This Time, Cowboys Are Ready : No Dissension Here: Dallas Is Set for Rams
Each year, Tom Landry examines his roster and decides what his Dallas Cowboys can win. Most times, the chore takes as long as drying a dish. Scribble, scribble goes the pen and out come the same two words: Super Bowl.
People quit chuckling at Landry’s annual goals back in the late ‘60s, when the Cowboys began appearing in championship games as if they had reservations. Folks suggested he become more creative and add to his list: a Super Bowl victory might be nice . . . maybe Uranium 235 . . . interstellar conquest. Landry showed them his tight smile and went back to winning football games.
Things were going fine until, say, 1983, when the Cowboys played the Rams in the NFC wild-card game at Texas Stadium. By then, there were rumors that it would take a wheelbarrow to distribute all the pink slips if the Cowboys lost. Team unity was nonexistent. The only thing the Cowboys could agree on is that they disliked each other.
And that was that. The Rams beat the Cowboys, 24-17, on a frozen Texas day that magnified every hurt and made simple tackles sound as if someone was getting hit with a waffle iron.
The next year, inspired by their sudden and unexpected departure from the playoffs, the Cowboys bickered even more, became embroiled in a quarterback controversy and lost to the then 0-11 Buffalo Bills. For the first time in 10 seasons, the Cowboys didn’t advance to postseason play.
“We started needing to get slapped awake in ‘83,” said Tex Schramm, Cowboy president. “In ‘80, ’81 and ‘82, I guess, we were so close (three NFC championship game losses) that all of the sudden we lost track of the real world and all we thought about was winning it, going for the Super Bowl. If we didn’t get to the Super Bowl, everything was a failure. You have the tendency to forget that you have to play games in-between.”
Meanwhile, Landry’s tight smile was replaced by a grimace, and you could have fried an egg on his fedora.
Shortly before the 1985 season, Landry took out pen and paper. He wrote--and it must have hurt: Eastern Division champions .
For the Cowboys to settle for anything less than a visit to the Super Bowl was like substituting Spam for steak. It tasted less important. “But it was reality,” cornerback Everson Walls said.
“Well, you’ve just got to know your personnel, and you’ve got to know the teams that your playing,” Landry said. “You have to set goals that your team has a reasonable chance to make.
“But they can fool you,” he said. “They may go all the way to the Super Bowl.”
Wouldn’t you know it? Almost two years to the day, the Rams get another crack at the Dallas playoff legacy. This time, the Cowboys say they’re ready. No more dissension. No more doubts.
Listen to the Cowboys and you hear chirps of happiness and harmony.
“Now, when you come off the field after scoring a touchdown, you’d think you just saved everybody’s life,” quarterback Danny White said.
“Just call it unity,” Walls said.
Walls recently celebrated his 26th birthday. Nothing against Walls, but in past years you could have gotten by with a bag of chips and a birthday cupcake to feed the number of teammates who attended his party.
This time, he said almost all the Cowboys were there. “That can keep your mind on your teammates a lot,” Walls said. “We really should have more (team parties), I always thought.”
Better late than never is the new Dallas philosophy. A year ago, Walls publicly endorsed a change in quarterbacks, from White to Gary Hogeboom. Now, Walls and White have lockers next to each other and all is forgiven, or at least understood.
This isn’t utopia, mind you. There have been moments of unrest and frustration. Running back Tony Dorsett and Cowboys management took turns calling each other names before a contract was satisfactorily restructured. Hogeboom didn’t send a thank-you note when Landry named White the starting quarterback in 1985. And defensive tackle Randy White wasn’t thrilled when six Cowboy defensive backs wearing sunglasses and hats conducted a television interview shortly before a kickoff against the St. Louis Cardinals. Dallas lost the game, but unlike past years, the Cowboys quickly and quietly settled the problem.
If nothing else, the Cowboys have discovered they need each other. The superiority complex that came with five Super Bowl appearances in the ‘70s is rarely seen.
“It’s not like when everybody knew they were going to get in the playoffs,” defensive back Dennis Thurman said. “It’s not a gimme like we used to feel it was. Now we have to work.”
Said Dorsett: “We wear that star on the side of our helmets, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to win because of that tradition. Some people respected you so much that they didn’t play well or they always were waiting to get beat instead of going out to play to win. It’s not like that anymore.”
The Cowboys did the necessary things to win the NFC Eastern Division this year. They swept the Washington Redskins and the New York Giants. The St. Louis Cardinals, favored to win the division and the conference, were never a contender.
Dallas also demonstrated a knack for survival, sort of like Huck Finn talking his way out of trouble. The Cowboys lost to the Detroit Lions early in the season and then won four consecutive games. The Chicago Bears visited Texas Stadium and left with a 44-0 victory that had the critics predicting an immediate team collapse. So, of course, the Cowboys win their next two games.
What’s going on here? Dallas loses to the Cincinnati Bengals, 50-24, and then turns around and beats the favored Giants, 28-21. A division title soon is theirs, the first since 1981.
“This team is a very different team,” Landry said. “They seem to rebound pretty well from disaster.
“I’m not worried about it,” he said. “It’s interesting to see what happens.”
It was less interesting in ‘84, when Landry knew the Cowboys had plastic hearts and little spirit. Veteran receiver Drew Pearson, tight end Billy Joe DuPree, defensive lineman Harvey Martin and running back Robert Newhouse retired before the season began. Wide receiver Butch Johnson, a talented performer who never met a mini-cam or notepad he didn’t like, later was traded.
Landry didn’t help the situation by naming Hogeboom the starter, then White, then Hogeboom, then White . . .
The Cowboys won nine games and no one is quite sure how, what with the time spent pulling knives from backs.
“We had a winning record that was a little bit disarming,” Schramm said. “Then we hit rock bottom when we played Buffalo.”
“The awakening,” said Dorsett, when asked about the game.
“Very, very embarrassing,” defensive back Bill Bates said.
Bates said he remembers walking off the Rich Stadium field after the 14-3 loss and saying to himself, “Man, we can just not let this ever happen again.”
The Cowboys won their next two games, lost their last two and missed the playoffs. Funny thing, but the Cowboys were pleased with the two losses.
“It was the first time we played with a lot enthusiasm, with a lot of vigor,” Schramm said. “Last year, with the Buffalo game, the realization finally came it wasn’t like the late ‘70s, when you had so much personnel you could win even when you played half-way.”
Twenty players from the 1983 playoff game against the Rams no longer are on the Cowboy roster. There are 16 new players and eight new starters. There are no quarterback arguments and no new Buffalos.
Instead, say the Cowboys, they are a team trying to reestablish itself. “We’re on somewhat of a mission,” Dorsett said.
Schramm knows all about missions and offers the following story. It involves the Rams.
“In 1975, we went into the playoffs as the wild-card team and went up and beat Minnesota with a ‘Hail Mary’ pass which I’m sure you’ve heard all about,” Schramm said. “Well, the Rams were sitting back there scared to death. If Minnesota wins, the Rams have got to go play in Minnesota. I can guarantee you, because I was with the Rams for 10 years, the Rams don’t like to go and play in Minnesota in December.
“All of the sudden we have to go Los Angeles (for the 1975 conference championship). They thought, ‘We’re in. We’ve got this team coming in here to Los Angeles and we’re home.’
“I got a copy of a party invitation after our game out there (in Minnesota): Pre-Super Bowl Party. Obviously, the team saw it and we beat them, 37-7. Just killed them. They didn’t know it, but they weren’t thinking about the game at all.”
Schramm doesn’t laugh when he tells the story. Too similar to the old Cowboys, way back in 1983.