The Dallas Cowboys need an upgrade at head coach yesterday. What would this team look like if longtime college head coach Urban Meyer was in charge in 2020?
It’s not working and it hasn’t for a long time. The Dallas Cowboys cannot continue with Jason Garrett as their head coach entering the 2020 season. This team is too talented to be so mediocre on the gridiron every week. This year, the Cowboys have a sub-.500 record through 13 games because they can’t beat a near-.500 team for the life of them. They have to make a change.
Fortunately, there are a few coaching candidates out there that might have the cachet to become the next head coach in Dallas. When Jerry Jones has made a good hire at the position, oftentimes it has been by landing a guy from the college ranks. He won Super Bowls in the 1990s after prying his college teammate Jimmy Johnson away from Miami and Barry Switzer from Oklahoma.
It could happen again, and probably will happen again. The two college coaches that might have what it takes to win big in Big D are Lincoln Riley of the Oklahoma Sooners and former Ohio State Buckeyes head coach Urban Meyer. Riley may not be ready to leave Norman just yet, as he has some more Big 12 titles to win and nothing more. As for Meyer, he’s chilling on a FOX TV set.
Months ago, Meyer appeared on his FOX colleague Colin Cowherd’s popular show The Herd, mentioning that the Cowboys were the one job that he’d seriously consider getting back into coaching for. If you do care to remember, Meyer retired for the second time in the 2010s from coaching due to health concerns. He stepped away at Florida after the 2010 NCAA season, too.
Though his reputation off the field and the manner in which he has conducted himself before is less than stellar, his coaching acumen is second to none in the college ranks. Everywhere he went, from Bowling Green to Utah to Florida to Ohio State, those football programs not only got better but thrived. An 11-win season was essentially a guaranteed floor for a Meyer-coached team.
But what would his team look like in the NFL, say if he were to take over the Cowboys next season? Does his coaching tactics translate to the pros, unlike many former collegiate program builders before him? What do the 2020 Cowboys look like with him calling the shots?
The biggest thing that Meyer will bring to the Cowboys that his theoretical predecessor Jason Garrett has not for a while now is an attention to detail and a readiness to play against any opponent they meet on the gridiron. Meyer’s team will rarely lose at home, always play its best football against division rivals and will only drop a rare road game to a team it doesn’t respect.
With the talent on the Cowboys’ roster, Meyer should be able to win 10 games annually in a league of men. He may not be able to lean on his players as much as he did in Columbus or Gainesville, but Meyer does coach in a way that his players easily buy in on. Why do you think so many of his former players have gone on to have success in the NFL years after playing for him?
So we know that Meyer is a great motivator, an excellent manager and a dominating recruiter, not that it matters at all in the NFL, so to speak. But schematically, what are we looking at in a Meyer-coached NFL team? What are the strengths and what are the weaknesses of what he has to offer as a potential NFL head coach?
Meyer’s coaching roots are at the wide receiver position. The former Cincinnati Bearcats defensive back first served as a graduate assistant at Ohio State in the mid-1980s. One of the players he worked closely with on Earle Bruce’s staff was the future Pro Football Hall of Famer Cris Carter. Meyer’s ability to get his best offensive playmakers in space are his greatest schematic attribute.
In Dallas, he’d have a blast devising ways to get wide receivers Amari Cooper, Michael Gallup and Randall Cobb open. Gadget players like Tavon Austin will thrive in Meyer’s offensive system like they always tend to do. His bell-cow back in Dallas is the greatest running back Meyer ever coach in former Buckeye tailback Ezekiel Elliott. And he’d absolutely take quarterback Dak Prescott to new heights.
Prescott is the ideal professional quarterback Meyer would want to work with. Not only is Prescott a consummate professional, an accurate passer and a durable, mobile quarterback, but he also ran the same offensive system in college at Mississippi State that Meyer would theoretically run in the pros. Prescott’s college coach Dan Mullen is Meyer’s greatest disciple, working together at Florida.
Meyer may want to use Prescott more as a runner than the NFL typically allows, but it would serve him to have an offensive coordinator that has more of an NFL coaching pedigree to split the difference. His offense may not be as effective in the pros as it was in college, but it’s certainly good enough to help complement what is already a pretty good Dallas defense, so don’t change it.
Meyer is smart enough to realize that he doesn’t know everything, so he’s done a great job of surrounding himself with a ton of other great coaches over the years. Retaining either Rod Marinelli or Kris Richard to run the same Dallas defense will have this team finally achieving its dreams of playing in an NFC Championship this century. This should work, at least temporarily.
What will be Meyer’s biggest test as an NFL head coach is navigating the draft and free agency. The Joneses have done a good job of team building over the last decade. Meyer might be able to offer some insight on the top players entering the next few drafts as any coach does making the leap from college to the pros. But after that, this will remain his greatest coaching challenge.