NBC Sports’ Jason Garrett Talks Cowboys, Rams, Dez Caught It & More with Rich

Jason Garrett spent years clapping on the Cowboys sideline, and it turns out the habit was never an accident. "Enthusiasm is the oxygen of the soul," he told Rich, framing it as a core part of coaching. He learned it in part by watching Jimmy Johnson, who used to clap way out in front of his hands, and he built his own version of it. As Garrett put it, the energy of the leader pervades the group.

That idea is the spine of his new leadership podcast, Coach to Coach, which opens with Hall of Fame coach Tony Dungy and then UCLA's Cori Close, with Andy Reid, Sean Payton, Dan Campbell, Joe Maddon, and Joe Girardi lined up down the road. The through line Garrett found was generosity. These are the best at what they do, most of them with Super Bowl or World Series rings, and at their core they are still just coaches who want to help players get better. He also learned that people do not want platitudes. As Fred Gaudelli told him, enough of the platitudes. People want stories with a point.

Garrett has one of his own about Dak Prescott. Drafted in the fourth round in 2016, Prescott got thrust into the job when Kellen Moore and then Tony Romo went down. The Cowboys lost the opener and then won eleven straight. Garrett asked him how he was pulling it off without speeches or hollering. Prescott's answer was relationships. He played chess with the defensive guys and engineered marathon games of hamper basketball in the locker room hours after practice. "Once you develop that relationship, that's when they want to play for you," Garrett recalled. He called it a great lesson learned from a rookie quarterback.

Then Rich brought up the play that still stings in Dallas. Dez Bryant's catch in a playoff game before Dak's time, the one that was called a catch on the field before Dean Blandino and Gene Steratore reversed it. Garrett remembers pleading the officials' own standard back to them. "Time enough to make a football move," he said. "The guy made eight of them." He traces the mess back to the Calvin Johnson precedent and the corner the league had painted itself into on going to the ground. His only regret is not fully celebrating the throw Romo made and the catch Bryant made, a play he compared to Bradshaw to Lynn Swann over Mark Washington. Officials still deny it was a catch. Garrett will go to his grave saying it was. The Cowboys fan in the corner, nursing what he called PTSD, agreed with every single word.

On this year's Cowboys, Garrett is intrigued but honest. He still questions letting Micah Parsons out of the building, even for two first-round picks and Kenny Clark, and he pointed out that Dallas won seven of seventeen games with Philadelphia as the one signature win. The defense, he thinks, is more solidified now with Quinnen Williams and Clark, and the offense returns loaded.

As for the Rams and the 17-0 chatter around Sean McVay, Garrett reached for Nick Saban, whom he worked under for two years and heard deliver plenty of rat-poison speeches. His advice is old-school process. Eliminate the noise, focus on yourself, and let the results come.