Last year during the pre-season, Rico Gathers began to emerge as a legitimate playmaker at TE before a concussion cost him the entire season. It was a huge setback for a player that the Cowboys have invested a late round draft pick and kept on the roster hoping to develop him into a complete player who can catch and block. It has since been revealed in an article by Brandon George of SportsDay, DallasNews.com, that he was fully healthy midway into last season and yet was kept on IR and not given an opportunity to contribute. This year if he does not show any more progress as a blocking tight end it could be the end of his time in Dallas. At least Rico Gathers seems to suspect as much judging from the following quote in that same article:
“The biggest thing for me this year is just making it to the regular season,” he said. “I have to make sure I’m healthy and make sure I’m able to be on somebody’s 53-man roster.”
All of this leads me to believe the Cowboys may once again repeat the same mistake as they have in the past. That is to prioritize their system above the players on their roster and in so doing refuse to adapt their scheme to get the most out of the talent they have.
Being adaptable is what great coaches and great organizations do but the Cowboys have fallen short in this department time and time again. If history repeats itself again and the Cowboys release Gathers, we the fans may once again have to endure seeing him succeed in another team’s colours. Sound familiar? Look no further than former Cowboys TE Martellus Bennett. He was drafted by the Cowboys with a second round pick back in 2008 but buried on the depth chart behind Jason Witten. Coach Garrett was never able to find creative ways to get both of those players involved in the offence and the Cowboys allowed Bennett to depart in free agency after failing to live up to the high expectations they had for him. During his 4 years with the Dallas Cowboys his production was minimal but in the 5 seasons following his departure split among 3 different teams he finally reached his potential. Take a look at his numbers both in Dallas and post Dallas.
| Martellus Bennett production | AVG Receptions | AVG Yards | Avg TD’s |
| 4 seasons with Dallas Cowboys | 21 | 211 | 1 |
| 5 seasons with NYG/CHI/NE | 64 | 699 | 5 |
Since Bennett’s production was consistently effective across 3 different teams/coaches and he only failed to produce in Dallas. That speaks volumes about the Cowboys inability, particularly under Jason Garrett, to find creative ways to use talented players. The only question that remains here is why do they continue to add these type of offensive weapons if they don’t plan on using them? Why did they draft Martellus Bennet, Gavin Escobar or Rico Gathers in the first place?
I only hope that this season after bringing in a plethora of new coaches, the Cowboys may have finally decided to stray a little from their stubborn ways. The retirement of Jason Witten and the existence of a new TE coach as well as a new WR coach among those changes may result in some more creativity and a willingness to change their offensive approach. Otherwise, players like Tavon Austin and Rico Gathers would have been much better off on another teams’ roster.
*Photo by Marco Becerra https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode
George, Brandon; Sportsday dallasnews.com The two things Cowboys TE Rico Gathers is working on to take next step from basketball to football, May 25, 2018 https://sportsday.dallasnews.com/dallas-cowboys/cowboys/2018/05/23/cowboys-te-rico-gathers-ready-make-sure-able-somebodys-53-man-roster
All data and statistics obtained and verified through https://www.pro-football-reference.com/
