Bumbling Buffoon Jason Garrett Should be Canned by the Boys

Continuing with the theme from yesterday, let's talk about the American version of football for a moment. I have been a Dallas Cowboys fan since my dad bought me a helmet at the tender age of 5. While it has certainly been less painful than my love for the New York Jets, besides the 90s success of Tony Aikman, it has included a lot of near misses – just missing out on the Super Bowl four times under Danny White, losing a heartbreaker to the Steelers with Staubach and more recently, missing out on the playoffs with a late swan song. In the past two seasons, the Cowboys have lost far too many games late – sometimes based on chokes by Tony Romo, but more often in my mind based on terrible coaching by Jason Garrett. Garrett is an intelligent young coach, but he just doesn’t know how to manage games, particularly at the end, and they too often either blow a lead or fail to get the final score that could have won it.

Dallas was ten up against Detroit after four turnovers in the fourth quarter, gave back a touchdown, got it back up to ten, let Detroit score again and then stopped them with less than two minutes left and no timeouts. Somehow, they couldn’t run the clock down and close out the game. Instead they kicked a field goal to go up six and then allowed Detroit to run down the field for a winning score with only seconds remaining. Garrett seems to take the air out of Romo when he’s playing well, doesn’t understand how to use timeouts to control the clock, fails to make the right decisions in the clutch and watches the team blow games they should have won. This was among the most obvious, but one could include games against the Ravens, Eagles and Giants last year (as well as the Redskins maybe), another against the Browns and two this season.

He might be a great coach some day, but Dallas has a potent offense that is being undermined far too often by his bumbling buffoonery. Enough already!

P.S. Since I'm bashing managers, why not take a cheap shot at retired Manchester United great Sir Alex Ferguson. I've never been a fan of arguably the great coach in the history of world football, but respected his incredible and sustained success. But after bowing out with an improbable title run to finish on top, Fergie's second autobiography came out last week. There were the great stories you would expect, but also a lot of taking down of players -- including those like Beckham and Keane that helped deliver him trophies and others still on the pitch. I know England is among the most sensationalist countries in the world, and these stories will help sell the book, but it just seems in poor taste and lacking the class of someone with his pedigree. Maybe that's the world we live in today, but I really think it was a rather sad swan song for a legend.