Monday Musings: Is the Dallas Cowboys offense turning on Jason Garrett?

So embarrassing, so ugly, so pathetic was this latest Cowboy debacle that not even coach Wade Phillips could find a positive spin afterwards.

Apparently Coach Cupcake too has run out of sugar-coating.

“Not much I can say about this. It was a disaster,” he said, his most honest assessment of his team in at least a year, probably since he arrived.

He was talking about the Cowboys' 44-6 loss to Philly. He may as well have been describing this season and this Cowboys team. They were the disaster, a fraud, a collection of underachievers who needed a good, swift kick in the butt that never came.

Of course, that is not how this Cowboy team operates. They are all about finding excuses and assigning blame.

And it is Jason Garrett’s turn.

The RHG is now officially the RHS, or Red-Headed Scapegoat for the Cowboys. T.O. echoed his previous criticisms of The RH-no G to Deion on Sunday, and QB Tony Romo piled on as well. They would have us believe he is why they lost so ugly in Philly.

“Scheme is a major, major part of it,” Romo said. “If you’re put in a really good situation, it really allows your team to be successful a lot. That’s why I think some games, it’s easy to say, ‘Well, he didn't play good.’ A lot of it is scheme.”

T.O. was even less cryptic, noting “I know there needs to be some changes in regards to getting some guys involved, putting guys in position to win. It all starts with guys who are calling the plays.”

Of course, anybody who believes Jason Garrett is the biggest, or only, problem with the Cowboys is as delusional as Owner Jones and as clueless as Coach Cupcake.

Do not mistake this for a full-fledged defense of The RH-no G. Garrett gets dropped in the grease like everybody else. He has been mediocre-to-awful for long stretches of this season, which makes him not unlike Pacman Jones, Flozell Adams, Romo and too many Cowboys to count this season.

But for T.O. and Romo to so willingly heap blame on The RH-no G underlines why this Cowboy team fails again and again. They lack leadership and accountability. Very few in this locker room are good at standing up and saying what they could do better.

We should not be surprised, of course. When your coach is a butt-coverer, your players take on that personality as well, always finding excuses. And until this is fixed, the Cowboys will never be fixed

The truth is the Cowboy problems are deeper than schemes or player screw-ups. They are not a team. They are a collection of very talented guys who never came together and went from Super Bowl favorite to not in the playoffs as a result.

They take the easy way out, too often escorted to the door by their coach.

“I’m going to take some people to the woodshed,” Owner Jones said afterwards, right before saying Coach Wade was returning.

So what exactly is going to change? It is going to be hard to change too many players since almost all of them are locked up in long-term deals. The reality of a salary-capped world is you cannot just dump your underachievers.

Owner Jones has a lot of big decisions looming. And T.O., in his self-serving way, volunteered his services, saying “if Jerry needs advice or asks me about anything, I will give him my honest opinion.”

If he’s accepting unsolicited opinions from fools, may I offer my services? I’d love to be in on their secret meetings. And I have a few ideas for Jerry:

■ Begin by firing your chief enabler, Coach Cupcake himself. Swallow your pride. Back away from last week’s hasty stupidity. Admit you are wrong. He has to go.

■ Fire Bruce Read, 12 games too late, yet still necessary.

■ Bid farewell to Pacman and Tank. Talent allows trouble makers to get second chances, but neither has enough to justify their presence.

■ Say goodbye to T.O., as much as this hurts, because his whining, his private meetings, his silliness has become a distraction. Trust me, your team is better without him.

■ Call Bill Cowher, Mike Holmgren, any and every coach who you think might look you in the face and tell you to go to hell. Keep adding zeroes until one of them says yes.