Cowboys rounding out offensive staff, hire Lunda Wells away from Giants

The Dallas Cowboys have hired tight ends coach Lunda Wells, who spent the previous two seasons in the same role with the New York Giants.

This much is clear about Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy: he has carte blanche in terms of his coaching staff. The latest move is the hiring of former New York Giants tight end coach Lunda Wells to replace Doug Nussmeier who took over the quarterback coaching gig from Jon Kitna.

There were thoughts that perhaps future Hall of Famer Jason Witten could get the nod coaching the position he played so well for so many years. With the Cowboys being run as a family business, and the amount of respect that owner Jerry Jones has for Witten, it seemed as if that would be a logical fit for this organization.

In Wells, the Cowboys have perhaps identified a young coach on the ascent. He’s spent a little more than a decade in the coaching game, starting his career in the college ranks with LSU in 2008 as an offensive line assistant, a position he held for two years before working with special teams and acting as an assistant to the head coach.

The Giants brought him into the fold in 2012 as an offensive assistant before moving him to assistant offensive line coach for the next four seasons. In 2018 he was promoted to tight ends coach where he worked with Evan Engram. Engram isn’t the prototypical tight end of yesteryear, and spent half of each of the two seasons with Wells injured, never capturing the spark he showed in his rookie campaign.

The head coach wielding control over his staff hasn’t often been the case in Dallas in the past 20 years, with Jones dictating the terms of those in his employ, but it isn’t unheard of. Despite the long running meme of his meddlesome ways, Jones has turned over complete control at least once since recent Hall of Fame head coach Jimmy Johnson parted ways following back to back Super Bowl wins.

Bill Parcells was the last man with enough pull to convince Jones to relinquish control and allow him to do whatever it was he wanted to do, but McCarthy, a Super Bowl champion in his own right has walked in the door at The Star in Frisco and made himself right at home.

[lawrence-newsletter]