DALLAS — In a decade now defined by mediocrity under Jason Garrett, Jerry Jones’ chosen man could finish his final season as the Dallas Cowboys’ head coach with the same result he started with during his first full season.
With a win over hapless Washington in Week 17, the Cowboys would finish 8-8 just like they did in 2011 (and 2012 and 2013) and, unless they get some help from the New York Giants, they will miss the playoffs by one game, just like they did in that inaugural Garrett year when the Giants eked out the NFC East title at 9-7 and parlayed their playoff spot into a miracle run to a fourth Super Bowl championship.
Jones was hoping this season would be Dallas’ turn to transform a haphazard regular season into something miraculous in the playoffs. However, with a chance to secure the lackluster NFC East crown, the Cowboys looked as enfeebled as ever.
Despite Sunday’s 17-9 loss at Philadelphia, the Cowboys playoff hopes are remarkably still alive, even if they certainly don’t deserve to be. If Dallas wins next week’s regular season finale at home, and the Eagles lose in New York, then Dallas is in and hosting a wild card game to open the playoffs.
Hoping for divine intervention is where the Cowboys stand but, given how this team has performed since the mid-November win over the Lions, there’s no reason to believe they’re even a shoo-in to do their part and win next Sunday against 3-12 Washington.
The Cowboys have won just once over their last five games and have gone 4-8 since Week 3. The Eagles, meanwhile, have won three straight to take over first place in the division and will only need to beat a 4-12 Giants team that they defeated 23-17 as recently as Week 14.
Of course, given how Dallas has performed against teams with a winning record, a gifted playoff appearance would only be delaying the inevitable. The Cowboys likely wouldn’t have been able to muster up much of a fight in the postseason, and that’s before they failed at their best chance to clinch an opportunity to prove people wrong in Philadelphia.
And so, with all that said, it is time for the Dallas Cowboys to clean house.
Garrett had so much promise as the team’s offensive coordinator in Tony Romo’s developing years, and many felt that he had made strides over the early part of the decade once he took over as head coach. Maybe he had, but whatever was there has now stagnated to the point that it feels like the Cowboys are dying on the vine.
As time has gone on, the results have made it all the more evident that the Cowboys can’t go very far with the current regime.
Jones gave Garrett many more chances than most people get with all kinds of configurations at important coaching spots and bountiful player personnel. What the Cowboys got in return, in the end, was the same maddening lack of conviction and conservative nature that only doomed them to lose games close enough to perpetually make you wonder if they were just about to turn the corner.
Defensively, the staff was expected to continue with what they did last year with a top unit in the league. Instead, the reality was a complete drop off in 2019. The defense, at times, forgot how to tackle and the inability to stop the run became a liability on many Sundays. Rod Marinelli has led this group since 2014 – and they have often overachieved – but it could be time to couple a Garrett departure with a brand new voice for the defense.
And, while we’re at it, if Dallas makes no other changes, the abysmal performance from the special teams all the way around means special teams coordinator Keith O'Quinn should be the first to go.
For 2020 and beyond, the Cowboys front office needs to find a coach that is going to get the most out of the team and stop settling for what could be barely good enough at best. The coaching staff is supposed to put their players in a position to succeed, but it felt like the opposite this year, and, frankly, for many instances over the last decade.
In what was meant to be a season where the Cowboys were a top contender in the conference, the combination of the staff and underachieving players failing to execute has turned this season into a colossal failure where a .500 record is the best case scenario.
Ultimately, in a year where the NFC East was extremely weak, the Cowboys couldn’t find a way to bury the division early on and that is the biggest failure of all. That falls on Jason Garrett and thus so does the sword of Damocles fall in Dallas.
Do you think the Cowboys could pull off the miracle next Sunday and take the division or is it time to look forward to 2020 and a new coaching regime? Share your thoughts with Patrick on Twitter @DraftCowboys.
