Rash moves won't be the right ones for Dallas Cowboys | Williams
Back in the 1990s, when newspapers had the money and the manpower to go wherever, The Avalanche-Journal covered all the Dallas Cowboys' home games over a seven-year period, plus the Super Bowls, plus training camps in the blistering hot settings of Austin and Wichita Falls.
You might say I was doing my best Earl Scudday, the A-J sportswriter who'd set a standard for man-on-the-scene Cowboys coverage years before.
I would take an 8 a.m. flight out of Lubbock to be at Texas Stadium for a noon or 3 p.m. kickoff on Sunday and the last flight back on Sunday night. When the Cowboys won Super Bowls, beating the Buffalo Bills to cap the 1992 and 1993 seasons and the Pittsburgh Steelers to put a bow on the 1995 season, we were there.
Says here that Michael Jackson was the halftime act at the Rose Bowl for the first of those. I suppose. I was too busy typing my first-half running into a TRS Model 102 to notice. Three years later, when Larry Brown's interception wrapped up a Cowboys' Super Bowl win over the Steelers, I was in the elevator at Sun Devil Stadium, headed down for the post-game interviews.
Famous players and coaches aside, I'm not sure I've ever been starstruck except when crossing paths with Jim Murray, the legendary sports columnist from Los Angeles, in a Super Bowl press room.
Those were the days. Surely back then, I didn't think they would last forever — Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin would have a shelf life. Jimmy Johnson could coach for only so long and then how well could Barry Switzer, after winning the third of those championships, sustain it?
But flying back from Phoenix in January 1996 after recapping Dallas' third Super Bowl title in four years, I wouldn't have expected to be sitting here 28 years later, still waiting for the Cowboys to do diddly squat in the playoffs for the first time since.
On Sunday, the NFC East champion Cowboys lost at home as a 2-seed to the 7-seed Green Bay Packers. It was never a game, really, the final count 48-32, but Dallas' deficits 27-0 and 48-16 at points.
It's the third year in a row the Cowboys have rolled through the regular season and made an early exit from the playoffs. Not only have they gone 28 years without a Super Bowl appearance; they've gone 28 years without even making the NFC championship game.
In Sunday's immediate aftermath, some people spoke of the dismissal of Mike McCarthy as though it were a foregone conclusion. Oddsmakers list Bill Belichick as favorite to be Dallas's next head coach. How uninspiring that would be. Belichick's teams are 29-38 the past four years with one playoff appearance, that a first-round loss. Not to mention the man's soon to be 72.
An ouster of McCarthy might happen but, as of this writing, we're still waiting. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is in a tough spot, with a talented team good enough to go 12-5 three years in a row, yet do nothing when it counts.
My advice would be to sit tight. Don't make a rash decision to appease the disgruntled.
These scenarios still can work out. Go back to yet another generation, and the early 2020s look a great deal like the late 1960s. From 1966 to 1969, the Cowboys went 42-12-2, won their division every year and then conked out at crunch time. The Lombardi Packers earned Super Bowl berths by dealing Dallas heartbreak in the first two of those seasons, 34-27 at the Cotton Bowl and then 21-17 in the Ice Bowl at Lambeau Field.
The Blanton Collier Cleveland Browns ended the Cowboys' season in '68 and '69, those games bearing a resemblance to Sunday's. Dallas was favored in both. In the '68 game in Cleveland, Don Meredith threw three interceptions, was benched and the 12-2 Cowboys lost 31-20. In the '69 game, Vegas had Dallas as a 7-point favorite, and the Browns bashed the Cowboys 38-14 at the Cotton Bowl.
The Dallas Cowboys of that era became "Next Year's Team." That was the condescending moniker. Tom Landry? Branded a great tactician who couldn't win the big one.
Over the next nine seasons beginning in 1970, the Cowboys would make the NFC championship game seven times, the Super Bowl five times and win it all twice. Landry secured his place as one of the game's all-time great coaches.
This is a different era. Rosters change more from year to year. Most all the key pieces from this 12-5 Dallas team should be in place again next season, though. A knee-jerk reaction is not what they need.
The Cowboys ought to keep it together and take one more shot.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Rash moves won't be the right ones for Dallas Cowboys | Williams
