Tag: Jason Garrett

Prescott, Cowboys suffering this dubious feat for first time since 2019

The Dallas Cowboys haven’t struggled to put wins together this badly since the last lame-duck season. Message. | From @KDDrummondNFL

Dak Prescott has enjoyed a fair amount of success since taking over for the Dallas Cowboys as their quarterback in 2016. A fourth-round rookie who started his first offseason way down deep on the depth chart emerged as a franchise quarterback. Dallas had immediate success with Prescott, who has earned four Pro Bowl nominations and finished among the top MVP candidates two times in his eight-year career.

But Sunday night’s loss, a 30-24 defeat at the hands of the San Francisco 49ers, put Prescott in a position that hasn’t happened since 2019. With Prescott under center, the Cowboys have lost at least two consecutive games on two different occasions.

Dallas didn’t lose two consecutive games, at all, in 2022 nor in 2023. They lost two consecutive games once in 2021, and that included an Thanksgiving Day overtime defeat to the Las Vegas Raiders. In 2020, Prescott was lost for the season in Week 5, so the last two losing streaks of that year weren’t on him.

Things have to go all the way back to the 2019 season to see a Prescott-led team down this bad. There’s a parallel here, as well. 2019 was the lame-duck coaching year of Jason Garrett. Mike McCarthy and staff are under the same duress.

That season the Cowboys started off with three straight wins before losing three straight to drop back down to .500. They’d win three out of their next four before dropping four of their next five. Things never quite got right with that version of the ballclub and that feeling is familiar as Dallas works their way into the middle of the 2024 schedule.

Announcers revealed for Notre Dame-Georgia Tech game on ESPN

Do you like this crew?

Until now, it was unclear whether ESPN or ABC would broadcast Notre Dame’s contest against Georgia Tech. It’s annoying how ESPN often waits until this soon before games it has broadcast rights to to announce where a game specifically will be broadcast, but it’s the reality for many college football fans.

We now know that Irish and Yellow Jackets will face each other on ESPN. The game between Alabama and Tennessee has drawn ABC during the same time slot. It makes sense that the contest with the two ranked teams would be on the network with the bigger reach.

On the call for the Irish’s visit to Atlanta will be Bob Wischusen and Louis Riddick, while Kris Budden works the sidelines. It’s been a while since Riddick has announced an Irish game, but he is one of the most respected analysts in college football.

Irish fans who don’t care for Jason Garrett being retained for the NBC coverage this season surely will enjoy this break:

Best of luck to the entire broadcast crew in covering the game.

Contact/Follow us @IrishWireND on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Notre Dame news, notes and opinions.

Follow Geoffrey on X: @gfclark89

Ex-NFL coach Jason Garrett visits Broncos training camp

Former NFL coach Jason Garrett visited Broncos training camp on Thursday.

The Denver Broncos had a special guest at Thursday’s training camp, a former quarterback. Not John Elway. Not Peyton Manning.

Okay, okay, you already read the headline. It was Jason Garrett.

Garrett played quarterback in the NFL from 1989-2004, but many football fans today know him from his time as a coach. Garrett started his coaching career as a quarterbacks coach with the Dallas Cowboys in 2005 and later worked his way up to offensive coordinator and then head coach.

Dallas did not renew Garrett’s contract when it expired in 2020 and he went on to serve as an offensive coordinator with the New York Giants from 2020-2021. So is he now returning to league on Denver’s staff? Probably not.

Garrett was a quarterback with the Giants from 2000-’03, overlapping with then-New York offensive coordinator Sean Payton (2000-’02). Payton went on to coach on Dallas’ staff from 2003-’05 and Garrett joined the Cowboys in 2007, one year after Payton became head coach of the New Orleans Saints.

Garrett now works for NBC’s Sunday Night Football and while the Broncos do not have any initially scheduled SNF games this year, Thursday was likely an opportunity for Garrett to reconnect with an old friend and do some prep on Denver’s roster ahead of the 2024 season.

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Ranking top former Cowboys in their media careers

There’s a storied tradition that is part of the lore of playing a chunk of one’s career in a Dallas Cowboys uniform. The popularity the brand affords stars is evident in how well they often do in gaining media opportunities as retired personalities. …

There’s a storied tradition that is part of the lore of playing a chunk of one’s career in a Dallas Cowboys uniform. The popularity the brand affords stars is evident in how well they often do in gaining media opportunities as retired personalities. It doesn’t always work out for the best, see Emmitt Smith and Jason Witten’s short stints in front of the cameras, but after the extra endorsement offers die down, there’s a clear path to remaining relevant in the media world.

There are several who have proven very good at the job of explaining football to the masses. In various roles across multiple outlets, former Cowboys bring live game analysis, review and preview editorials, and function as another arm of the entermainment complex known as the NFL. Here are our 2024 rankings of those media members who formerly wore the star.


Marcus Spears (ESPN)

Ditka had been a staple on ESPN for a while, after first appearing on NBC Sports and CBS Sports following his retirement from coaching. The former Cowboys tight end had an illustrious career in all phases, but not rarely makes on-screen appearances.

Johnson had been a staple on ESPN for years, dating back to 2007 as an on-air analyst and radio show host. That relationship ended in 2023 and he since joined Skip Bayless as a Stephen A. Smith replacement on Undisputed.

The former Cowboys head coach eased right into a gig with NBC. He serves as both a studio analyst for pre and post-game histrionics, while also getting in the booth for college football and the other professional leagues that have appeared on the network.

Baldinger was a reserve lineman for the Cowboys the first five seasons of his career. He’s been on NFL Network since the middle of last decade but he ranks highly on this list for his use of social media. Baldinger’s tweets, each week, highlight a handful of standout performances from the slate of games. The way he breaks down technique and skill into digestible nuggets for the viewing public make him one of the top followers among NFL media.

If a Cowboys fan is interested in having a completely biased supporter of the organization to balance the litany of talking heads that hate the team, Michael Irvin has been their guy. The Hall of Famer makes no apologies for his level of Dallas love and brings it on air on a regular basis. Irving was recently let go of his NFL Network gig as the league-owned media company has purged a ton of their on-air talent. Now Irvin can be found as a rotational guest on FS1.

The Moose was surprisingly good in the booth off top, but he’s appeared to hit a ceiling of sorts. He was never on the top team, but he has always been solid and gotten most of the Cowboys’ early game assignments when they rarely kickoff at noon central time. Johnston has likely been bumped down to at least Team No. 3 with the arrival of Tom Brady bumping Greg Olsen.

After the first two years of his career, Romo seemed on the trajectory to be the next John Madden. Going from the field to the booth, Romo’s ascension to a mastermind in the pocket clearly translated to the microphone game. His ability to dissect plays based on formation and defense and knowing the checks the QB would make were elite cinema for the viewing audience.

It was groundbreaking and deserved all of the accolades.

Since though, Romo’s seemingly slipped in his preparation and has been heard missing what has actually happened on the play. He’s still very entertaining but some of the shine is gone.

Aikman joined the FOX booth all the way back in 2002, pairing with Joe Buck and Chris Collinsworth. He and Buck have been joined at the hip, and when their contracts were up they moved over to ESPN together to host Monday Night Football. AIkman had been the gold standard for color commentary until Romo’s arrival, and in all honesty has regained the throne in the past couple of seasons.

He’s often accused of both being too hard on the Cowboys and too soft on them, meaning he’s probably doing a great job when both sides are mad at you.

Shocked? Shouldn’t be. The former Dallas first round pick immediately moved to the broadcast game following his retirement in 2013. First on the SEC Nation and then the SEC Network, Big Swaggu made his way to the main ESPN stage starting in 2014 and has been prominently featured since around 2017.

While he’s not in the broadcast booth, Spears is an analyst for several of ESPN’s shows and is most known for providing quality, knowledgable, entertaining takes without devolving into sensationalistic muck that is often connected with the four-letter network’s productions. His work along with that of Ryan Clark and Mina Kimes are proof that ESPN can still provide top-tier analysis despite the network’s addiction to giving the lowest-common denominator fans what they crave; drama without substance.

Notre Dame Football: Shakeup Coming to NBC Broadcast Booth This Fall

Big News Regarding the Notre Dame on NBC TV Booth

The last two seasons have seen Notre Dame home football games on NBC announced by play-by-play voice Jac Collinsworth.

Collinsworth is a Notre Dame graduate and was an up-and-comer when named to succeed Mike Tirico, who left the booth to take over NBC’s Sunday Night Football call when legendary Al Michaels left for Amazon

According to Dan Marchand of The Athletic, Collinsworth is out for this fall and replacing him will be longtime NBC Sports voice Dan Hicks, who happens to be married to Notre Dame graduate and veteran sports reporter/anchor Hannah Storm.

According to the report Jason Garrett will remain as the color commentator for Notre Dame on NBC.

No offense to Collinsworth but going from Tirico to him felt like getting spit in the face.  Collinsworth didn’t scream “big time” in any capacity, something that is done by more flight miles and experience – not by having a known last name.

Jason Garrett wonders how Rams will look without Aaron Donald, ‘the human eraser’

Jason Garrett recently visited Rams OTAs and while he has no concerns about the offense, he wonders how the defense will fare without Aaron Donald

Teams across the NFL all lost players this offseason, whether in free agency, via trade or to retirement. No one suffered a bigger loss than the Los Angeles Rams, however.

Aaron Donald announced his retirement from the NFL after 10 seasons, stepping away from football and the Rams after a Hall of Fame career. Replacing him is nothing short of an impossible task but Los Angeles attempted to do so by focusing a lot of attention on the defensive front in the draft.

Former Cowboys coach Jason Garrett recently visited Rams OTAs and his biggest question about the team is the void left by Donald.

“The big question there is Aaron Donald is no longer a member of the Los Angeles Rams,” Garrett said. “Having gone against that guy a lot, he’s the most disruptive player we ever had to game plan against. And you always had to have two guys on him. You had to have an answer in the run game and in the pass game. And when you’re playing around him and are coaching when he is on your team, it’s an unfair advantage. And now they don’t have that. He was the human eraser. And so now, they drafted the two kids from Florida State. I think they’re excited about them. But it’s going to be a younger team on defense without that superstar, that marquee player, so that’s going to be a big question.”

It’s a question most fans and analysts are also asking about the Rams. There will obviously be a drop-off in terms of interior pressure without Donald in the fold, but will that have a ripple effect on the rest of the defense? Donald always commanded double- and triple-teams but now that he’s gone, offenses will be able to deploy a more standard style of protection up front.

Garrett doesn’t have any concerns about the Rams offense, but the defense is a question in his mind.

“Matthew Stafford is still their quarterback, Cooper Kupp is still their receiver, Puka Nacua is still their receiver, Sean McVay is still calling the plays. I feel good about what they’re going to do on offense. The question is how do you replace 99?” Garrett said.

The Chiefs-Dolphins game demonstrated how awful Jason Garrett is as an announcer

Jason Garrett should not be an NFL announcer.

If the NFL and NBC wanted people to watch the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins’ playoff matchup through a Peacock subscription, the least they could’ve done is give us a better color commentator than Jason Garrett. When I say “better,” I mean that it would’ve been preferable to listen to three hours of random Wilhelm Screams than hear Garrett’s milquetoast, nonsensical analysis of an NFL postseason affair.

Don’t believe me?

What if I told you that Garrett called Patrick Mahomes a “sneaky good athlete” like he’d never watched him play before? What if I said he seemed to make a reference to Vitamin C’s infamous melody about over-appreciating one’s high school years? And these are just two examples!

At seemingly every turn, rather than add, you know, color to a broadcast, Garrett opted for the low-hanging fruit. He offered the most anodyne possible descriptions of sequences during the game and flip-flopped constantly on his opinions. He called Chiefs-Dolphins like a robot beholden to the binary code, not a human being who knows how to talk to other human beings.

Needless to say, NFL fans had enough of Garrett during an agonizingly awful broadcast.

Jason Garrett acted like he’d never seen Patrick Mahomes before after a 4th down scramble

Has Jason Garrett ever watched Patrick Mahomes play?

From time to time, we get to hear Jason Garrett call NFL games now. What joy! And judging by the sample size of his announcing work, this is probably something we should be exposed less to.

As the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins battled in impossibly frigid conditions, Garrett tried to add “unique” color to Patrick Mahomes’ play on the field. Mind you, Mahomes is already one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history. He has a patent on making clutch plays in the postseason, especially long runs in pivotal situations. We have seen him do it time and again. We have likely run out of original ways to describe Mahomes.

But when Mahomes scrambled for 28 yards on a second-quarter fourth down, Garrett’s analysis of the sequence made it seem like he’d never actually watched Mahomes play. He’s a “sneaky good athlete,” apparently. Really?

It’s been a rough evening for Garrett while filling in as NBC’s color commentator. This description that effectively made it seem like Mahomes is underrated — the NFL’s best quarterback — might take the cake as his worst call.

Why Jason Garrett, not Cris Collinsworth, is calling the Dolphins – Chiefs playoff game on Peacock

Collinsworth isn’t in the booth for the game, and here’s why.

That’s right, the voice you’re hearing alongside Mike Tirico on Peacock (exclusively streaming this week’s Wild Card game) for the playoffs broadcast of the Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs is not his usual partner, Cris Collinsworth.

No, it’s former NFL head coach Jason Garrett, and if you’re here, you’re probably wondering why it’s Garrett over Collinsworth.

There’s a really good reason for that. Tirico is actually calling two games this weekend — he’ll be on the mic for Sunday’s Los Angeles Rams and Detroit Lions game on NBC. And it’s Collinsworth who will join him for that game as usual.

There you have it! Enjoy the playoff game!

Collinsworth/Garrett named worst college football announcing team

Woof.

The relationship between Notre Dame and NBC recently was renewed through the end of the decade. However, the network probably needs to make some serious decisions regarding its announcing team for Irish broadcasts. It should be for no other reason than to appease the viewers.

Awful Announcing recently selected 20 college football broadcast teams and asked its readers to vote on them. Jac Collinsworth and Jason Garrett, the team that has announced Irish games for NBC over the past two years, was one of the teams up for voting.

The results were less than flattering as Collinsworth and Garrett were ranked dead last with the team ranked directly above them not even coming close.

Here’s the website’s interpretation of the team’s ranking:

“The only broadcast team we’ve seen get a score this low is the infamous Joe Tessitore/Booger McFarland/Jason Witten Monday Night Football crew back in 2018. That in and of itself is damning. But overall, there weren’t even many positive vibes for this team. Their percentage of A and B grades was less than half of the team ranked directly ahead of them, and their percentage of F grades was nearly four times higher than the second-highest percentage. This is the second season that Collinsworth and Garrett have called Notre Dame games together, and there will need to be a major step up in year three (if it even gets to that point).”

It’s no secret fans were constantly complaining about Collinsworth and Garrett both seasons they have been on the call, and now, we know exactly how low everyone’s opinion about them is. This is a level of bad that you almost have to try to attain.

Clearly, NBC missed the mark when it brought these two together to call games it had been broadcasting for over 30 years. The only thing to do is shake things up for 2024 because there’s no way it can stick with the status quo without coming off as ignorant, tone-deaf or both.

The network owes it to college football viewers to provide them with a better experience, especially since this relationship with Notre Dame will continue for the foreseeable future.

Contact/Follow us @IrishWireND on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Notre Dame news, notes, and opinions.

Follow Geoffrey on Twitter: @gfclark89