Jeffcoat Gets Reprieve from Doomsday Sentence

The way it was told to Jim Jeffcoat in 1983, “Doomsday” was the name of the defensive unit he had been invited to join, not a way of life.

“When I came here,” Jeffcoat says, “the Dallas Cowboys were, quote-unquote, ‘America’s Team.’ They were supposed to go to three or four Super Bowls and have perennial All-Pros and all these things. . .

“When you think of the Dallas Cowboys, you think of the Randy Whites, the Bob Lillys, Roger Staubach. You never expect to lose. That’s the mentality. I mean, the first game I played, we were losing to the Redskins by, I think, 14 or 21 points at halftime, and when we walked into the locker room, I was expecting the coaches to go crazy and berserk.

“But the coaches did not say anything. They just went over what we were doing wrong, really calm, and said, ‘Let’s go get ‘em.’ And we won the game.

“I said to myself, ‘This is amazing.’ In a situation like that, I’d be frantic--wondering what’s going on. But they were relaxed and just had this confidence that they could accomplish anything, that they could score however many points they needed to win this game. And they did.

“It was impressive.”

It was also fleeting. Dallas went 12-4 during that 1983 season, breaking in a young sack-starved defensive end from Arizona State along the way, but by the time Jeffcoat was entrenched as a starter, the end of the Cowboy dynasty as we knew it was at hand.

In 1986, the Cowboys’ streak of 20 consecutive winning seasons fizzled to a close at 7-9.

In 1988, the Cowboys set a franchise record for defeats in a single season--13.

In 1989, that record fell, along with the Cowboys, who did so 15 times in 16 weeks.

One-and-fifteen.

Jeffcoat had to take another look at the side of his helmet, just to make sure. No blue horseshoe. No winking buccaneer. No wincing patriot. It was still the star of Dallas, which meant he still had to be a Cowboy.

But everything around him looked like Tampa Bay.

“The worst thing that happened,” Jeffcoat recalls, “is that people started putting bags on their heads. You know you’re in trouble then.”

And those were the Cowboy fans.

Cowboy opponents ran up scores like 28-0, 30-7 and 31-13. They ran up and down the plastic field inside Texas Stadium. They were making up for lost time and too many lost games during the dead-and-buried 1970s.

“There was gloating going on. I definitely felt it,” Jeffcoat says. “Some of the articles I read, some of the things being said--I think a lot of people figured we were getting our just desserts. Teams were enjoying us being down. They were getting back at us. We got the . . . kicked out of us.”

Players came, players went. Tom Landry was already gone. America’s Headmaster had been replaced after the 1988 season by America’s Hairstyle, Jimmy Johnson, who was learning the hard way that football salvation wasn’t to be found in an aerosol spray can.

“People were saying things like, ‘Coach Johnson can’t turn this thing around and that he inherited a great team at Miami and that he was just mediocre at Oklahoma State,” Jeffcoat says.

“It’s funny. The people who wrote those things then are the same ones calling him a genius today.”

Jeffcoat is talking into a microphone while sitting in the stands on the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Surrounding him are members of the national sports media. Surrounding them are members of the National Football Conference champions, otherwise known as the new and improved Dallas Cowboys.

Four years removed from doomsday, Jeffcoat is now two days removed from Super Bowl XXVII. They said in 1989 that he couldn’t get here from there. They said he was a million miles away.

“It did seem that way,” Jeffcoat concedes. “It did. Back then, you couldn’t even think about being in a Super Bowl. You were just thinking about winning a game.

“The Super Bowl? Shoot, that was something the 49ers and the Redskins and the Giants got to play in.”

The Cowboys climbed back, in world-record speed, and did so by dumping virtually all old baggage. The only players left from Landry’s last playoff team, the 1985 team, and listed on Sunday’s active roster are punter Mike Saxon, offensive tackle Mark Tuinei and Jeffcoat. Only six others predate Johnson.

At 31, Jeffcoat no longer starts, giving way to the fresher legs of Charles Haley and Tony Tolbert. He’s a pass-rushing specialist now, the Cowboys’ designated hitter, and what he hits are NFL quarterbacks. His 11 1/2 sacks in 18 games lead his team.

“They call me ‘The Old Gray One,’ ” Jeffcoat says with a twisted grin. “They give me a hard time. But I always remind them who was the sack leader this year.”

He is asked how he survived the purge.

He grins again.

“I really don’t know how,” is the reply. “I guess it’s because I’ve always been productive. Even in that 1-15 season, I had 11 1/2 sacks and over 100 tackles. . .

“Coach Johnson always said there would be a spot for me on this team. ‘Don’t worry about it, keep doing the things you’ve always done.’ There’s always a place in his system for guys who make plays.”

If it had worked out differently, Jeffcoat claims he’d have understood.

“Coach Johnson was put in an almost no-win situation,” Jeffcoat says. “The toughest thing in any business is taking out old employees and putting in new employees. There’s always going to be hard feelings, there’s always going to become animosity.

“But if you buy a business, you have the right to put people in. If I was gone, I would have never been mad at Coach Johnson, because I realize it’s a business and not a personal attack of Jim Jeffcoat. I just didn’t fit into a scheme.”

Jeffcoat concluded Thursday’s round of media questions by saying he was disappointed in Thursday’s selection of media questions.

“I was waiting for that guy to ask me if I was a tree, what kind of tree would I want to be,” he says. “But he never showed. I’m kind of sad. I had a good answer for him.

“I’d have said I wouldn’t want to be a tree. I’d be a log.”

A very heavy log. A log that refuses to budge for year after year after year.

“I want to be here when this team gets back to where it was before I came,” Jeffcoat says.

Today he is closer than he has ever been. After 10 years, he is only four quarters away.