Dallas Cowboys sink to new low: Time to burn it down

The Dallas Cowboys are an undisciplined team playing the worst brand of football possible. It’s time to cut loose Jason Garret and his staff and burn it all down.

It’s usually best to avoid public commentary following a loss of this magnitude. Emotion can spark overreaction and that often brings with it ugly and regretful conclusions. But this, my friends, deserves our outrage. The Dallas Cowboys deserve our condemnation. Our overreaction. Our ugly conclusions.

The Dallas Cowboys may still be in position to win the NFC East but the past three games have served as a reality check and perfectly illustrate how undeserving the Cowboys are of the playoffs. The product put forth is painfully embarrassing and shows failure on multiple levels. It’s time to burn it all down.

How do you burn down a dumpster fire?

Ok, maybe not burn it all down, but systematic wholesale changes are clearly needed. Throughout the season we’ve argued whether this was primarily a coaching issue or a player execution issue. While the answer, “both” certainly fits best, I’ve come to the conclusion it’s a leadership issue.

We’ll get to top of leadership (Jerry Jones) at a later date, but for now let’s just look at the direct team leadership – coaching.

Undisciplined

Forget play-calling, game-planning, or in-game adjustments and decisions. We’ve harped on those long enough. Jason Garrett and staff are guilty of falling short in all of those areas. The area we need to focus on today is discipline.

If there’s one thing that’s become glaringly apparent this season, it’s that this team is undisciplined. Especially on defense. Players are not committed to their assignments and coaches are not holding them accountable.

When players play without discipline, coaches need to hold them accountable or else it’s liable to continue. That’s what we’ve seen this season. Bad plays have started to snowball and eventually we landed here — losing badly to a pretty poor team in a critical stretch late in the season.

now we’ve reached the point, the event horizon if you will, where it’s clear nothing can save this team. Their course is set and the black hole is their unavoidable destiny. So I say burn it down.

The temptation is there to evaluate the players like we normally do. This would inevitably draw some unfavorable grades and lead many to conclude all the players stink and this roster is just not as good as we once thought they were. And maybe they aren’t but, but when you have an undisciplined team collectively plummeting deep into a downward spiral, individual evaluation is pointless.

Even this season’s great players are now playing like hot trash. The issue is bigger than them. They deserve blame, yes, but this is a leadership issue first and foremost. We can’t properly evaluate the players until we break from this current course.

Weeks ago I called the idea of firing Garrett “foolish”. Not because I thought he deserved to coach, but because midseason coaching changes historically never work. And since the Cowboys were still in control of the division and had plenty of time to still improve, it made sense to let Garrett try to correct course. It was the only realistic shot at a postseason.

Who will take the reins?

It really doesn’t matter. The final coaching solution won’t be found until this offseason anyways. There are plenty of unemployed coaches happy to take a temporary gig. Veteran coaches like Mike Mularkey, Todd Haley, and Joe Philbin could all come in and command respect from Day 1. They all would be grateful for the temporary job. This gig comes without the pressure to win. They only have the pressure to hold players accountable, apply discipline, and let us evaluate.

Next. Who should be the next head coach of the Cowboys?. dark

Evaluating talent so the team can build properly this offseason should now be the goal. And we can’t evaluate with Jason Garrett and staff still in place.

Published on 12/06/2019 at 12:01 PM
Last updated at 12/06/2019 at 11:54 AM

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