Cowboys L generates usual flap
After 62 seasons in the National Football League, the Dallas Cowboys have returned to their roots. They can no longer win the big one. Make that the biggest one
This is where some of us came in with the Cowboys losing heart-breaking NFL championship games to the Green Bay Packers, most vividly in the 1967 Ice Bowl that Jerry Kramer might or might not have beaten the snap on the clearing block of Jethro Pugh that set the 21-17 final score.
The losers’ tag stuck with the Cowboys through Super Bowl V, the 16-13 Blunder Bowl won by the Baltimore Colts in the first year of the AFL-NFL merger. Fortunes changed somewhat in the 1970s with the Cowboys, led by Roger Staubach, winning the only two championships by a National Football Conference team in the decade, the 1971 squad with the sphinx-like Duane Thomas carrying the ball and the 1977 unit relying on the Doomsday Defense led by Harvey Martin and Randy White. (And let us not forget Cliff Harris, Captain Crash, for whom they named the football stadium at Ouachita Baptist University.)
Staubach’s retirement preceded three straight NFC championship losses in the 1980s, once when Dwight Clark went up over Everson Walls for “The Catch,” the first Super Bowl year for Joe Montana and the San Francisco 49ers.
The Cowboys became more nationally immersed after their 1989 purchase by an Arkansas oilman. Who can forget Jerry Jones wishing to “start fresh with my good friend Jimmy Johnson,” a teammate on the Razorbacks’ 1964 11-0 team, even if that meant firing “the only coach the Dallas Cowboys ever had.” Oh, to be the headline writer that came up with “You’re out, Tom” after Jones authored the “Saturday Night Massacre.”
Jones, against all odds, won two Super Bowl titles in four years with Johnson before egos conflicted and they split after the 1993 season. Jones said then that “500 people could win a championship with the Cowboys,” some inferring that the man he hired, Barry Switzer, must be No. 501. If not him, Barry Manilow.
Though Dallas columnist Randy Galloway, unsure of exactly what the ex-college coach did to help the Cowboys, tagged Switzer as ISP (Insignificant Sideline Personnel), the Bootlegger’s Boy from Crossett remains the last Super Bowl-winning coach in Dallas. That, if you’re keeping score at home, was 26 years ago.
Now, we have the Cowboys making an early exit from the Super Bowl tournament, with San Francisco — once again a pest — scoring the only road victory in the super wild-card round. The 23-17 game Sunday ended with quarterback Dak Prescott scrambling for a first down and then spiking away the final second before he could attempt a touchdown pass. This is obviously not what Jones expects from a quarterback he pays $40 million, one who deserves Comeback Player of the Year after an injury and setting a single-season club record with 37 touchdown passes. Yet, Prescott is hearing what Tony Romo heard all those years he couldn’t take the Cowboys all the way and that every Dallas quarterback since Eddie LeBaron and Don Meredith experienced after a loss.
The cries against coach Mike McCarthy were even harsher with critics saying he should go the way of Chan Gailey and Jason Garrett after two seasons in Dallas.
The eminently quotable Jones said frankly, “When you get this combination of players together, you need to have success.” The question lingers whether Jones, at 79, has lifted his last Lombardi Trophy as NFL champion.
Some wish Jones would exit stage center and ride off into the Arkansas sunset, content himself with making large contributions to Razorback athletics and let others run the Cowboys’ day-to-day operations. In a sense, though, Jones has always sought confirmation as the “football guy” at Valley Ranch, the man pictured in the war room on draft day with his kitchen cabinet getting their heads together. Many years, Jones cut a higher profile than his team whether in dealing with Nike’s Phil Knight or Deion Sanders, all the time ruffling feathers in the NFL office as not so much a team player.
The media glare around the Cowboys is greater than ever to the point that it strains making an objective opinion about the team. Throughout his reign, Jones has believed in the star system, paying his star players the highest salaries and sometimes skimping on talent at other positions. He won Super Bowls, after all, with Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin center stage, scraping up enough cash to pay Sanders and Charles Haley on defense; people now are expecting the same from Dak Prescott, Ezekiel Elliott and receivers including Amari Cooper and CeeDee Lamb, with rookie Micah Parsons a rising star on defense.
Like the New York Yankees, without a World Series title since 2009, nothing short than a championship parade will suffice in Dallas. No confetti for an NFC East title, big news in New York, Philadelphia or Washington.
Cutting his teeth in the oil business after playing football for Frank Broyles, another known for making quick decisions, Jones is perhaps the right man to own the Cowboys, even if his management technique comes under fire. Whatever happens in Dallas before next season would be no surprise short of cutting loose Prescott, whom fans seem to like even if a notch below Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes as the league’s top quarterback.
Cowboy fans, like those of the Razorbacks, demand to know what’s wrong and what’s being done about it. After a season that Dallas lost four games at home with talent that Jones deemed good enough to go farther in the playoffs, storm clouds are gathering over Valley Ranch.
Maybe they can bring back Switzer, who at his first press conference in Dallas informed all that “we’ve got a job to do and we gonna do it, baby!”