Cowboys should add these extra coaches to help Mike McCarthy
By Riley Donald
I think the Cowboys could benefit from addition by subtraction… of duties.
Hear me out on this and let me explain. What I mean is we should let the coordinators retain their duties with regard to calling plays, personnel groups, and all of that. That doesn’t go anywhere. Those guys spend countless hours game-planning and are the best bet to handle the duties of scheme and groups on the field.
What I mean is we should narrow their focus, and leave maximizing win probabilities to someone else entirely.
How would they do that? Don’t they have to make decisions about penalties, fourth-down decisions, timeout decisions, and clock management calls? In this plan, no. No, they do not. All of those duties would be delegated to a specific individual tasked with being what I would title a “game management consultant.”
This individual doesn’t dive too deeply into offensive or defensive game plans. They spend the week studying tendencies of the opponent in every situation on both sides of the ball. They compare success percentages of their opponent against the league standard. This consultant reviews data and analytics regarding when the Cowboys need to go for it or punt.
They would handle the clock management and utilize the data showing where the Cowboys or their opponent is on the field and make decisions based upon scoring probability. This individual would also be the decision-maker on challenge flags, as they would weigh the value of success versus the likeliness of getting the challenge correct.
Too often, we saw this year’s Cowboys struggle with clock management, timeout decisions, and fourth down decisions (post-fake punt in the playoffs), and it hurt them. Taking these decisions off the plate of the coordinators opens them up to do what they do best and it puts these critical decisions into the hands of an individual who has spent the week preparing for any scenario and eliminates any questions or hesitation.
This consultant likely needs to be a younger coach on the forefront of this new era of football we are seeing based upon aggressiveness, trends, data, and maximizing your offensive possessions. I would use this role to lure an up-and-comer with their chance in the NFL. Let’s see a handful of candidates that could do this role.