Tag: offensive line coaching staff

COVID-19 to have ripple effect on multiple Cowboys coaches for Week 13

The Cowboys will have several assistants pitch in with the offensive line this week after multiple coaches have tested positive for COVID. | From @ToddBrock24f7

The Cowboys’ roster has been harangued by COVID-19 all season long, with the virus affecting more players in Dallas than any other locker room in the league.

Now it’s working its way though the coaching staff, too, causing a ripple effect of gameday duties.

The Cowboys have announced that offensive line coach Joe Philbin, assistant offensive line coach Joe Blasko, and coaching assistant Scott Tolzien have entered the league’s COVID-19 protocol and will miss Thursday night’s game against the Saints.

Their absences will put several other Cowboys staffers in new roles on a fill-in basis.

“We have some different scenarios of exactly how we’re going to work the week,” head coach Mike McCarthy said Sunday in a conference call with media members.

Those scenarios include tight end coach Lunda Wells, quality control coach Chase Haslett, and Ben McAdoo, who has been serving the team in a consultant role, scouting future opponents.

Wells’s first coaching job was as an offensive line assistant at LSU for two seasons; he did the same job again with the New York Giants from 2013 to 2017.

Haslett is the son of former NFL coach Jim Haslett. He was hired by Dallas in 2020 after gaining offensive coaching experience at Nebraska, Mississippi State, and Mercer.

McAdoo’s name is most familiar as the head coach of the Giants in 2016 and most of 2017. Most of his body of work as a coach comes on the offensive side of the ball, working with the offensive line, tight ends, or quarterbacks.

Now all three will pitch in on getting the Cowboys’ line- without Terence Steele, who has also tested positive for COVID– ready for New Orleans.

As for whether McCarthy himself will get personally more involved with that unit for the Week 13 game, the coach had this to say:

“I think the biggest thing is just to make sure that the job description and responsibility is always tight. We feel really good about our game plan process. How we’ll do the group meetings, we’ll spend a little more time together as a group. This is something that I think that this an opportunity for young coaches to take advantage of. Definitely, I’ll be where I need to be this week.”

Philbin tested positive for the virus last week and missed the Thanksgiving Day game versus Las Vegas, as did assistant strength and conditioning coaches Kendall Smith and Cedric Smith.

Blasko handled O-line coaching responsibilities on Thursday; he and Tolzien turned in positive COVID tests since then.

Following the clash with the Saints, the Cowboys will have nine full days off before beginning their final five-game stretch of the regular season, in which they’ll play four divisional games and one against the NFC’s top seed Arizona Cardinals.

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Former Cowboys OL coach Marc Colombo to interview with Giants

The former Cowboys offensive line coach could reunite with new OC Jason Garrett on the staff in New York.

When Mike McCarthy was announced as the ninth head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, Jason Garrett was obviously the first casualty. But Marc Colombo became the second when word leaked just before McCarthy’s introductory press conference that the team’s offensive line coach would not be retained under the new regime. Colombo was out in Dallas; longtime McCarthy assistant Joe Philbin was in.

But it seems Colombo may ultimately be able to carpool to the office with Garrett in 2020 just the same. According to reports, Colombo is set to interview with the New York Giants to be their next offensive line coach under new offensive coordinator Garrett.

One-time Dallas assistant Bill Callahan had been linked to the Giants OL job, but that door closed when Garrett was hired in New York. Callahan will join the staff in Cleveland instead.

Colombo was a first-round draft pick by the Bears in 2002. After three injury-riddled seasons in Chicago, he was signed by Dallas in 2005 and was a mainstay at right tackle for the next six seasons. Some of that time was spent with Garrett serving either on the Cowboys’ offensive staff or as interim head coach in 2010. He played the 2011 season in Miami before retiring as a member of the Cowboys.

Colombo then joined the Cowboys’ coaching staff in 2016, first as an assistant. In October 2018, Colombo was promoted by Garrett to offensive line coach upon the firing of Paul Alexander. Colombo was credited with instilling a nasty attitude and fixing the offensive line’s play; sack totals dropped and the team’s ground game improved. Ezekiel Elliott finished 2018 as the league’s rushing champion.

In 2019, Elliott’s numbers largely mirrored his previous season’s, good enough for fourth place leaguewide. Elliott and three of Colombo’s linemen were named to the 2020 Pro Bowl, but with a new head coach comes changes to the staff, even to excellent positional and assistant coaches.

The rival Giants may prove to be the beneficiaries of this one.

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Report: McCarthy bringing two former Green Bay assistants to Dallas

New Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy continues to build his staff, reportedly tapping two of his former assistants from Green Bay for key roles.

Mike McCarthy is moving quickly to round out his new coaching staff in Dallas. And he’s drawing from a pool of familiar faces to do it. According to ESPN’s Todd Archer, McCarthy will tap two former assistants from his Green Bay tenure for key roles with the Cowboys for the 2020 season.

Jeff Blasko is expected to serve as an assistant under new offensive line coach Joe Philbin, and Scott McCurley looks to have a position awaiting him coaching the Dallas linebackers. Both have experience with McCarthy after being a part of his staff with the Packers at the end of his tenure.

McCurley was a member of McCarthy’s original staff in Green Bay, joining the team as an intern in 2006. He was let go by the club last January, a month after McCarthy had been fired.

During his time there, McCurley filled several jobs on the defensive side of the ball, from defensive quality control coach to assistant linebackers coach to defensive assistant. Among other achievements, McCurley helped Packers linebacker Clay Matthews transition from outside to inside linebacker in 2015; Matthews received a Pro Bowl nod in his first year in the middle.

McCurley will help with a Cowboys linebacking unit that currently features Pro Bowlers Jaylon Smith, Leighton Vander Esch, and Sean Lee. But there are question marks McCurley will need to address: Lee’s future with the team is undecided, Vander Esch missed the final five games of 2019 with a troublesome neck injury, and Jaylon Smith was widely criticized for a down year in his first season as a captain with a mega-contract.

Blasko spent the 2019 season as the assistant offensive line coach in Cleveland after spending three years with McCarthy in Green Bay. Originally hired by the Packers in 2016 as a coaching administrator, he was promoted to assistant O-line coach, where he helped tackle David Bakhtiari earn All-Pro honors three straight years.

Before that, Blasko spent eight years on college coaching staffs: at Akron, Florida, Kansas, and Pennsylvania. In Dallas, he’ll inherit a line that boasts three 2020 Pro Bowlers in Zack Martin, Travis Frederick, and Tyron Smith.

McCarthy has shown loyalty to his former staffers and a noted affinity for blue-collar guys from his hometown of Pittsburgh. Blasko hails from Bessemer, about an hour north of the Steel City, and went to Pitt for college, where he played linebacker for the Panthers. McCurley is also a Pittsburgh native.