FRISCO, Texas _ The first official day of the Dallas Cowboys offseason featured as much confusion and backpedaling as the defense when it gave up 275 yards rushing to the Los Angeles Rams in the season-ending 30-22 loss in the divisional playoffs on Saturday.
Jason Garrett began Monday morning all but promising no coaching changes on his radio show on 105.3 The Fan. He said everyone would be back, including embattled offensive coordinator Scott Linehan.
Vice president Stephen Jones followed Garrett a couple of hours later on the same radio station and said no decision had been made on the coaching staff.
But then a couple more hours later during a season-ending press conference at the team's headquarters at the Star, Garrett walked back his initial declaration of no staff changes. He also said no decision had been made, though he feels good about the job Linehan and company did in 2018.
"It's still pretty immediate right now," Garrett said. "Obviously we played the game on Saturday night. We haven't had any substantive conversations in regards to our staff at all. There are some guys who are out of contracts, we will have to address those situations, and one of the things we always talk about is the makeup of the staff. A lot of the decisions impact the other decision you make. We haven't had any conversations about any of that stuff up to this point.
"I feel really good about the job our staff did this year. We obviously have to get better. We have to address some of the issues that we have. That applies to players, that applies to coaches, that applies to everyone in our organization."
Asked why he was more definitive on the radio earlier in the day, Garrett said he didn't remember what he said. He also said he was busy doing other things when he took the call.
"We haven't had any substantive conversations," Garrett said. "Scott did an excellent job for us this year. Again, I don't know how I answered that question this morning. Nothing has changed. I was in and around player meetings. I feel very good about what Scott Linehan did for us. We'll have conversations about everybody as we go here the next few days. We'll make a lot of decisions to put the staff together and put the team together as we go."
As a point of reference, Garrett was asked specifically on the radio show if Linehan would be back. He said, "I do."
"We don't anticipate any significant changes on our staff," Garrett said. "Obviously, we're still evaluating everything on our football team. We're 36 hours after the ballgame but we're going to keep trying to grow as a staff and as a football team. We'll evaluate what we did and just keep trying to get better."
Stephen Jones, however, declined to answer when asked about changes on the coaching staff on his radio show.
"Obviously we're going to be doing a lot of work in trying to uncover every stone to see how we can take that next step," he said. "So, really don't want to comment on anything other than I will say that we were, this team, coming off a 3-5 start to the first half of the season and did a really nice job of getting themselves back into the hunt. Obviously got themselves to a big game against the Rams out in L.A. We didn't get the job done and fell short. But other than that, I think it's a little early to be speculating about players, coaches, anything like that other than I really do think our group overall did a nice job."
The whole scenario gave the appearance that Garrett had a talk with the owner Jerry Jones and Stephen Jones after the morning radio show.
Asked if he had final authority on his staff, Garrett said decisions are collaborative but Jerry Jones has final say.
"I do not own the team," Garrett said. "Jerry Jones owns the team. Ultimately, he has final say over everything we do here. But I do believe our relationship is very collaborative. I have a tremendous amount of faith and trust in him and hopefully, he has the same for me. We talk about all the decisions we make, any player, any coach, and we come to conclusions we both feel good about. And we'll certainly do that with every decision we make this offseason like we've done over the last number of years."
Linehan and defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli are signed through the 2019 season and so is Garrett.
