Report: Cowboys Were Less Than Happy With Rob Ryan's Scheme Before 2012

Ryan was fired by Dallas back on January 8

The Dallas Cowboys canned defensive coordinator Rob Ryan back on January 8, but according to a report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Dallas brass had issues with Ryan’s defense long, long before that.

"Where we fundamentally came down with Rob is that his philosophy is about multiple scheme," executive vice president Stephen Jones said. "I think you have to skinny it down. Philosophically, I don’t think Rob believes in that. And it’s not something that happened and all of a sudden at the end of the year we had a problem. I think Rob will tell you we had long visits about this in the off-season last year that there was too much scheme. He tried to cut it back and he did skinny it back, but it’s still a lot.

"This is no revelation we had after we went 8-8. This was after the year before’s 8-8. We just didn’t feel like at the end of the day Rob could skinny it back enough to our satisfaction that we could make plays."

Indeed, Jones said earlier this offseason that the issue with Ryan wasn’t that his schemes were ineffective, but there were too many of them--enough, as it turns out, to earn Ryan his walking papers in Dallas.

Ryan was hired as the New Orleans Saints defensive coordinator earlier this month.

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