The fate of Jason Garrett and other NFL coaches

I'm betting Jason Garrett will have that interim tag removed from his title at the end of this season. Garrett is 4-2 as the "interim" Dallas Cowboys coach and those four wins include two victories over division rivals (the Giants and the Redskins). Now Cowboys owner Jerry Jones can pat himself on the back and say he was right about Garrett all along.

I also have a feeling that the high-priced coaches-in-waiting -- Bill Cowher (pictured) and John Gruden -- will still be waiting next season because the teams most likely to make coaching changes -- Denver, Cincinnati, Carolina, San Francisco, Cleveland and even Tennessee -- are not likely to pay the big bucks Cowher and Gruden will demand. That means jobs for the in-demand coordinators. The one exception is the Houston Texans, a team that has underperformed this year, after winning four of their first six games. Owner Bob McNair has the deep pockets, but he also is someone with the reputation of being slow on the trigger. If I were McNair and had read that the Texans were one of the three teams Cowher would like to coach, I would roll the dice and make a change, especially since it has been the Texans defense that has let the team down this year. But McNair said just last week he thought his team was heading in the right direction and that he had heard from other NFL owners how impressed they were with his team. So McNair might just stick with coach Gary Kubiak.

“We’ll review everything at the end of the year, and, will we make some changes? I’m sure we will make some,” McNair said, according to the Texans' Web site. “But we’re very, very close to having the kind of team I think that we can all be proud of.”

The other two teams Cowher said he would coach are the Miami Dolphins and the New York Giants, both of whom have the resources to hire the Super Bowl-winning former coach.. I can't see Miami making a coaching change although the word is out that the Miami braintrust believes the Miami Heat is syphoning off fans and will need to add marquee names (read that "Cowher") to counter the Heat's star-studded lineup. There are those clamoring for Giants coach Tom Coughlin's head following Sunday's monumental collapse against Philadelphia, but I'm convinced if the Giants make the playoffs as a wild card, his job is safe,