National Football League

Cowboys' ex-coach Jason Garrett shares why team struggled

Published Jun. 26, 2022 12:21 p.m. ET

Former Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett is getting candid about why he believes America's Team came up short under his nine-season reign.

Garrett coached Dallas from 2011-19, saying that while he may have done a lot of things well, his biggest fault was being too compliant and not pushing hard enough to do things the right way.

Garrett, the Cowboys' longest-tenured coach since Jerry Jones bought the team in 1989, ultimately blames his own poor communication for Dallas' shortcomings — not Jones.

"[Jones] was always so supportive, and he wanted to do what was necessary to win, and I always felt like I didn’t do a good enough job communicating what we needed to if there was a decision made that went against some of the things that I wanted to do," Garrett said Thursday on "The Rich Eisen Show".

"Whether it was hiring someone, or signing someone, or making a decision about personnel or how we’re doing things. To me, it’s the coach’s job in any organization to create the vision for what you want the team and the program to be, and it’s your job to lead, and it’s your job to lead upward to ownership to general managers and certainly lead to your coaches and your players and all the staff members who work with the team.

"So, anytime something didn’t go in a direction that I felt like maybe we should’ve done it this way I always put it back on myself to say clearly, I didn’t communicate that well enough, I didn’t make the argument well enough to get the decision or the outcome that we wanted."

The Cowboys made the playoffs three times under Garrett, each time going out in the divisional round. Still, the Cowboys only had one losing season (2015) during his time in Dallas.

Garrett went on to share that there were many people involved in the discussions and decision-making during that time, but the final say always came down to Jones.

"It’s a very collaborative organization," Garrett added. "There’s a lot of people, you have a lot of conversations about the decisions you want to make. Ultimately, Jerry is the owner and general manager. He’s the one that makes the decisions. He’s the one that drafts the player."

Garrett did give himself some credit, saying that he believes that the Cowboys were at their best when he successfully got the team to do what he believed was right.

"I always felt like when we did a good job, when I did a good job communicating the vision, communicating the reason why we wanted this particular guy and we created consensus throughout the organization, that’s when we did the best work and anytime we fell short of that I put back on me for not doing my job well enough."