DALLAS — Mike Shanahan has replaced Wade Phillips as a head coach before. Clearly, it's time for him to do it again.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones can put to bed all these tales of woe at Valley Ranch with one easy hiring. All the talk of loose discipline, of in-fighting between teammates, between players and coaches, all the stuff that sounds so crazy and in some cases so irrelevant can be shoved aside.

Shanahan may have just exhausted his stay in Denver, but when it comes to the Cowboys, Shanahan is change you can believe in.

Here's why the Cowboys can't continue with the Wade Phillips era.

Thirteen years and 13 NFC teams. That's what the NFC championship, once a regular playground for your Cowboys, now represents.

It has been 13 seasons since the Cowboys played in an NFC title game. That's the longest streak in club history. The previous longest was nine years — Tom Landry's last six seasons and Jimmy Johnson's first three.

Landry's teams had played in a remarkable 12 NFL or NFC title games in 17 years (1966 through 1982) before the drought hit.

Now, it has been 13 seasons under five head coaches, which immediately tells you the problem has more to do with Jones than the coaches themselves.

Barry Switzer's last two years, followed by two with Chan Gailey, three with Dave Campo, four with Bill Parcells and two with Phillips have failed to produce a single trip to an NFC Championship Game.

Meanwhile, 13 other NFC teams have played in an NFC title game since Dallas' last one. Only Detroit and Washington have been away from the game longer than the Cowboys.

Let an experienced and proven coach like Shanahan clean house. Tell him he needs to keep Jason Garrett for one more year as offensive coordinator and then decide if he wants to go a different direction.

Let Shanahan and Garrett decide what to do about Terrell Owens.

Now that Jones has forced Phillips to get rid of the two coordinators he was allowed to hire — Brian Stewart on defense, Bruce Read on special teams — let Shanahan figure out which way to go on those two fronts.

Shanahan is exactly the kind of experienced and successful coach Jones could actually work with. It wouldn't work for long any more with coaches as headstrong as Johnson or Parcells.

It wouldn't work with Bill Cowher, either, and I'm not even sure where Jon Gruden fits on the "head coaches you want to hire" rankings.

Shanahan knows about getting teams to championship games. He has endured a rough last three seasons in Denver with a team spinning its wheels and going 24-24. Prior to that, as offensive coordinator of the 49ers and head coach of the Broncos, Shanahan coached in NFC or AFC Championship Games six times in 14 years.

He earned three Super Bowl rings.

He has an understanding of what it takes to win and he proved it over a long and largely successful run in Denver. And unlike some who would question his hiring, I can't imagine Shanahan is incapable of trying to win with larger offensive linemen than he was used to deploying in Denver.

Unless Jones truly believes that "all publicity is good publicity" and he thinks the stories coming out of Valley Ranch for two months now are helping him sell tickets to his new stadium, then Jones knows it's time for major fundamental change at the top.

Or at least as close to the top as Jones will allow any coach to get.

Asking Phillips to get rid of his coordinators doesn't accomplish much. Asking Phillips, at age 61, to change his coaching style and personality is impossible.

Whatever you want Phillips to be in terms of a ruthless dictator, he isn't going to be that guy. Besides, the manner in which Jones has been at the top of all real decision-making since Parcells left the building doesn't allow for that to happen.

The good vibe Phillips and his more player-friendly coaching staff brought after Parcells lasted for one regular season. It was gone by the time the Cowboys lost to the Giants in the playoffs, and 2008 was an outright disaster.

The 2009 season doesn't have to keep going in that direction. A good, proven coach is ready to take over.

All Jones has to do is make that splash during Super Bowl week that he so dearly loves.

And then — for a time, anyway — the nonsense can disappear.