IRVING, Texas – Cowboys officials have said on numerous occasions this season that they have no intention of making a head coaching change.
Following the final game of his team's 4-12 season, Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones re-delivered the message emphatically when asked about the future of coach Jason Garrett.
"Let me be real clear: There's no thought of replacing Jason -- at all," Jones said. "I only say that to get ahead of anything that might be said about me addressing coaching."
From the time the Cowboys' season started going south, there's been some semblance of speculation that Jones might replace Garrett as head coach. It never seemed like an overly realistic thought, given that Garrett just signed a five-year, $30 million contract extension last January after he took the Cowboys to the second round of the NFC playoffs.
Despite that, it's been a common enough topic that Jones was asked to address his head coach's future several times following the Cowboys' 34-23 loss to Washington.
"I certainly have evaluated and looked at Jason's situation, and not interested in any change, or thinking about any change there," he repeated.
Having said that, Jones acknowledged the likelihood that there will be changes on the Cowboys' coaching staff – but he wasn't ready to discuss where they would be. The Cowboys have several coaches who will be out of contract following the season, and he admitted the difficulty in keeping a coaching staff intact from year-to-year.
"We've got I think four that are out of contract," Jones said. "So that's always a potential and problematic if you're trying to keep it exactly the same."
Following last year's 12-4 record and run to the NFC East championship, the Cowboys turned heads when they managed to retain the trio of Garrett, offensive coordinator Scott Linehan and defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli.
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Whatever changes might be coming to the coaching staff in 2016, Jones expressed confidence that the Cowboys' staff could replicate those more favorable results given a better set of circumstances.
"There's an old adage in personnel if you've seen them do it, then they can do it -- if you've seen them do it once or twice, then the player can do it," he said. "Well, I've seen this staff work together in principle, most of them, and I've seen them do it and have a lot of success. And there's no reason, if you factor in any creditability at all that injuries hurt us this year, there's no reason at all not to give this general staff the opportunity to do it again and repeat '14."
