Countdown to Cowboys Camp: The five biggest questions facing America's Team

SAN ANTONIO – The Dallas Cowboys will open their 2019 training camp when they arrive in Oxnard, California, Thursday, with a number of questions hanging over the team. For the sake of brevity and my own attention span, we will cover the five biggest question marks, none bigger than the future of Jason Garrett as the Cowboys head coach. 

Garrett is about to start his ninth full season as the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, tenth overall if you consider that he took over for Wade Phillips midway through the 2010 season, and as a result, is the second longest tenured head coach in team history behind the late great Tom Landry. 

However, Garrett is coaching for his job this year. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones confirmed in February that he has not given Garrett a contract extension even though he's in the final year of a 5 year, 30 million dollar contract signed in 2015. 

Garrett avoided the pink slip last season when the Cowboys won 7 of their last 8 games and took their division title to advance past Seattle in the first round of the postseason only to lose to the Super Bowl bound Los Angeles Rams 30-22 in the divisional playoffs.  

Instead of firing Garrett for a predictable offense that ranked 20th in the league last season, Jones instead fired offensive coordinator Scott Linehan, replacing him with Kellen Moore who played just 3 seasons as back up quarterback for Dallas. The quick turn around by Rams head coach Sean McVay sparked the youth movement in the NFL including naming former Texas Tech head coach Kliff Kingsbury as the new head coach of the Arizona Cardinals.

Garrett has been here before. After going 8-8 in his first three full seasons as the Cowboys new coach, Garrett avoided the chopping block when he led the Cowboys to a 12-4 finish in 2014 after winning the NFC East. Now he has to sing for his supper again with Moore calling the Cowboys offensive plays this season.