One of Tavon Austin’s greatest strengths is his running ability and dangerous top-end speed. His speed is what made him a 1st-round pick out of college, which is what makes the decision for him not to display on Sunday Night so puzzling.
With the Dallas Cowboys down to the Minnesota Vikings 28-24 with 0:24 left to play, a punt headed Austin’s way and he had open field in front of him to show off that speed in a big moment.
He called for the fair catch when there was nobody from the punt coverage team bearing down on him. He had space…a lot of it.
He called for the fair catch because he was told to.
Special teams coach Keith O’Quinn not only told Austin to call for the fair catch, but he decided to lie to head coach Jason Garrett about what happened.
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Cowboys coach Jason Garrett explained Monday the staff emphasized to Austin to avoid bleeding clock with his return. Basically, don’t run around in circles trying to find an open lane. That didn’t mean call for a fair catch as he had an open lane to gain several yards, if not a touchdown to win the game.
“We didn’t communicate that well enough,” Garrett said. “In that situation, you’ve got a couple different options. You can try to block the punt. We decided not to do that. We decided that we thought there’d be a good chance that we can get the ball around the 50-yard line. So the biggest coaching point for Tavon was make sure you don’t bleed the rest of this time off by spending a lot of time trying to return the ball.
“So fair catch was a very viable option. The part of it that we didn’t communicate well enough was just simply if you do feel like you have a good return opportunity, take advantage of it. Catch it and go north and south and get as much as you should. We did a poor job as a staff making sure he understood that and hopefully we’ll learn from that experience.”
The Cowboys ended up gaining just nine yards before Dak Prescott was forced to launch a Hail Mary on the final play of regulation that was intercepted. The team dropped to 5-4.
