How Much Can Jason Garrett's Knowledge of Cowboys Personnel Help Giants Game Plan?
When Giants head coach, Joe Judge, assembled his assistant coaching staff earlier this year, he sought to find the best teachers possible.
And if any of them happened to have ties to a head coach of a division opponent? Hey, even better.
Such is the case for Judge, who will bring his winless Giants into Arlington this weekend in search of a victory over the struggling Dallas Cowboys.
Among Judge’s staff is offensive coordinator Jason Garrett, who spent 12 years of his coaching career (three as the offensive coordinator and nine as head coach) with the Cowboys. Garrett and the Giants return to the Big D this weekend to face a team that, other than for the coaching staff and maybe a few players here and there, really isn’t that much different.
Whether that can be an advantage for Judge and the Giants remains to be seen, but he did admit that he tapped into Garrett’s knowledge of the Cowboys personnel as part of their game-planning process for this week.
“I try to gain as much information as I can from every member of our staff,” Judge said. “Jason’s definitely added a lot. We try to use every resource we have on every single week.”
The Giants can certainly use any advantages that come their way as much as possible. While most coaches will try to downplay any familiarity a staff member might have from having worked somewhere else, there's probably something to be said of a man who's worked with an organization as long as Garrett worked with the Cowboys.
Sure, the personnel has changed, as has the language and the tendencies. Still, with several players on the Cowboys roster from last year remaining on this year's version, certainly Garrett should at least have a better understanding than most as to the strengths and weaknesses of the individual players on both sides of the ball.
That information, probably more so than specific plays which are, for the most part, identical (though the language and tendencies are usually different), is invaluable.
With that said, the Giants, whose offense has shown slight signs of breaking out of its funk—its 136 rushing yards last week was the ninth-best total in the NFL—can’t expect a walk in the park against a defense that currently ranks 30th overall in the NFL (430.5 yards/game allowed) and whose run defense has allowed 172.5 yards per game (31st int he league).
“As a team, we have to keep improving in all three phases,” Judge said. “We saw some progress with our offense. We definitely had more balance last week. This game plan will be different than last week, but their defense is very capable.”
