PRO FOOTBALL / BOB OATES : Key to the Cowboys’ Success Is Johnson’s Eye for Talent

For a football coach, there have always been two ways to the top:

--Organizing, motivating and teaching players effectively, obviously, amount to one way.

--Recognizing superior new talent is an equally helpful, and perhaps surer, way.

“It isn’t every coach who can look at large groups of college athletes and say: ‘We’ve got to take Jerry Rice (or) Emmitt Smith (or) Alexander Wright,’ ” Hall of Famer Sid Gillman said recently.

The Dallas Cowboys seem to have such a coach.

Jimmy Johnson, whose team is the youngest in the league, has advanced the Cowboys to a status as co-favorite with the San Francisco 49ers to win the Super Bowl.

As the month-long NFL playoffs begin this week, enough evidence is in to conclude that the foundation for Dallas’ success is Johnson’s knack for recognizing excellence in young prospects.

Since 1989, the Cowboys have risen from a league-low 1-15 finish to a club-record 13-3 with a coach who, making the personnel decisions himself, has proved to be an unusually able talent scout.

The Johnson organization, otherwise, doesn’t differ greatly from those he has been beating.

Nor is Johnson’s strategy superior, Gillman said. The Cowboys are winning with the I formation and other old staples.

They’re simply doing things a little better than most of their opponents. Which suggests that Dallas has better athletes--as found by Johnson in drafts, trades and elsewhere, and as hired by the club’s owner, Jerry Jones.

The Cowboys, with a few exceptions, are basically a no-name team--particularly in the offensive line and on defense.

Not one of their defensive starters made the Pro Bowl this year, despite the Cowboys’ achievements as a unit: They led the league on defense.

That takes talent.

Raiders benefit: The talent level is so high in Dallas that Johnson can’t keep it all. And that is one of the reasons the Raiders ended their season on a winning note Saturday in Washington.

The newest Raider receiver, Alexander Wright, is a Cowboy castoff who made two of the four key catches during 37-year-old quarterback Vince Evans’ three- touchdown rally.

Johnson, who drafted Wright second in 1990, still admires his ability, but has expressed some worries about his work ethic.

The Raiders haven’t.

All they need now are a new quarterback and some more old Cowboys.

It seems clear enough again that Emmitt J. Smith III, the league’s leading ground gainer for the second successive year, is the engine that drives the Cowboy machine.

At quarterback, Troy Aikman has had his moments. But most of their opponents are plainly still lining up to stop Smith. Then if it’s a pass, they react to Aikman.

Smith weighs 203 pounds and has the legs and lower body of a fullback and the acceleration and moves of a scatback. He is seldom hit squarely.

Smith shows much of Herschel Walker’s power, combined with many of Barry Sanders’ moves.

The thing that defines Smith is that he is everlastingly battling forward, leading to the kind of results that the Cowboys love: They are rarely stopped except when Smith is stopped.

Among other things, he typifies Johnson’s personnel savvy.

In the 1990 draft, NFL teams passed Smith over 16 times before Johnson traded up to take him 17th in the first round.

Considering the shortage of good running backs in pro football, that slot was low for a player of Smith’s caliber.

If the Cowboys get to the Super Bowl, he will still have a lot to prove. That game has never been won by a team with the league’s leading ground gainer.

AFC on the move: An NFC representative, San Francisco or Dallas, figures to win the Super Bowl again this time.

Veteran NBC commentator Charlie Jones, who has called AFL and AFC games for the last 28 years, doesn’t have too much trouble with that thought.

But, as Jones compares the field of 12 playoff teams, he ranks the conferences even.

“There were nine interconference games this season (matching) playoff teams, and the AFC won five of the nine,” he said.

Buffalo beat San Francisco and New Orleans in landmark tests, Kansas City beat Philadelphia and Washington, and Houston beat Minnesota.

“Six of the nine games were on NFC fields,” said Jones. “Buffalo won at San Francisco and at New Orleans.”

The NFC edge, he contends, is in the middle of the pack, and probably at the bottom.

“But the AFC is gaining,” he said. “Their best teams are already as strong as the NFC’s best.”

Injustices inevitable: The league’s 73rd regular season ended without major rhubarbs over officiating mistakes that could have been corrected with instant-replay reviews.

That isn’t to say, however, that the NFL will get through the playoffs trouble free.

If a big game turns on a bad call, the league will hear about it from innumerable critics.

Playoff games are nationally televised, so playoff injustice is magnified.

The NFL’s club owners, however, have been so preoccupied with their labor problem this year that they didn’t get around to instant replay.

Starting next year:

--The league can continue to live without instant replay during the regular season.

--In the playoffs, instant-replay officiating should be mandatory.

Oilers survive: Of the three run-and-shoot teams in the playoffs a year ago, only one has returned. The Houston Oilers will be at Buffalo in Saturday’s first game to find out if their run-and-shoot machinery is operable in cold weather.

Will the new system be accepted in pro football next year if quarterback Warren Moon takes the Oilers to a postseason victory or two?

June Jones, the offensive coordinator of the Atlanta team that netted 445 yards on run-and-shoot plays Sunday to 276 for the Rams, but lost, 38-27, isn’t hopeful.

“I don’t think it will ever get respect,” he said. “The people that appreciate it already do, and the ones that don’t never will. (The problem is that) it has a name attached to it. Everything else is just football.

“The (run-and-shoot) is different, and any time you come along--no matter what it is--if you’re different than what other people are doing, you become looked at closer.

“If you take a stance--it doesn’t matter if it’s in politics or you do something dramatically different in the business world--you’re going to be looked at and evaluated differently than somebody who’s just doing the norm.”

In addition, this year, the Falcons were trying to play without a defense.

As for the Detroit Lions, a 1991 run-and-shoot power, they abandoned it for much of this season and fell out of the race.

Quote Department:

--Mike Ditka, Chicago coach: “To coach again next year is my goal. But a lot of goals go unfulfilled in life.”

--Barry Word, Kansas City running back: “Around this team, you learn quickly that fumbles aren’t tolerated. You take care of the ball, or you sit down.”

--Rickey Jackson, New Orleans linebacker, on the Saints’ many hometown critics: “I guess we’re dull. We’re also 12-4.”

--Bobby Hebert, New Orleans quarterback: “Only one or two teams have won more than us, and in those towns (San Francisco and Dallas) the players are heroes.”