Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones says things are just getting started with Jason Garrett, which means the coach damn well better win games.
Jones isn’t likely to fire Garrett after this season regardless of how the Cowboys finish, but Garrett won’t have much more time to prove he’s capable of leading the team.
Not that Garrett was ever the right choice for the job to begin with, but Jones knows that he can’t pull the plug on his coach after a season and-a-half.
Jones realizes he made a mistake hiring Garrett, but now he’s stuck with his decision. Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time Jones made a mistake hiring a coach for the Dallas Cowboys.
At least Garrett has a sense of what it means to be the coach of the Cowboys.
After all, he stood on the sidelines for the majority of his time as a Cowboys’ third string quarterback watching Jimmy Johnson lead Dallas to consecutive Super Bowl titles.
All of that experience he gained holding a clipboard has clearly served him well now that he’s the man in charge. It’s doubtful another NFL head coach holds a clipboard as well as Garrett.
In some respects it’s not Garrett’s fault that his weaknesses are coming to the forefront. Jones has, for whatever reasons, always been in love with Garrett.
But now Jones is starting to see that his infatuation with Garrett amounts to nothing more than a high school crush. There’s a huge difference between Garrett and coaches like Johnson and Bill Parcells.
Those coaches had achieved success before they took one of the most demanding jobs in all of sports, whereas Garrett was handed the keys to the throne without earning it.
There are times when Jones clearly doesn’t understand his own shortsightedness. It’s as if he didn’t realize that hiring an unproven coach was a huge gamble.
By nature, Jones is a gambler. A lot of his bets have paid off, but you don’t gamble in the NFL.
Especially not when you’re the owner of the world’s second most valuable sports franchise with a fan base that expects more than what they’ve been given.
Dallas will have to win their final three games to make the playoffs, but given the team’s propensity for coughing up fourth quarter leads it appears unlikely they’ll accomplish that goal.
In that event, Jones will have to decide whether retaining Garrett for another season is worth the gamble. But we’ve already established the answer to that question.
The key will be whether Jones knows the answer. Being that the Cowboys haven’t won a Super Bowl in 16 years, we know the answer to that question as well.
