any General MacArthur impersonations. Can we just make Wade the DC and hire Shanahan or Gruden? That would be bliss.