SUPER BOWL XXVIII / Cowboys 30, Buffalo Bills 13 : ANALYSIS / BOB OATES : Erik Williams Also Plays a Lead Role

In the end it was another Super Bowl rout, 30-13, but the score was only 13-13 when Emmitt Smith went to work Sunday in the third quarter.

Carrying the ball on one down after another, the best player in the league also carried the Dallas Cowboys on his back on the long touchdown drive that finished off the Buffalo Bills.

Or that’s the way it looked.

Is that the way it was?

Not quite.

As great as Smith is, that drive--the most memorable interlude of Super Bowl XXVIII--belonged to Dallas right tackle Erik Williams, the NFL’s best blocker. Using his 324 pounds adroitly--yes, adroitly--Williams opened a long sequence of big holes through Buffalo defensive end Phil Hansen.

On almost every play of that awesome, decisive drive, the Cowboys not only called on the same player, Smith, the NFL’s MVP this season. They kept calling the same play: Smith off tackle.

Smith off Williams, that is--with 325-pound Cowboy left guard Nate Newton pulling to his right every time to widen the hole just a bit just in case.

Repeatedly, Smith followed Williams through Hansen. Or, more exactly, through where Hansen was supposed to be. Outweighed by 50 pounds, Hansen fought Williams gamely, but couldn’t do it, and on the touchdown play he paid for his gameness with a sorely injured knee.

The Bills had won the first half.

Emmitt and Erik won the game.

*

For all but Buffalo fans, watching Emmitt Smith was the most entertaining way to spend the Sunday evening in Atlanta.

In a quarterbacks’ league--a quarterbacks’ era--he has become the dominant player as a 5-foot-9 running back.

What does Emmitt have?

--Because he isn’t a sprinter, Smith, a bodybuilder, has built himself a stronger pair of legs than those of any other running back.

--He has also built himself a left arm so strong that nobody can strip the ball away. Thus, unlike Thurman Thomas, he rarely fumbles.

--A nearly perfect scrimmage runner, Smith combines instant acceleration with his power, and he finishes off almost every run by cutting right to left. That way he can always carry the ball in his left hand.

--He fakes just enough to keep each tackler off balance, meaning he almost never absorbs a square hit.

--With uncanny vision, Smith sees the whole scrimmage scene from weak-side tackle across to the tight end, and, unlike many backs, invariably hits the hole. On any scrimmage play, there’s only one hole, which might be anywhere, but no matter where it is, Smith finds it.

And finds it quickly.

*

In a sport in which the coaching is otherwise about as effective in one franchise as it is in another, Dallas Coach Jimmy Johnson has pulled so far in front of his competition that he doesn’t really have any competition any more.

There’s probably no doubt in any rival’s mind now, in fact, that Johnson is up there with the better coaches of the last half century, Vince Lombardi and Bill Walsh.

Indeed, he is accomplishing things that they couldn’t. At Lombardi’s peak, the Green Bay Packers never smashed good opponents flat with the flair that Johnson’s Cowboys have exhibited in the last two weeks against the San Francisco 49ers and Buffalo.

Buffalo’s Thurman Thomas is taking the blame today for the fumbles that seemed to turn the game around--but he should quit apologizing. The defeat wasn’t Thomas’ fault. Turnovers didn’t beat Buffalo. The Cowboys were always going to win this one easily no later than the moment they could get themselves interested in an inferior opponent.

And as it happened, that was in the third quarter.

Putting everything together after a listless first half, the Cowboys dominated Buffalo once more with the NFL’s simplest defense and offense.

They faced the Bills’ fast break with their usual zone defense behind a 4-3 front that worked, as usual, because Johnson reasons that defense is two things only: speed and reaction.

He therefore recruits one kind of defensive player only--the man who runs fast and loves to hit. Johnson won--and has usually won, college or pro--for these reasons:

--He motivates astutely. In both college and pro ball, he has consistently fielded a wild, crazy, aggressive kind of team. And in the emotional sport that football is, emotion was much of it again in the second half Sunday.

--He is a better judge of football players’ skills than other coaches are. So he always has the better of the talent.

Johnson’s offensive line is the biggest ever. He has the most successful off-tackle running game ever brought into the NFL. And though his offense is painfully simple, Dallas’ play-calling is more imaginative than that of any rival.

In particular, with the finest running back of our times, Johnson uses Smith as a counter-puncher .

Against Buffalo, the Cowboys attacked with Troy Aikman’s passes, then sneaked in the winning punches with Smith’s runs.

As a way to play football, that has been as successful as it is unique.

*

This can be said for the Bills, four-time Super Bowl losers. The most difficult thing to do in football is to keep winning big games--year after year--and the Bills are still doing that. Every season, for four long seasons, they’ve won all but one big game. And that’s tougher to do than it sounds.

Champions rarely repeat. For runners-up it’s even even harder. For runner-up players have to get over the bitter disappointment of losing before they can start winning again.

Buffalo quarterback Jim Kelly and his coach, Marv Levy, are alike in one respect. They have a rare perspective on what’s really important.

And that is living--and winning--next year.

Most of the time, anyway.