Is this the Man that Will Save the Cowboys' Season?

Dallas Cowboys interim head coach Jason Garrett

The answer to the above question is two-fold. Maybe, but only if he actually takes over for Jon Kitna at quarterback. And, even then, probably not, considering the 1-7 Dallas Cowboys are so far out of the playoff race Big D has turned into a small dot in the distance relative to their NFC East rivals. When the dysfunctional family that is the Washington Redskins is a full three games up on you, times are bad to say the least.

And if the Redskins with their coaching tandem of Mike and Kyle Shanahan are the epitome of dysfunction, the Cowboys, who just let go of Wade Phillips on Monday, are a broken home, broken beyond all recognition relative to the team they were that won the division last year, relative to the dynasty that has won five Super Bowls in its history. Think some twisted version of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, with Tony Romo being the glass and all the other players in this production making up all the different characters you would come to expect in the comedy of errors this tragedy has become: 

Owner Jerry Jones can play the part of a philandering husband, who lies through his teeth when asked if are any other women in his life, giving his wife (Phillips) a kiss of death in the process, saying that "you've always been the only one for me", only to eventually reveal that he's fallen out of love with her. Garrett is the young son pushed into taking on more responsibility as the team's new interim coach. And the Cowboys cheerleaders? They're just the window dressing to help distract passing-by neighbours from realizing that there's an actual problem. I know it's wrong to objectify women, but, in my defense, they make it really hard not to.

So bad has it gotten that even the team's marketing department can't even do the simplest thing right, like keep the team's website operational. The day before Phillips's firing was announced, the DallasCowboys.com domain was left unrenewed prompting visitors to the site the day of to see something like this instead of the team's home page:

It's as if the team just decided that avoiding the issue of Phillips's termination altogether was the best way to approach it... all the while hoping that the problem would disappear. In a way, Phillips's leaving does just that, with Garrett having waited in the wings since the end of the 2007 season, when Jones gave him a $3-million-per-year contract to prevent him from pursuing head-coaching opportunities elsewhere.

With Phillips riding into the proverbial sunset, his time has finally come, and it couldn't have come soon enough... up until the point the Cowboys decided to make this season a total disaster.