Those Are Mighty Big Boots Switzer Is Trying to Fill : NFC: Dallas’ journey toward a third consecutive Super Bowl victory begins today against Green Bay.

Even the bootlegger’s boy admits it, between snorts and cackles and reminders that, by gosh, his team was still world champion last time he looked.

Today is the first day of the rest of Barry Switzer’s life.

“The transition period here is not complete,” he said. “The season ain’t over yet, coach.”

Today, in an NFC second-round playoff game between Switzer’s Dallas Cowboys and the visiting Green Bay Packers at 9:30 a.m. PST, Switzer will be asked to do something he has carefully avoided during his first 10 months as Cowboy coach.

He will be asked to become Jimmy Johnson.

Three victories from becoming the first team in NFL history to win three consecutive Super Bowls, the Cowboys are doubled over and gasping.

* They have lost two of their last three games.

* Their quarterback, Troy Aikman, has one touchdown pass and seven interceptions in his last five starts.

* Their running back, Emmitt Smith, will be making his first appearance after a straining his left hamstring three weeks ago.

* One of their wide receivers, Alvin Harper, caught two passes in December. Their other wide receiver, Michael Irvin, is recovering from a thigh injury and has missed most late-season practices.

* The most aggression by any team member in the last month occurred on an airplane after a victory in New Orleans. Smith climbed over his seat and attacked safety James Washington after Smith was hit in the back with a canned good during a food fight.

Is it any wonder the Cowboys felt the need to remind themselves of their predicament by plastering a blown-up reproduction of a recent national magazine cover on their locker room wall?

“Dallas Is Dead,” reads the cover.

“Everybody is already counting us out of it,” Switzer said in what sounded like practice for his pregame speech. “It’s just us 80 in that locker room. Just us 80 against everybody.

“We still think we’re the best. They’ve all got to prove us wrong.”

That task, expected by most to be completed by the San Francisco 49ers next week at the latest, begins with a Green Bay team that has lost to the Cowboys three times in the last two seasons.

During those losses, the Packers were outscored, 105-62. Most recently, in a 42-31 loss on Thanksgiving, their defense blew a 14-point lead in the final 31 minutes.

Even in the wake of their inspirational victory over the Detroit Lions in the first round of the playoffs last week--yes, they actually held Barry Sanders to minus one yard rushing--the Packers acknowledge they deserve to be heavy underdogs.

“We should be,” Packer Coach Mike Holmgren said. “We’re going to face the same Cowboy team we faced the last three times. We’re under no illusion there.”

Well, maybe a tiny illusion.

This is a Cowboy team that, without its annual late-season prodding by former coach Johnson, has appeared confused under pressure.

In their last game that mattered, the Cowboys lost to the Cleveland Browns when a potential game-winning pass to Jay Novacek was stopped 10 inches from a touchdown. Afterward, when asked separately, four Cowboy coaches and players cited four different primary receivers.

The next week, Smith injured his hamstring in the second half of a meaningless game in New Orleans that brought Switzer more criticism.

“I don’t even think about all that,” Switzer said. “There’s a lot of people still shooting for me, but I’ve got a football team to worry about.

“I guarantee you, we will be ready to play this game.”

The Packers, however cautious, feel that for the first time against the Cowboys in the Holmgren regime, they also will be ready.

“With each game, we played them a little bit better,” Holmgren said. “With each loss, the odds slip in your favor a little bit more. . . . I’m hoping this fourth one is a charm.”

If nothing else, Holmgren said, “I expect our team to be no longer intimidated by them.”

Even without their scoring leader, wide receiver Sterling Sharpe, who will miss the playoffs because of a neck injury, the Packers have at least a couple of guys who can intimidate.

Quarterback Brett Favre passed for four touchdowns and no interceptions in their earlier game against the Cowboys this season. Even if all those touchdown passes did go to Sharpe, Favre proved he is no longer fooled by Dallas’ league-best defense.

Or any defense, for that matter, after throwing 20 touchdown passes with seven interceptions in the last eight games.

“Brett is still the same gutsy, gun-slinging guy that he always was,” Packer tackle Ken Ruettgers said. “But now he’s more under control. You can see it in his face, you can hear it in the huddle.

“He’s like, ‘OK, I’m in charge of this thing now.’ ”

The other Packer capable of getting under the Cowboys’ bonnet is Reggie White, who was moved from defensive end to tackle last week, leading to the dramatic stop of Sanders. Fritz Shurmur, Packer defensive coordinator, said he will do the same thing today in hopes of slowing down Smith.

White hopes to recapture some of the good feelings that surrounded him at Texas Stadium on Thanksgiving, when he played despite a badly bruised elbow because he says the injury was cured earlier in the week during a “healing.”

A couple of days before the game, White was talking on the phone with close friend Cris Carter of the Minnesota Vikings. Together, Carter says, they prayed.

White said he then fell asleep. When he woke up, the swelling around his elbow had substantially decreased.

“I think a lot of people still think my arm is not well--and it is,” White said. “I think some of the reason the media couldn’t take me saying that God healed me is because you all can’t interview God. . . . If I would have said a psychic or something, you would have interviewed him.”

One psychic might say that this game will be decided in the weak Packer secondary, where Cowboy receivers Harper and Irvin have run free for 26 catches and five touchdowns in their previous three meetings.

Another might say that if the Packers can stop Smith as they stopped Sanders, the Cowboys will not be prepared to react. Confusion will once again lead to defeat.

For Switzer, none of that matters.

Having survived his first NFL regular season, he now must prove that he can guide one of football’s most talented teams through the first level of the playoffs. He has a legacy to keep.

“Now wait a minute,” he said. “Haven’t there already been one round of the playoffs? Haven’t we already gotten through that? We had a bye, if I’m correct. Don’t that count for something?”