Jason Garrett has been training his whole life to become a coach

Jason Garrett waits his time and knows one day he will be an NFL head coach. (Story first published in January 2008.)

This story originally appeared on Jan. 13, 2008, in The Plain Dealer. We're republishing it now because University School alum Jason Garrett on Monday was named interim coach of the Dallas Cowboys, succeeding fired head coach Wade Phillips.

By Bill Lubinger

Jason Garrett was primed for this.

Primed in that every cinder block of Garrett's life has set a foundation that has led him to this point: As the brains behind one of the most prolific offenses in the NFL, he is a hot commodity and likely one of the next head coaches in the NFL.

One by one, the blocks were stacked neatly:

Son of a football lifer and former Browns assistant coach. Brother in a large family of jocks, where all you had to do was roll out of bed in the summer and have enough players for a Wiffle Ball game or one-on-one pass routes.

From CYO leaguer to overachieving University School and Princeton quarterback, to long shot who survived a dozen seasons in the NFL as a backup to and student of some of the top passers and play-callers in the game – in effect, an apprentice coach.

He spent seven years as Troy Aikman's understudy in Dallas.

He played under head coaches Jimmy Johnson, Barry Switzer and Chan Gailey, and with former offensive coordinators Ernie Zampese and Norv Turner, now head coach of the San Diego Chargers. The team won five division titles and two Super Bowls.

As a backup to Kerry Collins in New York, he learned from coach Jim Fassel and former offensive coordinator Sean Payton, now head coach of the New Orleans Saints. While with New York, the Giants advanced to the Super Bowl.

On the sidelines in Tampa Bay, he learned from coach Jon Gruden. And from coach Nick Saban in Miami.

“When you’re around winning programs,” he said by phone last week, “you see how people do things the right way.”

Now he’s in back in Dallas, directing an offense that was No. 3 in yardage in the NFL this season and No. 2 in points scored, behind only undefeated New England. Expect the red-headed Garrett to get plenty of TV face time when the Cowboys and Giants meet in an NFC division playoff this afternoon.

At 41, with just three years as assistant coach on his résumé — and his first tour of duty as an offensive coordinator — Garrett is regarded as one of the league’s brightest young offensive minds.

Next to New England, Dallas has been the NFL’s most dominant team, and that’s widened Garrett’s spotlight. During the team’s playoff bye week, he was among a handful of candidates contacted to interview for the Atlanta Falcons and Baltimore Ravens head-coaching jobs.

In fact, the Browns tried to hire him to run their offense this year, but were denied permission to interview him by the Dolphins, for whom he coached quarterbacks.

Miami later eased off, and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who has known Garrett and his family for years, plucked him to run his team’s offense.

Jones said by e-mail that during the interview he was impressed with Jason’s approach: Build an offense around the talent rather than cram a style down a team’s throat.

“So many times coaches will say, ‘This is what I do and this is our system,’ without having the flexibility to adapt to the players at hand,” Jones wrote.

The owner was so familiar with the family’s character and Garrett’s intellect and ability to communicate that he hired the man even before naming Wade Phillips the head coach. It prompted speculation that Garrett, who’s known to solicit feedback about the offense from his players and assistants, was being groomed for the top job.

“It’s been kind of remarkable,” said Jason’s brother, Jim Garrett III, the oldest of Jim and Jane Garrett’s eight grown children and an English teacher and former football coach at University School in Hunting Valley.

Not only remarkable that Jason may soon be directing an NFL team, but that brother John also coaches tight ends for the Cowboys. And that brother Judd coaches tight ends for the St. Louis Rams.

It’s in the blood
But it’s not so remarkable, really, given the pedigree.

Patriarch Jim Garrett, a running back on the Giants when Vince Lombardi was his position coach and Tom Landry coached the defense, spent 52 years playing, coaching and scouting in college and the NFL. (As a Cowboys scout, he recommended they draft quarterback Tony Romo. They didn’t, but signed him as a free agent.)

The family bounced from town to town like a military family, landing for seven seasons in Cleveland — on Berkshire Road in Cleveland Heights — in 1978 when Jim was hired by the Browns to coach running backs under Sam Rutigliano.

“Growing up,” Judd Garrett said, “we saw him Fridays and Saturdays bringing home the projector, breaking down film in the dining room. A lot of times we would sit there and watch with him.”

The big back yard of the family home on the Jersey Shore became a summer practice field. When Browns players Dino Hall and Pat Moriarty would visit to work out and run pass patterns, the young Garrett boys asked if they could play with them, and did. Jason would throw passes to Judd against Pro Bowl linebacker Sam Mills, a family friend.

Three of their four daughters graduated from Beaumont School in Cleveland Heights. Two still live in Russell Township in Geauga County. The three younger boys enrolled at University School, where Jason played shortstop on the baseball team and point guard on the basketball team in a backcourt with Derek Rucker, son of former Browns receiver Reggie Rucker.

And Cliff Foust’s football team gained instant offense when the Garrett boys took the field. John was a wide receiver and co-captain. Judd, the youngest, was a running back.

Jason wasn’t the most talented quarterback he’d ever coached, but “he could do the things that a lot of high school quarterbacks didn’t do,” said Foust, who coached high school football for 50 years.

The kid could read defenses. He knew exactly where to throw the ball. He fired the sideline strike better than any quarterback he’d ever had. The boy was reserved, but quietly commanded respect in the huddle.

“He was the boss and everybody knew he was the boss out there,” Foust said. “The thing is, the kids respected him.”

Foust recalled a big game against unbeaten Ashtabula St. John and its star player, Urban Meyer, now head coach at the University of Florida. Jason had a huge night, running and passing, to lead the upset.

Working his way up
But only one Division I college expressed interest. Instead, all three younger Garrett brothers eventually wound up at Division I-AA Princeton, where Jason still runs a summer football camp for kids.

Even before official practices began, Jason organized workouts and drills and got a bunch of the guys together.

Former Princeton teammate and good friend Tom Criqui has known him since the day Garrett arrived for his freshman year sporting a big red “almost Julius Erving-like” afro. “He’s a person that people gravitate to,” said Criqui, son of veteran sportscaster Don Criqui. “He’s the guy at the bar who can milk one beer all night and people still want to be around.”

Dean Cain, the actor who played Superman on “Lois & Clark” in the 1990s, was among Garrett’s Princeton teammates. Nelson Rockefeller’s son, Mark, was his tight end.

Steve Tosches, his former college coach who now works with an executive search firm in the Princeton area, remembered the fifth game of Garrett’s junior season in 1987. Garrett led the team from its own 2-yard-line — after Cain’s third interception of the game — down the field with five passes to brother Judd to set up a game-winning field goal with no time left to beat Lehigh.

“It’s his field awareness,” Tosches said. “When he was a player, he knew where all 10 people were or where all 10 people were supposed to be. Now, you can teach awareness, but with Jason, it was absolutely, positively 100 percent natural. Jason was truly born in a huddle.”

As a Princeton senior, Garrett completed 203 of 299 passes with just three interceptions and was unanimously voted the Ivy League’s top player.

And yet he wasn’t drafted by the NFL.

Over 12 years in the NFL, Garrett started just nine of the 39 regular-season games he played. The most memorable came on Thanksgiving Day in 1994, when he got the start against Green Bay because Aikman and second-stringer Rodney Peete were hurt. It was Lehigh, the sequel, as Garrett led Dallas to a thrilling 42-31 come-from-behind victory on a club-record 36 second-half points.

Garrett said playing quarterback helped hone an ability as a coach to set an urgent tone for the players while staying calm. Observers say his years on the field, sidelines included, also helped polish an effective play-calling rhythm.

As the huddle breaks on the Cowboys’ Super Bowl run and Garrett surveys the field of NFL head-coaching vacancies, his next call may be his biggest yet.