The high school freshman beat that rug to a fare-thee-well.
Incisiveness.
Few share Garrett's knowledge of the game, honed by 12 years of scrapping for an edge to keep his job. Undrafted out of college, he was cut by clubs in the Canadian Football League and the World League of American Football. The New Orleans Saints released Garrett twice. The redhead kept coming back.
The book on Garrett was: weak spiral, strong spirit. All told, he piled up seven rejection slips to go with two Super Bowl rings. He earned the hardware while in Dallas.
All of his professional life, he has been a coach-in-waiting.
"That's my role, to sit and wait," he once said of his playing career. But the wheels were always turning.
"Because he wasn't blessed with tremendous talent, Jason had to break down the game thoroughly to be successful," Jim Garrett said. "He's like the .270 hitter who stays in the lineup because he knows exactly how to swing the bat."
There are long-standing links between the Garrett family and members of the Ravens' brass. As a Browns assistant, Jim Garrett coached Pat Moriarty, a running back who is now the Ravens' vice president of football administration. Ozzie Newsome, the Ravens' general manager, was the tight end on that same Cleveland team.
Should Garrett get the Ravens job, he would move closer to his parents, who live in Monmouth Beach, N.J. Family ties are important to Garrett, one of eight children, three of whom are NFL coaches (John, like Jason, with Dallas, and Judd with the St. Louis Rams).
Garrett and his father are especially tight. In 1985, when Jim Garrett was named coach at Columbia University, Jason left Princeton to play for him. And when winless Columbia fired his father at year's end, Jason returned to Princeton, where he set several NCAA Division I-AA records for passing accuracy.
In 2000, the Giants lured Garrett from Dallas, his home for eight years. That put him near his folks on the Jersey shore.
The Cowboys tried desperately to keep Garrett, then 34, by offering him a job as assistant coach.
"He was ready," Dallas owner Jerry Jones said.
When he finally retired in 2004, Garrett signed on as a television analyst for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The job didn't last. Bucs coach Jon Gruden found Garrett's comments so insightful that he signed him as a backup.
It was a fitting end and a smooth transition to his coaching career.
Though immersed in football, Garrett allows some of his precious time away from X's and O's to be filled with the music of someone else with New Jersey ties, Bruce Springsteen.
Now Garrett might get the chance to be The Boss himself.
mike.klingaman@baltsun.com
