So, after another humiliating beat-down, this time by the Green Bay Packers, Jerry Jones finally put Wade Phillips out of his misery. Phillips' body language on the sidelines of Sunday night's game was that of a baffled, despondent man. In these kinds of "win or else" situations, coach body language is a powerful indicator of the health of a team and its coaching leadership. I remember watching the last game that Bobby Petrino coached with the Atlanta Falcons, and noticing how the team leaders of the Falcons (led by Warrick Dunn) barely acknowledged the presence of the head coach. They had quiet clearly tuned him out totally. I also recall seeing Bill Parcells' last game as Head Coach of the Cowboys, when he simply looked dispirited as his team quit on the game. The engaged Parcells would have been all over his players yelling and goading them; in that game he simply looked pissed-off as he stood with his arms folded and passively watched the Cowboys go down to defeat.
I suspect that the decision to give the head coach position to Jason Garrett was not a move that Jerry Jones had much discretion over. 2 years ago, when Garrett was interviewing for head coaching positions, Jerry gave him a hefty raise and promoted him to assistant head coach to prevent him from leaving. IMHO his contract would almost certainly contain a clause elevating him to the Head Coach position in the event of Wade Phillips' departure. The only way Jerry Jones would have been able to prevent that would be by firing Garrett at the same time as dismissing Phillips, but that would have left the Cowboys without both offensive and defensive co-ordinators, with no real depth on the coaching staff (remembering that Parcells and Jeff Ireland essentially raided the defensive staff 3 years ago, stealing away Tony Sparano, among others).
Jason Garrett now has 8 games to improve the Dallas Cowboys. The odds are against him; interim head coaches are seldom much of an improvement over their dismissed predecessors. Most commonly they are seen as seat-warmers and cannot impose themselves.
Cowboys players are apparently not much impressed with Garrett; however, as Mike Florio has pointed out, the players loved Wade Phillips and that didn't do much for the win-loss column either, so whether Garrett is popular or not is pretty much irrelevant. His job is, quite simply, to put a stop to gross underachievement by the team.
If the Cowboys (for example) finish the season 6-2, that would put Garrett squarely in the mix for the head coaching position in January 2011. If the team's performance does not improve substantially, expect to see Jerry Jones cut Garrett loose or leave him in limbo until a new head coach decides what to do. Based on past history, a new head coach will not want Garrett around, at which point he will be dumped on the market too late to find a good job elsewhere.
Jerry Jones' worst nightmare would be to have Garrett leave and be successful elsewhere. That has already happened to one former Cowboys offensive coach, Sean Payton, who, tired of clashing with Bill Parcells, went to the Saints and led them to a SuperBowl win. Jones invested a lot of money in Garrett to make him the heir-apparent to Wade Phillips. Garrett is paid almost as much as several head coaches around the league. However, the Rooney Rule prevents Jones from immediately making Garrett the head coach. He has to interview other candidates, which is where the fun begins. Who out there on the job market would want to work for Jerry Jones? It is difficult to see a coach like Bill Cowher agreeing to work for an owner who is his own General Manager.
One sad and visible reality is that Jerry Jones is not good at learning from his football mistakes. He fired Jimmy Johnson in the early 90's, which precipitated a slow and painful decline. After running through several subservient head coaches (Barry Switzer, Chain Gailey and Dave Campo), Jones hired Bill Parcells, but that arrangement lasted only three seasons, as Parcells "retired" from coaching. These days, that might be Parcells' time limit at a club, based on his recent withdrawal from working for the Miami Dolphins.
Jones has shown an inability to learn on the player selection side also. The most obvious example is his decision twice in 18 years to vastly overpay for wide receivers in trades. In 2000 he gave up 2 first round picks to the Seattle Seahawks for Joey Galloway, who immediately tore his ACL. More recently, he traded 2 high-round picks to get Roy Williams, who, despite improvements this season, can not be said to have remotely justified his trade price or his contract.
All of the indications are that Jerry Jones does not learn from footballing mistakes. He appears to have no trusted confidants in football except for the voice in his own head. The biggest challenge for him may be that he played college football, which probably gave him a good feel for the psychology of the game, but did not necessarily prepare him for player selection. If he had never played football, he might have instinctively retreated to more of a hands-off role in the franchise, assuming a profile more like that of Jim Irsay or Robert Kraft, two successful owners who hired General Managers and then left them alone to control player and coach selection.
Whatever you may think of the Dallas Cowboys as a team, the soap opera is guaranteed to continue for a while.
UPDATE - Jerry Jones has been making noise this week about how he may be able to circumvent the Rooney Rule if he wants to hire Jason Garrett as the permanent head coach of the Cowboys. The only snag with this idea is that complying with the Rooney Rule is mandatory unless the interim head coach had a clause in his contract stating that he was to be elevated to the Head Coach position if the then-existing head coach left or was fired. Apparently, Jason Garrett had no such clause in his contract when he was the offensive co-ordinator/assistant head coach, which makes Jerry's latest idea more than a little bit of a stretch. But hey, Jerry can always do what Daniel Snyder did when he hired Joe Gibbs and ignore the Rooney Rule. It cost the Redskins $500k, but that was apparently simply regarded by the team as a cost of doing business.