For Jason Garrett to thrive as a broadcaster, he again just needs to mimic Troy Aikman
Jason Garrett cannot serve up another one of his famous word salads of nothing and expect it’s going to fly with audiences.
What he relied on so well, for so long, as the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys needs a little bit massaging now that he’s on NBC as an analyst.
“We do musicals here at NBC. I don’t know if you know that,” he said on a conference call this week to my question whether he thought being critical of the Dallas Cowboys could initially be awkward or uncomfortable.
“We want to make a positive. We want to make it upbeat. We all love football.
“But having said that, that’s the approach I took as a coach. You want to be positive. You want to be upbeat. You also have to be honest. You have to be honest with the players, with the coaches about what you need to do to get better.
“I think I’ll take a similar approach.”
That approach is one of the reasons he never lost his team in his tenure as the head coach of the Cowboys.
Now he’s on TV. If Garrett goes too happy, clappy-clappy audiences will see through it.
Garrett, who was the head coach of the Cowboys from the middle of the 2010 season through 2019, has joined the NBC Sunday Night Football studio crew. He will also serve as the color analyst on NBC’s telecasts of Notre Dame home games.
This is after Garrett did his apprentice work on NBC’s coverage of the USFL games during the spring.
He speaks well. He’s bright. He’s been around football his entire life.
His energy, to use one of his favorite phrases, is “off the charts.”
What he needs to do is simply follow the similar path created by his ex teammate, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman who remains one of the best in the business.
Aikman and Garrett were teammates on the Cowboys in the 1990s, and remain close friends.
On air, Aikman is unafraid of his thoughts. He’s respectful, and critical when necessary.
Whether Garrett is good on TV talking ball will ultimately depend on his willingness to say what he thinks.
It does not mean Garrett will have to turn into some shock-jock broadcaster. It does mean that Garrett needs to be honest.
TV is not the place to say, “He did some good things. He did some bad things. What he needs to do is do more of the good and less of the bad.”
Or, “I need to look at the film.”
If a guy didn’t play well, or a is a liability, Jason Garrett knows it. He lived that life for decades.
He has to say it without fear of what that person, or their family and friends, may think.
That includes Jerry Jones and the entire Dallas Cowboys organization, which he played for from 1993 to 1999, and coached for from 2007 to 2019.
For the record, he said he does not think it will be awkward talking about the Cowboys.
“One of the things I’ve been talking about with a lot of people who are in this business, is I think you want to analyze football like you would if you were in a coaches’ meeting and you want to talk about the good things and identify the things that aren’t quite as good,” he said on the call.
“I don’t think you need to do it in a way where you’re running people down and beating people up all the time. It seems to me there’s a lot of that in this world already.”
He’s not wrong.
Pro sports is a world of constant evaluation, judging, insecurity, fear, absolutes, and sometimes, meanness.
In his tenure as coach, Garrett fought all of that to be positive regardless of circumstances. If you could wade through the BS, some of it could be applicable to your own daily routine.
That attitude carried him a long way, both as a player and a coach.
While his preference is to coach football, his attitude helped land him a job on NBC talking football.
Garrett should do fine in this new role, provided he replaces clapping with honesty.
This story was originally published September 5, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
