2007 Offensive Coordinator / Fantasy Football Preview - Dallas Cowboys

Wade Phillips - 1st season as head coach
Jason Garrett - 1st season as offensive coordinator

First, I’m down on the Cowboys because their web site navigation is awful. Not only are their coaches and executive bios based on unlinkable coldfusion and javascript anchor tags, but the scrolling inside those resulting pop-up windows is irksome. They’ll win at least one less game this year because of it, I swear.

Background:
Jason Garrett, a backup QB for the Cowboys from 1993-1999, takes over as offensive coordinator for Dallas. This is the first time ever Garrett will be in charge of an offense, so there’s likely to be a bit of a learning curve this season.

Garrett, a Princeton graduate, seems to be a very good student of the game. He was never particularly talented as a quarterback but managed to hang on to a backup job for many years in the league. After retiring, he served as the Dolphins quaterbacks coach for two years under Nick Saban.

Jerry Jones brought in Garrett before he had a head coach, a move that shows just how much faith the Cowboys’ owner has in the 41 year old.

Philosophy;
Quite simply, Bill Parcells’ offense was boring and predictable. What Garrett and new head coach Wade Phillips have brought to this team is a new, creative outlook that should benefit the skill position players most.

Already through minicamp and the start of training camp, I’ve seen the Cowboys line up receivers in a number of new spots, compared to last season. The one player who’ll likely benefit most from this new offense is tight end Jason Witten. After two straight years of 65 catch, 750 yard seasons, I’d expect Witten’s numbers to approach his 2004 output of 87 catches and 980 yards.

Garrett intends to use a Ernie Zampese style, timing based offense to take advantage of Tony Romo’s ability to get the ball out of his hands quickly. Garrett will also be calling the plays.

Unlike Parcells, both Philips and Garrett stress the need to move players around the field to get them involved and into positions to make plays.

“It’s about using our personnel,” Phillips said. “That’s No. 1 with me.”

When Phillips was in Denver, he knew how to get Shannon Sharpe going in the offense. Sharpe had 1,000 yard seasons in both 1993 and 1994.

Players:
Besides Witten, Terrell Owens should rebound from his hand-injury 2006 season as well. TO only put up 1180 yards in 16 games of action, and had a lot of drops throughout the season.

Terry Glenn’s early season injury troubles could lead to Patrick Crayton playing a bigger role in the offense early on. Crayton excelled last season against Arizona when Glenn was unable to make the road trip to Phoenix.

The running back situation is still a bit of a committee, but based on talent and production alone, I think we’ll continue to see Marion Barber get more chances and Julius Jones less. Jones had double the carries last season, and is more of a boom or bust back who excels between the 20s. Barber, meanwhile, scored 16 total TDs in 2006 despite just 135 carries and 23 receptions. He’s a consistent back who’s entering his third NFL season and should improve his yardage output.

As for Romo, I’m just not sold. Not only does he have to deal with the awful end to his season (and I don’t mean the dropped hold), but he’s just got a lot of pressure on him now as the starter, playing for a new contract, in a new offense. He’s highly athletic, and has that quick release, but when he was putting up good numbers last season, he was still forcing balls into spots that he shouldn’t have been throwing to.

That said, he’s got two great playmakers in Witten and Owens who can offer Romo the ability to continue to force passes into tight spots.

In the end, I think this Cowboys’ defense is going to be a real strong unit, perhaps a top 5 one. And that means the Cowboys will spend less time passing the football and trying to comeback from big leads (where most of passing leaders in the league gain on other teams in total yardage).

One final note for Football Prospectus/Outsiders types, the Cowboys were 2nd best in the league last season in third down efficiency, at 48.8%. Readers of that publication know that given Dallas’ mediocre success in 2006 on first and second downs, their efficiency on 3rd down is likely to balance out lower this season.