Cowboys’ Johnson Winning Off the Field : Pro football: His trades, free-agent signings slowly are rebuilding a winning franchise in Dallas.

After 14 games last season the Dallas Cowboys had buried the 1-15 disaster of 1989. They were 7-7 and poised to make history. No NFL team had made the playoffs after a one-victory season.

It still hasn’t happened. Cowboy quarterback Troy Aikman suffered a separated shoulder and lost its final two games.

This season the Cowboys were the darlings of the media. Many publications picked them to finish over .500 and make the playoffs. The opening victory over the Cleveland Browns seemed to confirm that the franchise had arrived. And then they lost back-to-back home games, 33-31 to the Washington Redskins and 24-0 defeat to the Philadelphia Eagles.

“When you have a young team,” Coach Jimmy Johnson said, “you are more emotional. We’ve had a lot of peaks and valleys. As we grow older and more experienced, I think you’ll see more consistency.”

The Dallas Cowboys are going to be a good team; it simply won’t happen for at least another season or two. Johnson and the Cowboys are 0-4 against the New York Giants, but Sunday’s game between 2-2 teams at Texas Stadium looks like a fair fight. The reason is Johnson.

When Jerry Jones bought the team in 1989, he fired the only coach the Cowboys had employed. In Tom Landry’s later years the team’s personnel department fell behind the times and the talent on the roster eroded.

Jones signed his old college roommate at the University of Arkansas to a 10-year contract and made him one of the most powerful coaches in the NFL.

In three years Johnson, 48, has fashioned a startling makeover. Thirty-two of the team’s active 45 players last week are Johnson additions. He has engineered more than 30 trades and 20 Plan B free-agent signings. In 1991 alone, Dallas had 17 draft choices.

This is because Johnson already has proved himself a shrewd general manager. He sent unhappy running back Herschel Walker to the Minnesota Vikings in 1989 for a package of draft choices and players that turned into running back Emmitt Smith, cornerback Issiac Holt, defensive end Daniel Stubbs and running back Alonzo Highsmith. Incredibly, Dallas still has Minnesota’s first-, second- and third-round picks in 1992.

Johnson cleverly chose quarterback Steve Walsh in the 1989 supplemental draft, then dealt him to the New Orleans Saints in 1990 for three more high draft choices, two of which went toward the 1991 draft’s first pick, defensive tackle Russell Maryland.

Maryland is fourth on the depth chart at tackle, but promises to be an impact player. When he and the rookies and future draft choices mature in, say, 1993, Dallas will be tough to beat. For Johnson, it can’t come soon enough.

His Miami Hurricanes went 44-4 his last four seasons there, including the undefeated 1987 national championship team. Then the Cowboys lost that many games in the first month of the 1989 regular season. Johnson and his Teflon hairstyle were the butt of jokes around the league.

Aikman, the first pick in 1989, took a pounding as the only frontline player on the league’s second-worst offense. In retrospect, it’s amazing Dallas managed to beat Washington.

Last year, even with the addition of Smith, the offense was ranked last among the NFL’s 28 teams. The defense, however, was credible. The Cowboys finished 7-9 and, despite losing their final two games with backup Babe Laufenberg at quarterback, showed enormous improvement. Johnson became the first in NFL history to win a Coach of the Year award with a record below .500.

The biggest turnaround in franchise history was aided by a soft schedule that included three victories against fifth-place teams, two against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and one against the San Diego Chargers. This year’s schedule is tougher; in November, for instance, there are three consecutive road games against playoff teams.

As you might expect from a young team, the Cowboys are up and down. They were horrible enough to allow Philadelphia to sack Aikman 11 times in that shutout loss. They were smart enough to forget about it and allow one sack in last week’s 17-9 victory at Phoenix against the Cardinals.

“Last year we were 1-3 and didn’t get to .500 until the 14th week of the season,” Johnson said. “Now we get to .500 quicker.”

There’s a lot to like about the Cowboys. For starters, they still have four extra draft choices coming from Johnson’s deals with Minnesota and New Orleans. Smith is leading the NFL with 450 yards rushing and Aikman, who Giants linebacker Carl Banks insists will be the league’s next star quarterback, is the National Football Conference’s fifth-rated passer. The talent at wide receiver is breathtaking. The defense, for its part, has stopped the run effectively.

There are some minor problems. The offensive line is spotty at best and the defense has produced only one interception and five sacks. These are all matters for next year’s draft.

Johnson seems awfully impatient for a guy with a 10-year contract. When Landry christened this expansion franchise in 1960, it took six seasons to come within two games of .500. Johnson already has reached that mark and before the season he predicted his team would make the playoffs. A win Sunday would be a step in the right direction.

“I don’t know what the schedule is,” Johnson said Wednesday. “We’re trying to make improvements in this team as fast as we can. But we do have a lot of inexperienced players and we make a lot of mistakes.

“But I have to say I’m pleased with our football team right now.”