It took four months of questioning, but Dallas Cowboys coach Jason Garrett finally admitted that he won't call offensive plays this season. Of course, we already knew that because Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and offensive coordinator Bill Callahanadmitted it publicly last week.
Harrison: NFC summer storylines
Don't fear the dog days: Elliot Harrison picks out a storyline worth paying attention to for each team in the NFC. **More ...**
But Garrett oddly continued to stonewall the media last week, and he admitted Tuesday that was a mistake.
"It's a good thing for me to clarify. Ever since we put the staff together in late January, we had a plan in place for how to do things. ... We had that in place. We've been working really since the end of January with that in mind."
"We made that decision months ago. Where we did have a little bit of a miscommunication is when we were going to present that publicly."
Translation: We didn't want to be honest with the media for a while for "competitive" reasons. But Jones let the cat out of the bag, and I need to clean it up. Garrett insisted that the entire organization was on the same page, and he was happy to give up play-calling duties.
"We made that decision a long time ago. Where I made a mistake as a head coach is making sure the communication publicly happened more cleanly. It didn't happen as cleanly as I wanted to," Garrett said.
And from there, Garrett continued to answer questions about play-calling for another 10 minutes. The fact that Callahan will call the plays is less important than the likelihood that it wasn't Garrett's decision to cede the authority. Just like it wasn't his decision to make the news public last week. But it's hard to keep secrets in Dallas.
Garrett knows better than anyone that coaching for the Dallas Cowboys presents challenges that don't exist elsewhere.
Follow Gregg Rosenthal on Twitter @greggrosenthal.
