For a week and a half, the theme coming out of Valley Ranch has been the need for change. On consecutive Wednesdays, the Cowboys made their first real changes of the off-season.

On New Year's Eve they fired special teams coach Bruce Read. Just a week later, the Cowboys found his replacement in longtime NFL special teams coach Joe DeCamillis, who spent the last two seasons coaching in Jacksonville.

This move isn't simply the replacement of one figurehead with another, though. It also signals a shift in the tone the Cowboys will set for their kicking game going forward.

DeCamillis, entering his 21st season as an NFL coach and 17th leading a special teams unit, possesses a different personality from Read. Read was hardly a barker during his time with the Cowboys, and often his voice was drowned out by special teams assistants during practices.

Plenty of coaches have a similarly steady approach, but it clearly didn't work for Read here, as the Cowboys special teams went from bad to worse during his two-year tenure in Dallas. A change in style was necessary - something DeCamillis offers.

"There's several things about Joe that were very important to us," said Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones. "One is he coaches with a lot of energy; it goes down to the players in terms of his excitement about his job, and what he expects from special teams. Not only just the special teams player, but the total involvement in the team."

The Cowboys special teams did some good things under Read this season - two, if anyone is counting. Felix Jones returned a kickoff 98 yards for a touchdown in the Week Two win against Philadelphia, and Carlos Polk blocked a punt for a safety against San Francisco. The bad far outweighed the good.

The Week Six loss at Arizona was a special teams disaster from start to finish, with Cardinals returner J.J. Arrington taking the opening kickoff back for a 93-yard touchdown, and the game ending when receiver Sean Morey sliced through to block Mat McBriar's punt in overtime, breaking McBriar's foot and ending the former Pro-Bowler's season.

Kickoffs were a problem for the Cowboys all year as well, as just over 10 percent of Nick Folk's kicks reached the end zone. Read's schemes often required Folk to angle his kickoffs toward the sideline, which led to Folk booting more balls out of bounds for a penalty (two) than he had touchbacks (zero). Under DeCamillis, the Jaguars were much better on kickoffs.

Their opponents had an average starting position at the 24.5-yardline, compared to the Cowboys opponents starting at the 29.3, on average. The Jaguars had 10 touchbacks, and over 40 percent of their kicks crossed the goal line. Opponents averaged only 19.9 yards per kickoff return, while the Cowboys allowed an average of 21.3.

"He's very aggressive in terms of the way he goes through a game and the way he plays the game," Jones said of DeCamillis. "He doesn't just sit back. He really wants to try to make things happen on special teams."

Another area in which the Cowboys struggled was on punt returns. Patrick Crayton averaged 9.5 yards per return on 15 tries, generally as a fill-in for Adam Jones, who wasn't nearly as productive with the Cowboys as he was with the Tennessee Titans. Jones had 21 punt returns for 95 yards, an average of 4.5 yards per return.

Compare that to his totals during his last year as a Titan in 2006, when he took three punts back for touchdowns and averaged 12.9 yards per return.

Together, Jones and Crayton averaged only 6.4 yards per punt return, while the Cowboys opponents averaged 10.4. DeCamillis' Jaguars averaged 9.5 yards per punt return themselves, while limiting opponents to an average of 8.7.

"At the end of the day, I think he's very productive. I think if you ask a lot of people in the league he would certainly rate at the very top of most people's list, in terms of his experience as well his productivity with the special teams units."

Apparently one person who thinks highly of DeCamillis is head coach Wade Phillips, who was the Broncos defensive coordinator from 1989-92, while DeCamillis was serving as a defensive quality control assistant. The son-in-law of former Cowboys running back and assistant coach Dan Reeves, DeCamillis followed Reeves from the Broncos to the New York Giants, where he served as special teams coach from 1993-96.

He moved with Reeves to Atlanta in 1996, and coached special teams there through Jim Mora Jr.'s final season, 2006. He and Phillips reunited with the Falcons during the 2002 and 2003 seasons, where Phillips served first as Reeves' defensive coordinator, and later as interim head coach when Reeves was let go during the '03 season.

DeCamillis has also crossed paths with Cowboys secondary coach Dave Campo, who was with the Jaguars when DeCamillis arrived in 2007, and assistant secondary/safeties coach Brett Maxie, who was in Atlanta from 2004-06.

As for as how much the new coach can improve the Cowboys special teams, a one-year turnaround in the NFL is hardly undoable, and DeCamillis does have some talent to work with. Maybe most importantly the Cowboys are expecting McBriar's punting foot to heal completely by training camp. In six games, his net punt average was 40.5, compared to the 35.2 net yards that Sam Paulescu averaged as a replacement. Safety Pat Watkins, one of the league's best punt coverage gunners, should be returning as well after his season was cut short by a neck and shoulder injury.

Folk will be back as well, and while the Cowboys would like more production out of the sixth-round pick from 2007, he is hard to beat on field goals. Folk missed only two of 22 attempts this year, which is even more accurate than he was in making the Pro Bowl as a rookie.

Most of the team's top coverage players are under contract, though the two top special teams tacklers from 2008 are set to be free agents on March 1. The Cowboys would probably like to bring back captain Keith Davis, who had a team-high 20 tackles in the kicking game. Linebacker Kevin Burnett had 19 special teams tackles, but re-signing him could present more of a challenge and the team may be willing to let him test the free agency waters. Polk was signed to a one-year deal midway through the season, and the Cowboys may also look to retain the eight-year veteran.

The core of an NFL special teams unit is generally found at the bottom of the roster, and those guys come and go. There's no predicting which Cowboys will return in the kicking game next season, so the easiest way to improve special teams quickly, the Cowboys figured, was to bring in a new voice, a coach completely unlike the one who preceded him.

In replacing Read with DeCamillis, they seem to have made as dramatic a change as they could.