Cowboys Might Be Destined to Become Extinct NFL Elite Team

This victory celebration, of course, was different from the first two. This time it was Barry Switzer, not Jimmy Johnson, who received the Gatorade bath. This time it was Switzer, not Johnson, who touched the Lombardi Trophy and who could proclaim the Dallas Cowboys the best damn football team in the land.

Yet these three Super Bowl triumphs by Dallas over the past four seasons are linked by a common bond. They are the building blocks that established these Cowboys as an elite modern-era team, raising them into that rarefied atmosphere already occupied by Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers, Chuck Noll’s Pittsburgh Steelers and the rest of the legendary clubs since the late 1940s. An unprecedented three rings in four years is the resume of a dynasty. No debate needed.

“They are,” says Noll, who knows something about these things, “a great, great team. People think it is easy to do what they have done. But it isn’t. Or more would have done it.”

But as we watched the Cowboys strut their stuff, as only Deion and friends can do, there also was a sad sense of finality about what was happening on the turf of Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe.

For Dallas also is the last elite team the NFL will see.

The destructive effects of free agency, gnawing away at the best and improving the weakest, will see to that. “Free agency is the great equalizer,” says Tom Flores, who coached the Raiders to two Super Bowl rings. “It can close the talent gap faster than you could do in the past. And it is too hard now to keep great teams together. That is why I don’t think you will ever see dynasties anymore.”

Even this last dynasty is hanging on now. Far from dominating the Steelers in Super Bowl XXX, the Cowboys needed two timely takeaways to survive the 27-17 triumph. It was a game they should have lost but didn’t. They won’t be so fortunate in the future.

“We won’t be as good next year as we are this year,” Switzer says, realistically. Free agency likewise will make sure of that.

This glowing moment in the cool Arizona night stands as the peak moment for an historical team. It never will be the same for this franchise or for this league. For the gap between the Cowboys and the rest of the NFL closed noticeably this season; the Steelers’ magnificent effort last Sunday served to accentuate what losses to the Washington Redskins and Philadelphia Eagles already had exposed. Remember, Dallas had to struggle to secure home-field advantage in these playoffs. And the gap in 1996 will diminish even further, so much so that the Cowboys won’t make it four out of five.

“We’d like to think we have positioned ourselves to continue to challenge for the Super Bowl,” says Owner Jerry Jones, who gained sweet satisfaction winning this game with Switzer instead of Johnson, who was cast aside after championship No. 2. “But we know we will have to suffer some hits.”

By now, it is obvious Jones knows something about building and maintaining teams. But he has paid a terrible salary-cap price to continue the Cowboy greatness, and it is that overwhelming debt to the future that will return his franchise to a lower level. And the crowning irony is that a defense that bailed out the Cowboys against the Steelers will be so ravaged by free agency in the off-season it no longer will be of championship caliber.

If Pittsburgh could come this close to a ring, then why shouldn’t teams such as Green Bay, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Kansas City, San Diego and even Philadelphia and Miami suddenly feel more optimistic in 1996 about their championship chances? Combine that hope with the blows the Cowboys will take in free agency, and this next season could prove to be one of the most wide-open and electrifying in years. And possibly even the NFC’s domination of the Super Bowl, now 12 seasons long, finally will end.

“You don’t feel Dallas and San Francisco are invincible anymore,” Packers quarterback Brett Favre says. “What happened to both of them during the season gave everyone else the feeling they were now vulnerable. You look at it like, ‘If we can get just a little better, we could catch up and overcome them.’ ”

The 49ers need a running back; the Packers some defensive help. Both are possible off=season improvements. Still, the Steelers are obvious first choices to jump on top. But they have a major problem of their own. Quarterback Neil O’Donnell, whose two poorly thrown passes led to two Cowboy touchdowns and decided the game’s outcome, is a free agent who wants to return to Pittsburgh. But he will be a popular prospect for other teams, particularly the Eagles, who need to upgrade a position now occupied by Rodney Peete. Without O’Donnell, the Steelers will tumble considerably. With him, and with a defense that should be healthier and better, they are formidable. Remember, they lost only two of their last 12 games, and both could have just as easily been victories.

“O’Donnell is underappreciated,” says Phil Simms, the former New York Giants quarterback who now is a TV commentator. “He is a hell of a quarterback who still is young (29). He’s going to get better. I have the same feeling about him that I had about Brett Favre two years ago.”

O’Donnell had moments of brilliance against the Cowboys. But when compared to the steadiness of Troy Aikman, his inexperience in big games showed glaringly. “As long as you stay under control and don’t make mistakes, you can win games like this even if it looks like you are struggling,” says Aikman, who threw only one interception in three playoff games this postseason. That postseason experience was the only major difference between the Cowboys and Steelers this time around--”our nucleus carries us because they know how to win,” Jones says--but even that edge is dissipating.

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Three years ago, when Dallas won its first title under the Jones’ regime, league executives forecast the Cowboys’ eventual salary-cap headaches. He was caught in a Catch-22. If he signed his best players, particularly the magnificent trio of Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin, then he would tie up so much of his available money he couldn’t afford other quality players. But if he worried about the long-term implications of the cap and didn’t continue to sign his stars, then he would reduce his chances of winning multiple championships. He chose the first route, and now the implications of that decision will kick in dramatically.

“But he did the right thing,” says Charley Casserly, general manager of the Redskins. “You have to win it while you can, when you have a shot. These chances don’t come around very often and you can’t blow them. You have to keep those three guys around for whatever it takes.”

A few numbers best illustrate what Dallas and Jones now face. His top 15 players will earn $32.8 million of next year’s expected $40 million to $41 million cap maximum. Teams can carry 53 players. If he pays each of the 38 players needed to fill out the roster the minimum salary of $200,000, then he must fork out another $7.6 million. That would meet cap requirements but it would leave him with a bunch of stars surrounded by mediocrity. Call it the Price of Deion; signing Sanders to his $35 million contract last fall removed Jones’ future flexibility even as it served as the final piece in this year’s Super Bowl puzzle.

“Dallas was better than the rest of us in part because they had the depth,” says Mike Allman, the Seattle Seahawks’ player-personnel director, who has been scouting in the NFL for 31 years. “But free agency is killing their depth, which makes them more vulnerable to injuries and gets them more even with the rest of us. That’s one of the reasons you will never build a dynasty from scratch now that we have free agency. You can’t maintain depth. If a backup is any good, he will leave after his first three years for someplace he can play.”

Future strong teams will suffer from the same problem Jones is encountering. They can’t afford to keep a huge nucleus of stars around for their entire careers. “When we had our good teams,” says Joe Gibbs, the former Redskins coach who was selected to the Hall of Fame Saturday, “we had a nucleus of 12 players we could rely on. Now if you can keep eight you would be lucky. That is a major difference. That spreads out the talent more evenly around the league, so it becomes more difficult to dominate.”

To put it simply, Jones doesn’t have enough money anymore to keep every star on this roster. He has 35 players under contract for next season, tying up $40.8 million. And that is before he decides what to do with seven key unrestricted or restricted free agents (see chart on Page 16). Jones’ starting linebacking corps, half of his secondary and a star lineman are contract liabilities.

The worst-case defensive scenario is this: Of all the current linebackers, only reserve Godfrey Myles returns next season, meaning the Cowboys will have to find two starters and the money to pay them; cornerback Larry Brown, whose market value improved off Sunday’s MVP effort, doesn’t come back; outstanding safety Darren Woodson doesn’t get the franchise designation and is not re-signed; corner Deion Sanders plays baseball again and misses half the NFL season; and injured cornerback Kevin Smith, who tore an Achilles’ in September, doesn’t come back fully from his injury and leaves the secondary in a mess. And defensive tackle Russell Maryland, an unrestricted free agent, signs with another team, eliminating what once was incredible depth along the line.

“No matter how good your offense is, you still win championships with defense,” Flores said a few days before this Super Bowl. And this Dallas defense, which Switzer rightfully credited for the victory, won’t be close to title caliber by September.

Their offensive superiority also will be depleted in the off-season. Jones faces the immediate challenge of making cuts before February 15 to keep his roster under the projected cap figure. He will have 35 players under contract for $40.8 million and likely would have to fork out a few more million to retain rights to his restricted free agents. He will have to consider releasing a number of players from a pool of starters such as tackle Erik Williams (he’s due a $5 million signing bonus Feb. 1 or he becomes a free agent).

Normally, Jones would renegotiate the huge contracts of his major stars to help his cap problem, but he re-did eight contracts, including Aikman’s and Irvin’s, to make room to sign Sanders. Under league rules, he can’t change any of those deals for a year, leaving him with little immediate leeway. And he already has said he will work with Smith, who has a year left on his contract, to rewrite and extend his pact.

Smith, not Aikman, is considered the Cowboys’ MVP--”everything starts with him when you want to defend the Cowboys,” says Pittsburgh’s defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau.