Jason Witten believes Jason Garrett will help Daniel Jones ‘tremendously’
When the Dallas Cowboys parted ways with head coach Jason Garret after the 2019 season, someone was about to get very lucky. Sure, the Cowboys and Garrett had run their course, but he was far from done.
When Garrett accepted the position as the offensive coordinator of the rival New York Giants, few thought much of the move. But it could end up being a seismic shift in the NFC East hierarchy.
Garrett is a fine offensive mind and the Giants have a young offense with a lot of interesting parts. Running back Saquon Barkley is one of the best players in the NFL at his position. Tight end Evan Engram is immensely talented and their three top wide receivers — Golden Tate, Sterling Shepard and Darius Slayton — are all very capable players.
The player that matters the most is second-year quarterback Daniel Jones, who led all rookie quarterbacks in touchdown passes (24) last season. Garrett has just come off developing Dak Prescott into a Pro Bowl-level quarterback in Dallas and the hope is that he can do the same with Jones.
Former Cowboys tight end Jason Witten played for Garrett in 12 of Garrett’s 13 seasons in Dallas. Witten has profound respect for Garrett and believes the Giants have felt into good fortune here.
“You’re gonna be really proud to have him as your offensive coordinator,” Witten told the New York Post. “He’s one of them — hard-working, determined, lunch-pail-type guy, brings it every day. Don’t be fooled because he’s an Ivy Leaguer. He is very fair, very honest, a man of integrity, and he’s gonna find ways to affect the defense within his scheme, and play to his players’ strengths over and over and over again.”
Witten believes Jones will benefit greatly under Garrett’s system, just like Prescott has and Tony Romo did before him.
“It’s built for the quarterback’s eyes, that system,” Witten said. “And I think any young quarterback likes the fact that this system is something that Jason played in, and then he’s seen a lot of quarterbacks have success in that. And then, just the track record, he had Tony in ’07, which Tony had started nine, 10 games prior to that, and went on and had a really successful career. He took Dak Prescott as a rookie, and you saw what Dak has done in his first four years in the NFL, so for Daniel Jones, I think he would be ecstatic.”
As a future Hall of Fame tight end, Witten also commented on Engram, who could be in for a breakout season if he can stay on the field for 16 games.
“Evan’s an extremely talented player, and I can tell you from playing in that system they’re gonna get the playmakers the football, and find a number of different ways to do that,” Witten said. “First off, it starts with when you want to run the football, the numer one thing that comes off of that is the play-action passing game. And for a tight end, that’s the No. 1 thing, because a lot of times when you do play-action, it doesn’t really affect the corners on the outside, it really affects the linebackers in the underneath coverage. And that’s really where the tight end kinda makes his hay, and so I think that’ll be really exciting for him.
“And then his ability to move him around, and play a number of different positions, will allow him to get a lot of different looks and to feature his playmaking ability. Last year [Cowboys TE] Blake Jarwin and some of those guys really shined just from the ability to move you around, having a strong running game, I think the tight end benefits tremendously from that style of offense.”
And the Giants know all too well what Jarwin can do. Engram’s a more dynamic athlete so the sky is the limit for him.
