What would Jimmy Johnson do. . . .

In an article by Tim MacMahon:
(http://cowboys.beloblog.com/archives/2007/11/jimmy_blasts_burnett.html)

While ranting about bonehead penalties by Bradie James and Kevin Burnett, Studio JJ morphed into Coach Johnson, giving what amounted to a tongue-lashing aimed at Burnett in particular.

"Because you’re an idiot and you can’t keep your mouth shut, now it’s tied," Johnson bellowed, veins popping in his forehead. "And now they’ve got the momentum. They feel good. We have to play disciplined football if we’re going to win this game. We can’t go out there and lose our cool."

Moments later, Johnson wondered: "What would Bill Parcells think in that same situation?" Then, in an obvious reference to the difference between the Parcells Era-Cowboys and the Wade Phillips Era: "Relaxed-type atmosphere. You can’t have a relaxed-type atmosphere."

End of article quote

We've had relaxed before, sometimes with Campo, sometimes with Chan Gailey. The results were lack of discipline. On the other hand, the Parcells method didn't work either. The players responded to his method, but not in a positive way.

The results prove that Jimmy Johnson's method worked when he was coaching a team with talent. Tom Landry's method, while different than Johnson's, worked also when he had talent. Unless you had a bunch of slackers, you didn't see an undisciplined Landry team or Johnson team. And slackers didn't last long around here.

Since Johnson left, we've watched Larry Allen cash his checks and barely show up for most games in his last few years with the Cowboys. We watched Julius Jones run into the back of his teammates seemingly hundreds of times and just fall down. We've watched Flozell Adams make penalty after penalty after penalty, usually false start penalties, costing the Cowboys yards over and over, and usually when they needed those yards the most.

Discipline. That has to be the key. Parcells used fear and humiliation which, as I've already said, didn't work with the Cowboys. Johnson used intimidation, but also taught his players how to focus on the job at hand. We've watched 12 years of December Meltdowns where one player or another just didn't seem to be focused on winning the game. Sometimes it was entire units that weren't focused.

If Jimmy Johnson had been coach of last year's Cowboys, or this year's Cowboys, and any member of the team slacked off, he would have gotten benched. Or fired. Jimmy Johnson got his players' attention. A receiver dropped a sure touchdown pass during a playoff game under Jimmy Johnson. The next morning, that player no longer worked for the Dallas Cowboys organization.

Jimmy taught players that it was a serious business and that they were hired to do a job and that their focus had damned well better be on doing that job or they didn't work here anymore. For the record, the Cowboys went on to win the SuperBowl that season and you can bet your hiney there wasn't any more dropped passes in the endzone that season.

When you look at the tremendous effort required to get to the 13th game of the season with a 12-1 record, at all the struggles each player had to endure, at the studying and planning and manipulating schemes and plays, to make such a thing happen, a player should be publicly shamed when he doesn't put out his best effort for his teammates, for himself, and for the simple fact that he's getting paid to do it.

Anything less is disrespectful to your teammates.

Missed tackles? Dropped passes? Poor blocking? In a playoff game? I think Jimmy Johnson used the word "idiot". I concur. And I add the word "shameful" to it.

Rod