'A Blank Slate': Why New Cowboys Special-Teams Coach Fassel Won't Look Backward

FRISCO - If you are a Dallas Cowboys fan, you have a reason to not wish to re-watch the club's 2019 work on special teams - in short, because there ain't much to see.

That's among the two reasons new Dallas special-teams coordinator John "Bones'' Fassel isn't interested in dealing too much with what came before him.

"I can't answer to that,'' Fassel said on Monday in a group visit here inside The Star. "I'm going into this with a blank slate for myself and for every person who has been on this team.''

The guys on this roster who participated on special teams last year - when Dallas settled in as the NFL's second-poorest group - appreciate that. Fassel. 47, who was with the Los Angeles Rams starting in 2012 and has become a touted teams guru, doesn't fully have a "blank slate'' when it comes to how he approached the job.

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"A lot of the successes that come with special teams have to do with intangibles," Fassel said on Monday. "The personnel is a huge part of it, and the player development is a huge part of it. But when you can get a group of running backs, linebackers, tight ends, receivers, DBs to become cohesive and make it seem like those guys are valuable to a team, that's probably the biggest component to being successful on special teams.

"That's kind of my message to them: 'You're important to this football team.'"

Fassel is known as an aggressive innovator. And the son of former NFL head coach Jim Fassel is known as both a teacher and a student of the game. That will not change. ... though Fassel is talking of "reinventing'' himself.

"I've only been here a week but I'm starting to dive into a little reinvention of myself, whether it's schematics or progression of technique install," Fassel said. "When I come to a new team, I say, 'What have I done in the past that I liked, and what have I done in the past that I can do better?' It's a chance for me with a new team to just reinvent myself and think about all the things I've done and how I can do it better."

The 2019 Cowboys struggled in most ever special-teams department. Reliable punter Chris Jones dipped. They changed kickers. Coverage was poor. Decision-making, from head coach Jason Garrett on down, was muddled and awful.

So no ... let's not look back. For our own sanity.

"I look forward to building it how I want to build it,'' Fassel said of the 2020 Cowboys. "What's happened here in the past, I can't speak of that. I look forward to teaching the players and getting them to be prideful in what they do."