By Eric Edholm
Jan. 20, 2008

Cowboys offensive coordinator Jason Garrett

As far as Cowboys offensive coordinator Jason Garrett is concerned, winning Pro Football Weekly/PFWA’s Assistant Coach of the Year award is not winning the Super Bowl, and thus, not something he wants to talk about.

Others, however, are more than happy to gush about Garrett’s contributions to the Cowboys’ commanding offense.

“We started out in (minicamps), and you could just see he knew what he was doing,” TE Jason Witten told PFW earlier this season. “Everything had a purpose. There was a good tempo to everything, and we got started quickly. You just knew even then that he had what it took.”

Certainly, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones knew when he hired Garrett, 41, that the former backup to Troy Aikman had what it took to be a strong coach in this league. Jones just wasn’t sure what kind of coach when he snagged him from the Dolphins. Garrett was a QB coach in Miami, and when Jones hired him — after Bill Parcells had resigned as Cowboys head coach, leaving his staff somewhat in limbo — Garrett was a coaching staff of one. With no specific title.

Coaching was nothing new to Garrett. In fact, it has been in his blood since birth. Imagine the Thanksgiving dinner conversations with this group. His father, Jim Garrett, was a coach and scout, most of it with the Cowboys, and a legend in NFL circles, able to recall the scouting report of Red Grange as easily as, say, a Division III linebacker he saw play twice in the 1980s.

And the passion for football trickled down to Jim’s four boys. The oldest, Jim Jr., is the offensive coordinator at University School in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Brothers Judd and John both are pro TE coaches — Judd with the Rams and John alongside Jason on the Cowboys’ staff.

“We spent our whole lives watching Dad coach,” Jason told PFW in 2003. “That passion, always going 100 miles an hour, teaching kids as young as 14, 15. Wanting to impart whatever knowledge he could. He was a coach’s coach. That’s what we learned from him.”

Jason was good enough — and smart enough — to play QB at Princeton and later in the NFL for 12 seasons, seven with Dallas. In 26 games and nine career starts, Garrett’s numbers were respectable: 11 TDs, five interceptions and an 83.2 passer rating.

But coaching always had its pull. Even as a player, teammates saw Garrett more as a player-coach. After a year as the Dolphins’ No. 3 QB in 2004, Nick Saban made Garrett his QB coach the next two seasons, with brother Judd on staff as an offensive assistant. Despite Miami’s struggles, Jones thought of his erudite former backup QB and wanted Garrett on his staff. Doing what exactly, Jones wasn’t sure, but he had to hire him.

So before Wade Phillips took over as head coach, Jones hired Garrett. Still, he had been in consideration to be head coach, one of several candidates, before losing out to Phillips and becoming offensive coordinator. But neither man saw it that way. They quickly found themselves on the same page despite this unique, arranged marriage.

“(Jones) told me the circumstances — the only way they could get him was to hire him before they got a head coach — and they saw an opportunity to get a good coach,” Phillips told PFW this season. “They knew more about Jason than I did, (but) after I talked with him, it was pretty easy to realize that he knew what he was doing. He had a plan, he had a purpose, all the right things.”

Phillips said he had one request of Garrett — the same one he made to Jim Fassel, Phillips’ coordinator with the Broncos and another coach he hadn’t met before hiring: He wanted to get the ball in the hands of the team’s best players.

In Denver, it was Shannon Sharpe. In Dallas, it’s Terrell Owens and Witten. Done and done.

Owens was on pace for career highs in yards and touchdowns before his ankle injury in Week 16, scoring nine of his 15 TDs against NFC East teams. Witten had career bests in catches, yards and touchdowns, including a TE-record 15 catches in a win in Detroit. Stop one, the other kills you — it’s the lethal catch-22 of this explosive offense.

“(He has brought) aggressiveness,” Cowboys WR Patrick Crayton said of Garrett. “He’s never scared to not pass the ball. If teams put nine (defenders) in the box at the end of a game, he’s not just going to grind it out. If they stack it up, he will still attack.”

It has been Garrett’s work with QB Tony Romo that has been as important as anything he’s done this year in Dallas. Romo, we quickly forget, ended last season, his first as a starter, as a major question mark. He began like gangbusters, throwing lightning bolts all over the field in his first five games, but reverted to mediocrity and wild inconsistency. Romo’s season ended, oddly enough, with his botched hold on an extra-point attempt in Seattle hanging over his head throughout a long, strange offseason.

But Garrett came in and worried more about making Romo a more efficient quarterback, working alongside QB coach Wade Wilson to correct some of Romo’s mechanical issues. The results were nothing short of brilliant. Romo set team records for touchdowns, yards and completions, the Cowboys tied the Packers with an NFC-best 13-3 record and now Garrett’s name is as hot as any in football. Just about every team needing a head coach this offseason has called him for an interview.

Following the likes of Mike Tomlin and Jack Del Rio in the recent trend of one-year coordinators getting head-coaching jobs had appeared likely several days ago, with job offers reportedly coming from both the Ravens and the Falcons. However, after some reflection, Garrett decided he’d rather return to Dallas and bide his time for another head-coaching opportunity. The Cowboys made that option more palatable by giving him a big bump in salary to approximately $3 million per year, as well as the additional title of assistant head coach.

Like winning awards, his flirtation with a head-coaching position wasn’t something he wanted to talk about.

Luckily, everyone else is more than happy to do the talking for him.

All-time winners

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Links to 2007 PFW/PFWA awards