The national reaction to the Cowboys’ strangely competent and surprisingly efficient victory over the defending Super Bowl champions was quite different than it was in Dallas, where they finally played the way everyone from Jerry Jones to casual fans thought they could.
On several of the NFL cable TV shows, the talk wasn’t so much about how good the Cowboys looked after their 27-20 victory last week, but more focused on the demise of the Eagles. One commentator even said that Philly obviously is in big trouble when it can’t beat a lousy team with key injuries and a struggling quarterback.
That, of course, was unfair because the Cowboys deserve credit. They certainly are not a bad team. They are a typical Jason Garrett team that, at 4-5, is decidedly average – a fact supported by these key stats:
Points scored
Cowboys: 181
Opponents: 171
Total yards
Cowboys: 2,947
Opponents: 2,957
Touchdowns
Cowboys: 11
Opponents: 12
First downs
Cowboys: 171
Opponents 170
With seven games left in the regular season, much of that can and will change.
But it continues to be evident that in a sports world where one of the overused buzzwords is “culture,” Garrett’s culture is mediocrity.
Actually, that was evident right away. In his first three full years, Garrett’s record was 8-8, 8-8, 8-8. And it continued.
In 2014, Tony Romo was healthy and the Cowboys were 12-4. The next season, however, Romo played in only four games because of injuries, and Garrett – who played quarterback for eight years in the NFL – had not prepared an adequate backup, which is supposed to be his strength. The Cowboys were 4-12.
After he replaced Wade Phillips midway through the 2010 season, the Cowboys were 5-3. But in the next five seasons, Garrett was 40-40.
Perfectly ordinary.
Thanks to Dak Prescott, Zeke Elliott and a superior offensive line, the 13-3 record in 2016 is primarily responsible for Garrett being 13 games better than .500 at 71-58. In his other seven-plus years, Garrett’s record is 58-55.
While there is nothing wrong in general with mediocrity, it’s not really what you want your head coach to be. And as Romo’s injury in 2015 demonstrated, the trip from average to bad can be a quick one.
The Cowboys and their fans will be reminded of that when Dallas plays the Falcons in Atlanta on Sunday. Only 371 days earlier, the Cowboy made the same trip to Atlanta and they had the momentum of a three-game winning streak. At 5-3, they were two games behind the 7-1 Eagles, who they had yet to play. So those two games could be made up head-to-head.
But, again, as 2015 demonstrated, Garrett is not good at compensating for a lost player, and in this game Elliott began serving his six-game suspension for his involvement in a domestic abuse incident and perennial all-pro Tyron Smith was out with an injury.
That proved to be predictably disastrous, because Falcons defensive end Adrian Clayborn overwhelmed Smith replacement Chaz Green and had six sacks, which tied for the second most since the NFL began recording sacks in 1982.
Garrett did not replace Green until the fourth quarter and was criticized sharply by FOX-TV analyst Troy Aikman during the game and ESPN’s Matt Hasselbeck later.
“What got exposed is the Dallas coaching staff,” Hasselbeck said. “I don’t like hearing comments about coaching staffs being out-coached, but it’s absurd to me. Early in this game in the first quarter, Clayborn proves to you right away that Chaz Green can’t hold up. They never made an adjustment.”
The Cowboys lost that game 27-7 and it got worse from there. In the first three games of Elliott’s suspension, they were outscored 92-22 by the Falcons, Eagles and Chargers and that effectively ended their playoff aspirations, even though they won four of their last five games.
So now they return to Atlanta with a healthy Smith and with Elliott fresh off a 151-yard rushing game against the Eagles. Plus Clayborn is gone. He was a free agent after last season and signed with New England, where he has managed 2.5 sacks in his first 10 games while starting only one of those.
If an Atlanta defender causes the same sort of problems on Sunday that Clayborn caused last year, however, Jerry Jones said his coaching staff will be ready.
“You’ll see us making any adjustments,” Jones said on his radio show. “We need to go down there, hostile environment, outstanding team, and we’ve got to somehow figure out a way to come out of there happy.”
A victory would give Dallas, 4-5, its first two-game winning streak of the year. And perhaps their head coach provides them with an intangible. A win would officially put the Cowboys in familiar Jason Garrett territory.
5-5.
Perfectly mediocre.
