It Slips Away From Dallas in One Play : Pro football: Stoyanovich’s 41-yard field goal kick blocked, but Dolphins get ball back and win game, 16-14.

Don Shula has coached in 486 NFL games, but never had he witnessed anything like Leon Lett’s blunder on a bizarre snowy Thanksgiving Day in Texas Stadium.

“I’ve been around a lot of football games but I’ve never seen one end like that before,” the Miami coach said of Pete Stoyanovich’s second-chance field goal that gave the Dolphins a startling 16-14 victory over the Dallas Cowboys.

Lett, whose play in the Super Bowl allowed Buffalo’s Don Beebe to catch him from behind and stop a sure touchdown, touched the ball after Stoyanovich’s 41-yard attempt was blocked. Miami’s Jeff Dellenbach recovered on the Dallas one with three seconds to play.

With his teammates scraping away snow to clear a kicking area, Stoyanovich then hit the winner through the snowy mist from 19 yards out on a day better fit for tobogganing than football.

The frozen crowd at Texas Stadium sat in shocked amazement. Cowboys Jerry Jones, jubilant on the sidelines moments earlier, suddenly had a confused look.

“We had it won,” Jones said. “Then it was taken away.”

As for the Dolphins, they piled on each other as if they had just won the AFC championship.

“I thought it was all over when Pete got blocked but at least our people had the knowledge to get down there and recover it,” Shula said. “You don’t ever give Stoyanovich a second chance.”

Said Dellenbach: “We all had the presence of mind that they had to touch the ball so we stayed away. I tried to get them to touch it and they did. We knew what the rules were.”

Stoyanovich said his first kick was too low.

“I was too close to the line of scrimmage but didn’t know it because of the snow covering the markers,” he said. “... it must have been incredible entertainment.”

Ironically, Lett had lost the ball on the 1-yard line in the last Super Bowl to Beebe, who batted it out of his hands after a downfield chase with the game out of reach.

“It’s the most disappointing loss I’ve ever been around,” Dallas coach Jimmy Johnson said. “We had it won. Leon made a mistake. One of a hundred mistakes in the game. But that one cost it.”

Johnson added: “I still don’t know exactly what happened but someone said Leon’s leg hit the ball as he slid. We are hurting now.”

Lett hid from his shame afterward as teammates fetched his clothes from the dressing room.

“We never assume anything and we go over ever eventuality,” said special teams coach Joe Avezzano. “But there’s no way we can go over it every day.”

Michael Irvin said the Cowboys were already celebrating victory.

“I grabbed Troy (Aikman) and we were hugging, then they said they had the ball,” Irvin said. “It was all so strange.”

Rookie Kevin Williams caught a touchdown pass and returned a punt 64 yards for a touchdown as Dallas apparently had the game in hand.

But fate took a hand and reached out again to Lett as Miami raised its record to 9-2 while Dallas dropped to 7-4.

The game was played in the harsh conditions of a 5-degree wind-chill factor. It was the first time it had ever snowed during a Cowboys’ regular-season home game in Texas Stadium.

Williams gave Dallas a 14-7 halftime lead when he skated across the frozen turf 64 yards for a touchdown on a punt return with 27 seconds left. Williams euded four tacklers and celebrated the touchdown with an Olympic-quality knee slide into the snow-covered end zone.

The Dophins received second-half field goals of 20 and 31 yards from Stoyanovich but couldn’t score a touchdown.