Blogging The Boys
The Dallas Cowboys have had an on-again, off-again approach to head coaches calling plays over the last quarter century. In fact, going back all the way back to Bill Parcells, every single head coach (except Brian Schottenheimer) has been both a play-caller and a walk-around coach without play-calling duties, though not necessarily in that order.
Bill Parcells: From 2003-2004, Parcells was the official play-caller for the Cowboys, though nobody was quite sure who was calling in the actual plays. One popular theory at the time held that Parcells would instruct guys like Tony Sparano, Sean Payton, or even his first offensive coordinator, Maurice Carthon, to “go deep” or “run it right” and his guys would then call in the actual plays. True or not, Sean Payton started calling plays on offense in 2005, and Jason Garrett took over as offensive coordinator in 2006, making Parcells a true walk-around head coach.
Wade Philips: In 2007, Philips started out as a walk-around head coach, but he took over the defensive play-calling duties from DC Brian Stewart in October 2008 following defensive struggles, and kept them until he was relieved of his head coaching duties midway through the 2010 season.
Jason Garrett: Garrett took over has interim head coach from Philips and continued calling plays on offense until Jerry Jones announced in early 2013 that Jason Garrett would no longer be calling plays and that the Cowboys would benefit from Garrett being a “Walk-Around Coach”.
Mike McCarthy: McCarthy arrived in Dallas in 2020 and inherited Kellen Moore as the playcaller on offense. Moore would maintain the position over three years in which the Cowboys finished #1, #3, and #1 in scoring in the NFL. But McCarthy didn’t want an offensive to “light the scoreboard up”, let Moore walk to the Eagles, installed something called a “Texas Coast Offense”, and took over playcalling. That, coupled with key injuries, proved to be the nail in the coffin for McCarthy in Dallas, which finished 21st in scoring in 2024.
At the time, Garrett’s “promotion” to walk-around head coach generated a lot of offseason discussion, not the least because it was widely felt that this was a move pushed by Jerry Jones, and Garrett did not appear to be 100% on board. Here’s how Jerry explained his rationale at the time.
“It has more to do with the positives that go with it, which everybody recognizes,” Jones said, via the Fort Worth Star-Telegram,” that if you have more time to not be the busiest man in the whole organization–the offensive play-caller–if you have more time to move around on every aspect of the team, early in the week, in the middle of the week and during game-day, there’ll be a tremendous benefit from that.”
And the topic of being involved in every aspect of the team – offense, defense, special teams – is one that has also been raised after Schottenheimer’s first year. Would the defense and special teams have benefited from more involvement from the...
