Sean Payton on Jason Garrett’s shining moment, NFL replay change impact: ‘Dilly, Dilly’
Jason Garrett has just two playoff victories in eight full years as Cowboys coach.
He heads into 2019 in the last year of his contract, coaching for his job.
No matter what happens, he will always have Tuesday at the NFL owners meeting in Phoenix as one of his shining moments in helping usher in monumental changes to the league’s replay review policy.
NFL owners voted Tuesday night to allow offensive and defensive pass interference penalties, including non-calls, to be subject to challenge and review. For the 2019 season, coaches can challenge any flags or missed penalties until the final two minutes, when such instances are subject to booth review only.
The change was spurred by the New Orleans Saints’ NFC Championship Game loss to the Los Angeles Rams. Cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman was not called for an obvious pass interference penalty against New Orleans receiver Tommylee Lewis in the final two minutes of the game. The call helped send the Rams to the Super Bowl and left the Saints crying foul.
The owners and competition committee were initially against expanding replay.
Garrett was one of several coaches who banded together to get them to reconsider.
Garrett was reportedly eloquent and passionate in a speech to the league regarding replay changes on behalf of the coaches about the integrity of the game.
Garrett initially won over the coaches during a meeting on Sunday, drawing praise from Patriots Super Bowl champion coach Bill Belichick.
On Tuesday morning, he knocked it out of the park, receiving rousing applause from the owners in the room.
Saints coach Sean Payton is the understood face of the new rule because of the impact the no-call had on his team. He is a member of the competition committee and he certainly spoke and encouraged change.
But he bowed down to Garrett’s speech.
“He was outstanding,” Payton said. “He finished and I was like, ‘Dilly. Dilly.’”
The competition committee revised their proposal and included some of the changes Garrett and the coaches lobbied for, namely the review of non-calls and the ability to challenge pass interference penalties, before presenting to owners for a vote.
It passed 31-1 with Bengals owner Mike Brown as the lone dissenter.
“I think it’s hard to argue with anything he said. It was well done,” said Cowboys vice president Stephen Jones, who is a member of the competition committee.
“Jason has always done a great job of being able to verbalize what a lot of people feel. I think he certainly did a great job, at the end of the day, summing up what a lot of coaches feel and what a lot of our membership feels. I think it was well done on his part. I think, at the same time, it’s just been the competition committee trying to put into place something that works for everybody and addresses the concerns that people may have a problem with — in particular, the unintended consequences that can come with being too aggressive.”
Obviously, the key factor in the changes was the no-call between the Rams and Saints.
For Garrett, it was like the “catch” by Cowboys receiver Dez Bryant that was ruled incomplete in the 2014 NFC divisional playoff loss to the Green Bay Packers.
Both outcomes are now remembered more for the decisions of the officials rather than what transpired on the field.
“That was part of Jason’s speech if you will,” Jones said. “Here we had a great football game, an epic football game. Everybody enjoyed it. But when it’s over rather than talk about how great the game was everybody was talking about if the wrong team was in the super bowl or not and the call. You don’t want that to be the focus of the storyline of a great football game. Certainly, that is what the competition committee has been working on is how we change that to where you don’t have that issue in the future.”
This story was originally published March 26, 2019 at 8:38 PM.
