I am gonna say the head coach.
The Fix
Bill Cowher.
And speedy removal of Pac Man.
The Cowboys, as “America’s Team”, are inevitably overrated. The Eagles put them in their place today; no need to panic.
Don’t know, don’t care. I’m lovin’ every second of it though.
I respect Bill Cowher a great deal, but why would he go to Dallas?
Wade Phillips isn’t a genius, and I’m fine with Jerry Jones firing him, but Wade was NOT the problem with the Cowboys. Wade is a good football man, a solid defensive coordinator. His problem was, he COULDN’T command respect from his players, because EVERY single one of them knew Wade wasn’t really in charge of anything! Jerry Jones really (and foolishly) thinks ANYBODY can be a head coach, as long as there’s plenty of talent in place. He doesn’t see the need for a take-charge guy in that position. He won’t give a new head coach power to hire/fire his own assistants, and won’t give the head coach final say over who’s on the roster.
There are several coaches on the hot seat this year, and there will be numerous other openings next year. ASSUMING Bill Cowher wants to coach again, why would he take a job where he’s not really the boss? He’s making good money now, and can afford to bide his time, waiting for an astronomical paycheck and the PERFECT situation (whatever that is in HIS mind).
You traded for a Lions player, you didn’t think that was going to bring you GOOD luck, did you?
Who is to blame? The Gods. The Cowboys had had extremely good luck with injuries the past few years, making them appear better than they were. This year they had a more normal amount of injury problems. I think this core is, and mostly has been, an 8-10 win team that’s consistently had good injury luck and played toward the top end of their expected outcomes (until this year).
The fix? Not much, really. It’s not inherently a great team, but it is a good one, so draft well, make a handful of smart free agent acquisitions, and pull the trigger on Garrett as Head Coach – “Wade Phillips, Super Bowl Champion” is not a phrase that’s going to be bandied about any time ever. In the meantime, maybe Pacman Jones settles down a bit and fulfills some reasonable portion of his potential, and Roy Williams really should be a valuable weapon once he spends an offseason getting acquainted with the offense. TO-Williams-Barber-Witten-Romo is a hell of a skill position core.
While it’s true that the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man is a pretty terrible head coach (and he’s proved it three times now). The real problem with that organization begins and ends with Jerry Jones. The guy has no business being the team’s GM and, as others have said, his constant antics like going down to the sideline in-game completely undermine any coach. Its no coincidence that under his ownership the Cowboy’s two periods of success came when Johnson and Parcells were running the team and Jeruh’s influence was minimized.
On edit:
Also, Tony Homo isn’t nearly as good as the Espn hype machine built him up to be. He’s a decent playmaker when he gets great protection and his receivers are wide open. If any of those things doesn’t happen, he’s a bottom 3rd NFL QB.
What MQR said, although the Cowboys weren’t actually successful under Parcells, just better than they’d been before.
There’s no reason to blow things up. At the very least, Wade should get another year so the new HC won’t have to deal with TO (who I assume will retire or move on at the end of his contract next season).
I just wish one of the Eagles, during a post-game interview, nicknamed the game The Beat Down, just like there is the Play, the Drive, The Catch, etc… in football history.
As a Cowboy non-fan, this was historically fun - no different than watching the Yankees choke vs. Boston in '04 (which is nicknamed The Choke, as far as I am concerned - and Og knows, as a Yankee fan, I do choke on it…;))
So to me, it will live forever as The Beat Down - and as for who is at fault? No question - the owner; Jerry Jones feeds off hype and celebrity. He likes the circus atmosphere and getting to play ringmaster - well, let’s see what happens this time now that the tent has collapsed…
hee hee!
True, although when you haven’t won a playoff game in 16 years, Parcell’s bringing them to within a botched snap of winning one has to count as success. (So says the gleeful Giant fan :p) Also, Parcells the GM has been better than Parcells the coach for a long time now. His restocking of Dallas’s bare cupboard was his real achievement there.
I think Tony Romo deserves the most blame of any of the players. Can you imagine someone like Drew Brees with TO, Witten, and Barber? Overall, Jerry Jones only has himself to blame here. He didn’t build a team so much as he built a collection of egos, and giving his coaching staff a public vote of confidence before they even played the game was a mistake too. Wade Phillips is the wrong man for the job, Jason Garret is the wrong future man for the job, and letting Tony Sparano go to Miami was the wrong decision.
Heard this joke somewhere. Good puppets are hard to find.
Can you imagine someone like Brad Johnson with TO, Witten and Barber? I think Romo gets way less credit than he ought to.
And I am gonna say the guy who hired the head coach.
Only if Jones is willing to give Cowher free rein. And he isn’t.
Parcells had the team headed in the right direction – pretty much all their good players are guys he acquired – but Jones decided he wanted Terrell Owens more than he wanted Parcells (who knew that a team full of guys like TO and Pacman and Roy Williams do not, in the end, help you win championships).
And that’s your ballgame right there. The Cowboys will keep on being overhyped losers until Jerry Jones realizes that he is not a competent GM, and that the football decisions, all of them, need to be made by someone else.
Wade Phillips is exactly the **right **man for the job, because the job description of the Cowboy’s head coach is to be Jones’ puppet. Until that changes, it doesn’t matter who they hire.
TO is a hell of a talent and I would not want him on my team.
Sometimes teams just lose. There is not always a fix available or necessary.
Exactly. It’s a good team, if you go and make a bunch of big changes it might no longer be. Look at the Giants. Previous to this season they spent three years as a pretty good team that wasn’t considered a Super Bowl contender, but with a couple of good drafts, some solid but unspectacular free agent fixes, and the maturation of talent already on the roster they broke through to the next level.
If you’re a good-but-not-great team that isn’t facing an imminent collapse due to old age, just keep doing what you’re doing, but try to do it a little better.
Who is to blame? Don’t care*.
Who is laughing his ass off at them? That’d be me.
*Serious answer: Jerry Jones. Knows all about how to generate hype, knows shit about how to put together a winning football team.
I wish we could print this post on a billion fortune cookie inserts.
American sports fans whine way too much when their teams are winning.
Well, you should know. 
Seriously, I completely agree. And the assumption that the Cowboys are entitled to win every year and that their failure to do so must be somebody’s “fault” sums up why most fans of other teams can’t stand the Cowboys and rejoice in their suffering. {throws confetti}