You couldn't blame Jason Garrett if he announced that he was stepping down as Cowboys coach after Sunday's win over the Giants.
Not only would he be assured of the best winning percentage of any coach in Cowboys history, he'd leave before a single thing could happen to sully an image that couldn't be better right now. The needle is about to pop right off of the praise-o-meter after a week filled with people coming up with increasingly grandiose odes to his greatness.
If he walked away right now, Garrett's legend would just keep growing. He'd be the man who coached the perfect game and then rode off into the sunset to conquer some other field before moving on again and again to spread his greatness across the globe. It's like Caine from "Kung Fu" if you took out the kung fu.
Garrett isn't quitting as coach, obviously. He isn't trying to run away from comparisons to the greatest coaches in the history of the game, either. He's leaning on Jimmy Johnson, who coached him as a backup QB with the Cowboys, as a mentor and trying to instill the same kind of atmosphere that he remembers from back when Jimmy was running the ship. He explained that philosophy in a text message to the former coach.
"Making sure I get the maximum performance from everyone in the organization every day is my No. 1 daily focus."
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Jason Garrett joined Jimmy Johnson as the star of commercials for Extenze.
We kid, we kid. Garrett's not talking about that kind of performance, he's talking about football performance and he couldn't have picked a better model. Johnson took a Cowboys team that was in a lot worse position than the current edition, completely overhauled it and then drove all the way to the Super Bowl.
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The biggest test for Garrett, assuming he gets the job on a permanent basis, will be getting players to keep buying in when they are in a more comfortable situation. Johnson never stopped getting maximum effort from his players, and as later years showed these were not players who would give that effort to every head coach. That speaks to just how highly they regarded Johnson.
We don't know if Garrett's got that kind of jam, but we should find out soon enough.
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