Did Injury Hijack Jason Garrett’s Offense in 2008?

I don’t know everything about football, not by a long shot. All I know is when I see something that doesn’t work, and I usually want whoever to stop doing whatever isn’t working; no big …

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I don’t know everything about football, not by a long shot. All I know is when I see something that doesn’t work, and I usually want whoever to stop doing whatever isn’t working; no big surprise there.

But I’m not totally on-board with the “Fire Garrett” sentiments that I’ve been hearing from fellow fans.

I do think his offense is too vanilla for this league, but I have a hard time believing that he can’t change to go with it. Just look at the coaching changes he endured as a player in Dallas, that alone is enough evidence for me that he can adapt as needed to what an offense needs to do, that he can see how an opposing defense helps to dictate the scheme an offense uses.

Help me out here, though, does he really need to change his offensive scheme? Is it really his playbook that is the problem? Or could be something else?

It’s no doubt by now that something has to be figured out, and something has to be done about the problems that plagued this team last year, but being so quick to fire the Offensive Coordinator because the offense didn’t trounce on every team in the NFL seems a bit of a stretch.

This December gets a pass that no December in recent Cowboys history got, playing nothing but the best defenses in the league week in and week out. That has to account for something, right?

The injuries didn’t help either, but you can’t say that a lot of it was injuries because of all injuries on the offense this year, only four starting quality players were really affected. I’m not counting Jason Witten here, he was injured, but he also played through the injuries without too many issues.

First Felix Jones is hurt, then is hurt worse during rehab, then gone for the season. that certainly made things tougher for Garrett since he no longer had any speed on the offense at all, especially not on the ground. Then Romo goes out for three weeks, leaving Brad Johnson as the quarterback, insert your own derogatory comments about him here.

he wasn’t quite the veteran backup that Jerry Jones had envisioned, I’m sure, and I doubt he could have been a positive influence on young Tony Romo either.

And even coming back after only three weeks, Romo was still limited by the splint and healing finger. Though he did seem to do quite well during that time, maybe the splint held him back a bit, and saved the mishaps from him trying to do too much with a dead play.

Then Barber goes out, but wait, Choice actually rose to the challenge and did good starting as the teams only healthy back. Really, it says more about next year than anything.

Add in Kyle Kosier going down for most of the season, which left the other four starters on the line trying to compensate for Proctor, and you’ve got a few problems for Garrett to work out.

What kills me, and we all know this, that every team has certain things they do because of the personnel they have, the players. Garrett never made any noticeable changes to the offense no matter what players were hurt or not playing at all. Seems like if you have an offense designed for a specific group of guys, and one or two or three of those guys go down with injuries, your offense should change to fit whoever is playing.

Is it just me, or did he not ever seem to do that? It’s a weekly process, game planning, and he didn’t seem to do a lot to help out when it was needed most.

Help me out folks, help me understand what the problem is with that whole situation.