Dear T.O.: Jerry Has 25 Million Reasons Why…
By Matt Cordon (kh). Filed in Dallas Cowboys News in Brief |
… you should worry more about your own ability than you should about how Bill Parcells hindered your performance:
After sometimes going a week or two without talking to Bill Parcells during the season, wide receiver Terrell Owens said the coach’s retirement, which was announced Monday, was best for him and the Cowboys.
“I am just hoping his retirement brings promise to what the team has to offer,” said Owens, who is in Miami recovering from surgery on his right index finger. “This past year was a big letdown. Hopefully, the owner will hire a coach to take the team to the next level.”
Owens described the team’s locker room environment, fostered by Parcells’ old school ways, as difficult.
“Sometimes change is good,” Owens said. ” I think it was needed.”
Owens understands there will be speculation that “he ran Parcells out of here” — especially after a season that included injuries, an accidental overdose and complaints about his role.
Owens said that, after everything he had been through in San Francisco and Philadelphia, he initially thought Parcells might be good for him.
The receiver’s impression changed when Parcells didn’t offer any encouragement after Owens’ accidental overdose
“I still think he is a great guy,” Owens said. “But he is like my grandmother. You love the person, but they are stuck in their old school ways.”
He said Parcells’ coaching style “hurt us.”
“You don’t know who is doing what,” Owens said. “You don’t know who is calling plays. That is why our offense was up and down. You saw that at the end of the year. It filtered off. We as a team felt the frustration. I felt the frustration. But Bill is Bill.”
Owens caught 85 passes for 1,180 yards and had a league-high 13 touchdowns. But he was undone by a league-high 18 dropped passes.
He said hand injuries were to blame for some of the drops, but said not being made the focal point of the offense was the biggest problem.
“I was underutilized in the offense,” Owens said. “A new coach can be good for the Cowboys. It’s not just me. But my teammates know I could have done more. I wasn’t used as a No. 1 receiver.”
Hey Terrell– This does not indicate why you were unable to get off the line in press coverage. This does not indicate why you were unable to create separation against apparently inferior corners. This does not indicate why you made drops that literally hundreds of other receivers could have made. And you dropped some of those passes in the most crucial of times.
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Now before I tell Mr. Owens to go to hel…Oakland, there is another small matter to address about Mr. Tuna. Mind you, I have said that I won’t criticize Parcells any longer, but this comment by Jean-Jacques Taylor today has really bothered me:
Mr. Parcells never gave his coordinators an opportunity to maximize the talent on the roster. Did the Cowboys’ offense consistently show the creativity that New Orleans did this season under rookie head coach Sean Payton, who left Dallas last year? Nope. Even this season, Mr. Parcells often kept his thumb on play-caller Tony Sparano. Ask any of the key defensive linemen or linebackers on this team and they’ll tell you Mr. Parcells forced Mr. Zimmer to play more conservatively than he wanted to.
More than once, opposing players said the Cowboys ran some of the NFL’s most simplistic offensive and defensive schemes. They had no choice because the more complicated the schemes, the less Mr. Parcells understood them. And if he didn’t understand them, then he couldn’t adequately second-guess the calls the coordinators made. And if he couldn’t second-guess them, then he couldn’t properly assign blame.
Taylor has noted several times about how Parcells hindered the playcalling, but this is the first time that I seen him state that the reason was because he didn’t understand the more complicated systems and couldn’t place blame for what he didn’t understand. Any basic business course will tell you that demonstrates incompetent leadership, and that may very well have been at the heart of the problem.
Now I’m reading that Jones is going to start the search by interviewing some of the remaining staff from the team. Are these coaches more talented than what they were allowed to demonstrate? Likewise, do we really know what kind of talent that we have on this team with respect to personnel? We keep talking about how Parcells has stockpiled such great talent, but I’ve also read where scouts have told insiders that Dallas is overrated in spots (a certain strong safety, defensive line).
All of this is to say that I think that fresh ideas are necessary in order for this team to have any shot for success. That means reevaluate the systems, reevaluate the personnel. And the trouble is that I can’t see a coach that is currently on the staff being able to do that effectively, nor do I see another coach having enough time to assemble a good staff in time to start working for next year. We may very well take a step backwards before we start moving forward again.
[I posted this comment earlier today, and you can read the comments there.]
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Now back to Owens: there may be something to what he has to say. Maybe Dallas needs to run more exotic schemes in order for him to get open. Maybe it stands a better chance to win if he were the focal point of the offense. Then again, did any of the four championship teams rely on a single star receiver as the focal point of its offense? And weren’t three of the four teams pretty dynamic in terms of their ability to move the ball through the air?
Anyway, thanks for listening, Terrell. Sincerely, KnowNothing.
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Blogging the Boys has a good piece about Parcells that is worth reading. Just trying to spread knowledge here.
