Last Sunday, the New York Giants were shocked by the Dallas Cowboys, who, at 1-7, came into the New Meadowlands and whipped them 33-20 in front of a displeased home crowd.
The remarkable thing, probably, was the effort; the Dallas team that had shown up but barely in the five previous weeks was gone, replaced by an offense with life, a defense that swarmed to the ball and a special teams unit that wasn’t terrible. The question has since been, in many variations, whether this change was the result of interim head coach Jason Garrett, or the change in general.
It is, as of yet, an unanswered question, and will remain so until we see more of Garrett’s Cowboys.
Giants’ defensive lineman Justin Tuck recently spoke on the issue on WFAN Radio in New York, and said that even so much as the hint that a head coach might be fired could be a great motivating factor for a fledgling team, and described the difference he saw in Dallas last Sunday.
"Well I've never been through a coaching change mid-season,” Tuck said, via the Dallas Morning News. “But I look at it like this--a lot of players might have felt like they had a security blanket with Wade still there. They knew he would go before they would. And now with an interim coach in, a lot of those guys are playing for their jobs because they don't know if Jason Garrett is going to be there, they don't know who's going to be there. The fact of the matter is, whoever is there at the end of the year is going to evaluate that team.”
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