The new year often brings resolutions – as people look to find their new and improved selves as the calendar turns.

“New year, new me” the saying goes, and the Dallas Cowboys have turned quite a few pages as 2020 has gotten underway.

Firing longtime head coach Jason Garrett was a change that while seemingly overdue, was also far from easy for the Cowboys organization. Garrett has been coaching in Dallas since taking over as the offensive coordinator in 2007, and has been the team’s head man since the middle of 2010. He’s been relatively successful as the head coach as well, winning three division titles and keeping the Cowboys “in the mix” each and every season.

Still, as running back Ezekiel Elliott alluded to this week, sometimes change is needed even if it is hard to initiate.

“Change is hard, but sometimes good. Sometimes you need change. We’ll see what we have going for us,” Elliott told Calvin Watkins of the Dallas Morning News at the Pro Bowl this week, speaking to the “weirdness” around the team now that the head coach has changed.

Elliott is right. Moving on from the norm is always a difficult thing to do, especially when ownership wanted Garrett’s tenure to work so bad. Garrett has been a consistent force in the building, imprinting his character onto this football team in numerous ways.

But despite being hard, change was the right move.

We can (and likely will) argue for months about whether Mike McCarthy was the right hire or not, but a new voice was very obviously needed at The Star. Dallas needs an outside influence, someone who can bring in some freshness to try to break through that divisional round ceiling hanging over their heads.

For Elliott, as well as much of the Cowboys roster, Garrett is the only coach he’s known at the NFL level. There will likely be growing pains, but this change was inevitable after such a disappointing 2019 campaign.