Silver and BlueBlood

Who am I? Why am I here?

“Everything rises and falls on leadership.”

I do not know who said that first. I first heard it from a preacher named Lee Roberson, back in the seventies. Then, John Maxwell popularized it in more recent memory. Whoever said it, said it right.

All you can really add to it is, “Amen.”

The Dallas Cowboys are a team in desperate need of a leader. Plenty of players have emerged as positive locker room and field leaders, not the least of which is Keith Brooking. But the dearth of leadership on the sideline is ominous and distressing to the Cowboys faithful.

Last weekend, before the Green Bay game, my wife and I went to dinner with her parents. For my father-in-law and me, the subject turned, as it often does, to the Dallas Cowboys. We were talking about this very subject: the dreadful state of the head coaching position.

Coming off that huge win in Philly, my father-in-law was optimistic and hopeful.

“You know, Gene,” he said, “They don’t really have a head coach. They have an offensive and a defensive coordinator.”

I said that they do have a head coach. His name is Jerry.

He agreed.

He said he thought the team was mature enough and had enough team leaders to compensate for Wade Phillips’ lack of leadership. I said I hoped he was right, but I rather doubted it.

After Sunday’s debacle, he called and said, “I was wrong.”

Now, I do think he is right about being wrong. But I wish he wasn’t.

All of this got me thinking. I wondered who were the worst coaches ever to win a Super Bowl? I thought I would list the five worst Super Bowl winning coaches of all time.

That is a tough assignment. I only came up with two candidates I felt worthy to fill the five slots. But I will fill them anyway.

1. Don McCafferty won Super Bowl V with the Baltimore Colts. He only served as a head coach in the league for four years, posting a 28-17-2 record (a .600 winning percentage). Baltimore fired him five games into the 1972 season, just two years after he won his ring. His team was 1-4 at the time of his firing.
2. Barry Switzer is number two on my list, but could get serious consideration for number one. The legendary coach of the Oklahoma Sooners may have proved Jerry Jones right when Jones said, “Any of five hundred coaches could have won a Super Bowl with this team.” Jones said that as he was firing Jimmy Johnson. Barry won Super Bowl XXX with the Cowboys. He was fired by Jones two years later, after his team went 6-10. Switzer’s record as a head coach: 40-24 (a .630 winning percentage).
3. Brian Billick coached the Baltimore Ravens from 1999 – 2007. He posted four winning seasons and won Super Bowl XXXV. He also built one of the league’s all-time best defenses, with more than a little help from one Ray Lewis. He had a record of 80-64 (a .560 winning percentage).
4. Mike Ditka posted a winning record in seven of his 14 years as a head coach. His Chicago Bears destroyed New England in Super Bowl XX, 46-10 on the strength of one of the greatest defenses ever to take an NFL field. Ditka’s record as a head coach was 121-95 (a .560 winning percentage).
5. Jon Gruden won Super Bowl XXXVII with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. In 11 years coaching the Raiders and Bucs, he posted a 95-81 record.

As you can see, even a list of the “weakest” Super Bowl-winning coaches gets pretty strong after you get past those first two slots. I doubt many would call Billick, Ditka, or Gruden “bad” head coaches.

So how does Phillips measure up? Through the 2009 season, he had posted a 76-52 regular season record (a .594 winning percentage). The rub comes, however, in the post-season, where he is 0-4.

The problem with Wade Phillips is not his regular season coaching record. The problem is his laissez-faire approach to leadership. The problem is his penchant for over-celebrating minor victories and down-playing major losses. The problem is his tendency to become defensive, when he should become determined. The problem is that he is not now, nor has he ever been, the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys.

I just don’t see any way for that not to matter.

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A leaderless locker room is a rudderless ship.

The Dallas Cowboys are a team needing compensation. The absence of sideline leadership under Wade Phillips has led to frequent chaos. The Patrick Clayton flap is just the most recent evidence that there is poor communication between the coaching staff and the men in the trenches. Crayton said he did not even know he had been demoted. No one told him.

I believe him.

A weak head coach heightens the need for players to step forward and become the vocal and spiritual leaders of the team. What exists in the Cowboys organization today is not unlike the Barry Switzer era. That team managed to overcome the absence of a strong head coach, primarily because there were established leaders on both sides of the ball. Michael Irvin, Troy Aikman and Darren Woodson did what Switzer could not – would not – do: they inspired their teammates to rise to every challenge, to meet adversity with single-minded determination, to excel, to exceed expectations.

It didn’t hurt that they happened to be stacked with talented players at practically every position. But history has proven that the most talented team is not always the last team standing. Winning a Super Bowl takes more than talent.

It takes a team.

And a team needs leadership. It needs people confident and strong enough to stand up and say, “Follow me. I know the way.”

It is a mistake to assume that a great soldier will automatically make a great General. The current crop of Cowboys have some great performers. DeMarcus Ware, Jason Witten, Jay Ratliff, and others have proven they have the talent to do their jobs at the highest level. They have yet to prove they can inspire their teammates to do the same.

Enter Keith Brooking.

Brooking is proving himself to be the best off-season move the Cowboys have made in some time…and it isn’t just the quality of his play on the field. Watch him in the defensive huddle. Keep an eye on him when he is on the sideline. Listen to him in interviews. The man has assumed a leadership role on a team in desperate need of a natural born leader.

Brooking hasn’t bullied his way into his new-found role. Nor has he been officially appointed to be the leader of the Dallas defense. He has just been himself. Leaders lead. It is inherent in their nature. Born leaders are the most effective kind.

The idea that a professional football team doesn’t require on-field leaders is just wrong. It is more important at that level than any other. In college, high school, or Pop Warner, the leadership is almost always provided by the coaching staff. But these are grown men, playing their game at the highest level in the world. The rah-rah coach may inspire them, sure. The intellectual football genius coach may instruct them. But it takes a peer with skins on the wall, with a proven track record of his own, and with the innate ability to lead men to truly galvanize them on the field.

Otherwise, you have fifty-four individuals performing. One team will always trump fifty-four individuals.

The Cowboys are just another Brooking or two away from finding themselves in spite of their milk toast head coach.

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Poor Baby!

During the 2008 off-season, I began to call for Greg Ellis to be cut. I contended that, rather than being the leader he was purported to be, he had become a locker room cancer. In a recent radio interview – while on his way out of town to play for the NFL joke known as the Oakland Raiders – Ellis confirmed that he is more than just a selfish whine-bag: he is a moron, as well.

Here’s what the Dallas Morning News reports Ellis as saying:

“It’s a disgrace when DeMarcus Ware comes off the field just so I can get in the game and when the coaches tell him to come on the field, he tries to hide so I can play,” Ellis said during an appearance on ESPN 103.3’s Michael Irvin Show. “And you’re telling me we’re trying to win the Super Bowl?”

“On his own,” Ellis said. “He would say, ‘G, come on.’ And I would tell him, ‘No, DeMarcus, go ahead, man. You’re coming up on your contract year. Don’t mess that stuff up. Go ahead and do you, and we’re just going to do what the coaches, or whoever the powers that be, what they want to do.’”

This is wrong on so many levels.

First, I want you to notice that subtle nuance in paragraph two: the intimation that the only thing this is ever about is your own contract. I know this is professional sports and the man’s livelihood, but for four years, Ellis has made it crystal clear that he puts his own concerns above the team’s one hundred percent of the time. The guy was never underpaid. In fact, his compensation (that commisserate with a first-rounder) was more than adequate to reflect his performance and value to the team.

Second, a few days later on Sports Radio 1310 (the Ticket), I listened to an interview with DeMarcus Ware. He did not out-and-out call Ellis a liar, but he didn’t get his back either. He said, “I think I was in there like 95% of the time.” He said every time he happened to be on the sideline for a play, it was for a valid reason. Ware was certainly in there enough to record twenty sacks on the season!

Third, Ware being off the field has no bearing on Ellis being on the field. They do not play the same position. Ellis doesn’t back up Ware or vice versa. One is strong-side; the other weak-side. Ware won’t say it, so I will: Ellis is either twisting the truth, misinformed, or making up stories.

Fourth, Greg Ellis has to be a moron to think that the media would just bob their heads and accept whatever he said at face value, as though they don’t watch the games themselves, as though they don’t have access to the other player in question. And even if the media let it pass, knowledgeable fans will not.

For years, every time a Cowboy fan saw Ellis on the field, he was reminded of the player the Cowboys bypassed in order to draft him. That would be Randy Moss. While Ellis has enjoyed a career as a serviceable – but never a standout – player, Moss has stretched defenses, caused offensive coordinators nightmares, and established himself as a top five player at his position.

For four seasons, Ellis has spent every off-season bitching and posturing. If it wasn’t money, it was the team switching to the 3-4 (the move that helped finally make him a Pro Bowler for at least one season). Or, it was team management. It was always something. Then, the season would begin and he would be hailed as a team leader. No wonder they have gone nowhere in a dozen years. Leaders like that never take an organization to the pinnacle of success.

So, good riddance to poor, mistreated Greg and good luck to the Raiders.

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