IRVING, Texas– With two weeks until his team's next game, it wasn't as if Cowboys coach Jason Garrett needed to make any decisions about his quarterbacks on Monday.
Twenty-four hours removed from a 30-6 loss to the Patriots, however, the talk about a potential switch at the position hasn't died down. After stating Sunday night that he'd evaluate the quarterback position during the Cowboys' bye week, Garrett was pressed to elaborate on what factors will determine his decision.
"I think when you talk about evaluating the quarterback, you look at all of those things," he said. "You look at what we're asking him to do and how he handles that and then how he executes those plays on a consistent basis, week in and week out and you look at the overall production of the quarterback."
Brandon Weeden had met with mostly successful results during the past few weeks while Tony Romo recovers from a broken collarbone. It fell apart against New England, though, with Weeden throwing for just 188 yards on 26 completions and posting a quarterback rating of 67.
On the day the Cowboys generated just 264 total yards in the 24-point loss.
"We didn't play well enough on offense. We didn't play well enough as an entire team, and it was a good team we played," Garrett said.
The obvious question is about Matt Cassel, and whether he'll replace Weeden going forward. Sunday was the first time since he was acquired on Sept. 22 that Cassel was active for a game – leading to a bit of an obvious answer when Garrett was asked if the veteran felt comfortable with the offense.
"He's certainly comfortable enough," he said. "We wouldn't have put him in that situation yesterday to be the backup qb with a possibility of going into the game if something were to happen to Brandon.
"He's worked hard, he's a veteran player, he's a smart guy, he's been here for a little bit. There are always levels of knowing something. The more you're around something the more experienced you are with the people doing it together, the better you're going to be at it. But he's certainly comfortable with our system."
Whether that means Cassel will take over as the Cowboys' starter is anyone's guess for the time being. The Cowboys are expected to practice twice during the bye week, and they'll then have a full game week preparation for their Week 7 trip to play the Giants.
If Garrett has an idea about any changes to come, he's not sharing it for now. In the coming days, he said his entire roster is up for evaluation – headlined by the quarterback spot.
"I don't want to get into the whole thing," he said. "We're going to evaluate our quarterbacks, we're going to evaluate our offensive line, we're going to evaluate our tight ends, our receivers, our running backs, everybody on defense and everybody in the kicking game. We'll do that this week and we'll make any determination as the week goes on."[embeddedad0]
