- 1 day ago
"But free agency" they didn't lose any HOF player to it, garbage excuse
IG: aj_mckenzie416
Twitter: AJMckenzie94847
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Twitter: AJMckenzie94847
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00:16Hi, everybody. I'm Brian Kenney, and welcome to ESPN Classics' Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame,
00:21a series that takes a fresh look at sports personalities who are remembered largely for
00:25their mistakes, controversial moments, or questionable decisions. When Jerry Jones bought the downtrodden
00:31Cowboys in February of 1989, he vowed to raise the team to its former glory. By the mid-1990s,
00:38he had delivered. Dallas, driven by Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, and Michael Irvin, had won three
00:43Super Bowls in four years. But as the American century ended, so did the luster on America's team.
00:53Texas Stadium, in the heyday, is a place to see and be seen.
00:58Hand-off door set to the 10, goes to the outside, five, touchdown!
01:04And by 1988, the place was half empty because people didn't want to associate with the Dallas
01:10Cowboys anymore.
01:11Bumble!
01:13Vikings, touchdown!
01:16Horrible football team. Club bleeding money at an enormous rate, and maybe six or eight
01:24guys who could play on the field.
01:25The Cowboys weren't America's team anymore, so they needed somebody, they needed something
01:30to become alive again.
01:31The Dallas Cowboys were sold tonight to an Arkansas oil millionaire. The deal's first
01:37casualty, the Cowboys' legendary coach, Tom Landry.
01:41After paying $140 million for the corpse, high roller Jerry Jones inserted his old college
01:47chum, and former University of Miami head coach, Jimmy Johnson, in place of Tom Landry.
01:56Despite the ownership change, it didn't seem the Cowboys would return to the Super Bowl
02:01anytime soon.
02:04Jimmy Johnson comes in, and then Jerry Jones come in, and we were full of ridicule.
02:08And then to watch the product that went on the field in 89, you're going, these people
02:13are lost.
02:15We didn't go in with any false assumptions.
02:16I mean, we went into each game knowing we were going to pretty much get beat.
02:20Little did I know that the talent that we had at the University of Miami was better than
02:24what the Cowboys had.
02:26And I just said, hey, you know, we can't win in the NFL with what we have.
02:31Well before the Cowboys finished 1989 at 1-15, the brain trust of Johnson and Jones performed
02:38major surgery in October.
02:40Star running back Herschel Walker was traded to Minnesota for five players and six draft
02:46picks.
02:47With a fresh stack of chips, Johnson stepped to the bargaining table and began building
02:52a fortune of talent.
02:54Jimmy Johnson knows what a football player looks like.
02:57The fact that they got Kevin Smith and Emmitt Smith and Russell Merrill and Darren Woodson
03:02as an offshoot of those picks made this the team of the 90s.
03:06And Matt Smith is off to the races.
03:10The Cowboys wouldn't waste a draft pick.
03:14You looked around five and six and seven, and you find nuggets like Brock Marion and Leon
03:20left.
03:20Here come these young kids with the whole total package together.
03:26They had to change from October 1988 to October 1989.
03:34Cowboys went 1-19.
03:39Basically down and within the league.
03:42It was kind of unique to see how they transitioned from 1-15 to the NFC Championship to the Super
03:50Bowls.
03:51Jakeman with the ball, and he's going deep.
03:53Parker, wide open, touchdown!
03:56In four seasons, Johnson's Cowboys had climbed to the top of the NFL.
04:01In January of 1993, they were back in the Super Bowl.
04:05Shellacking Buffalo 52-17.
04:08And acting as if it weren't nothing at all.
04:11The thing about them is, they were arrogant, they talked trash, but they backed it up.
04:16People talk about the swagger of those teams that we were a part of, and I think that that
04:20came from the coach.
04:22We will win the ball game.
04:25And you can put it in three-inch headlines.
04:29I don't know that we really had a weakness on that team.
04:56That was one of the greatest things about this team was someone was going to make a play, no
05:01matter what the situation was.
05:03Wide, wide open, his big play man, Alvin Harper, touchdown!
05:08And once they got ahead, they could bring pressure with their defense.
05:14The leader of their defense was Charles Haley.
05:16Sacked at the 33 by Haley.
05:18And I think he brought that mentality over to the Dallas Cowboy defense.
05:22They were dominating.
05:23They peaked at the right time.
05:25They flew around the football.
05:27They were very quick and they had confidence.
05:29And they're down in the fumble.
05:30Caught by Jimmy Jones.
05:33A touchdown, Dallas!
05:35After winning a second consecutive Super Bowl in 1994, Johnson and Jones were being hailed
05:41as one of the most successful partnerships in NFL history.
05:44But the glue between the two was weakening.
05:47I don't think it's any secret in my life that had I not been a little greedy and wanted to
05:52make more money, then I would have coached.
05:55Jerry Jones actually said to Jimmy Johnson one time, when ESPN had those cameras in the
05:59boardroom on draft day, when the cameras come on, act like you're talking to me so that
06:04people will think I'm involved.
06:06Jerry would pull you off to the side if you were a beat writer and say, you know, I really
06:09made that Charles Haley trade.
06:11It just seemed like Jerry wanted more.
06:15He wanted to be closer to the team.
06:18Well, I wanted everybody to stick to their expertise.
06:22The relationship fell apart in March of 1994 at the NFL owners meetings when Jones told a
06:28group of reporters that any of 500 coaches could win with the revamped Cowboys.
06:33What I did mean was that somebody else could coach the team.
06:38That didn't sit well with me.
06:40And I said, hey, you know, why wait?
06:41Now it's time to go.
06:43We have mutually decided that I would no longer be the head football coach with the Dallas Cowboys.
06:52When he got rid of Jimmy Johnson, he declared himself as the out front guy.
06:55Rather than a cooperative kind of effort that one tends to see in NFL franchises, the Cowboys
07:01became Jerry Jones.
07:03The Switzer hire after Jimmy leaves was nothing but an ego.
07:07That was Jerry saying, I'm going to take the least likely guy and I'm going to win a Super
07:12Bowl with him.
07:14In Barry Switzer's second year at Dallas, the Cowboys won their third Super Bowl in four seasons.
07:20Emmitt Smith scores and the Cowboys are celebrating this one.
07:24It won that third Super Bowl despite rather than because of its head coach.
07:30This was Jimmy Johnson's team.
07:33It was built by him in every sense.
07:36Jimmy was a tremendous evaluator of talent.
07:39Once Jimmy left, we did not draft real well.
07:41Jerry thought he hung around Jimmy for so long that he knew football.
07:45Just because you're in there with the room with Jimmy and you see him making trades doesn't
07:48mean you know football the way he knew football.
07:51They had...
07:52Jeremy Shapp.
07:53Who's a New York native doing commenting on Dallas?
07:56Who does he know about Dallas?
07:58Like two Pro Bowl guys they drafted in nine years.
08:01And so there were years where the guys who should have been the core of the team simply
08:05weren't there.
08:05As Johnson's hand-picked stars faded or went elsewhere, Dallas slid into mediocrity.
08:11By 1998, Switzer was gone.
08:14The Cowboys haven't won a playoff game since.
08:17In the football business, you always need a quality football coach that's going to be
08:22able to run the team and not the guy in the administrative office running the team.
08:28They were going to win a lot more Super Bowls if Jerry didn't screw up the relationship
08:33with his coach.
08:33I don't know of any other owner who ever destroyed a sports dynasty, but Jerry certainly did.
08:46Before we cut down the top five reasons you can't blame Jerry Jones for the collapse of
08:50the Cowboys, here are a few that didn't make the cut.
08:53We call them the best of the rest.
08:57The playmaker.
08:58Michael Irvin's off-the-field problems influenced the Cowboys to pass on Randy Moss.
09:03Marshall's All-American wide receiver in the 1998 draft.
09:08It made Jerry Jones realize that when he went out and got guys both in free agency or in
09:14the draft, he wanted to make sure they weren't going to really screw up.
09:17I knew with the past that it was going to really be a question mark on draft day.
09:28The buzz about Moss was that he was a troublemaker coming out of college.
09:32You know, you don't go from place to place without gaining a reputation.
09:37I sat with him in my living room and his dream was to be a Dallas Cowboy.
09:41Michael had just come off his problems and his trials and they didn't want two Michael Irvins
09:46on the same team.
09:52In 1993, a new policy made it easier to become a free agent.
09:56In the first four years...
09:58They didn't lose Emmitt Smith until 2002.
10:00They didn't lose Aikman until 2000 and he retired.
10:04They didn't lose Irvin until 1999 and he was forced to retire.
10:09That's a lame excuse.
10:11They had Charles Haley.
10:12They had Darren Woodson until 2004.
10:15Lame excuse.
10:17Skip.
10:17Skip.
10:17Yep.
10:19Here they come again and down he goes again.
10:23I think the number one reason is injury.
10:26That we didn't knock on the door of two or three more years of Super Bowl possibilities.
10:31After winning Super Bowl 30, stars began to fall in Dallas.
10:35The first was five-time Pro Bowl tight end Jay Novacek.
10:39I don't think the offense was ever the same after Jay Novacek was forced to retire.
10:45Jay Novacek getting injured, Charles Haley getting injured, not being able to play much
10:50anymore.
10:50They kind of hit us all at once and that started us heading the other direction.
10:54In October of 1999, Michael Irvin made his 750th catch and suffered a neck injury.
11:02The playmaker turned in his playbook Tuesday as Michael Irvin called it quits.
11:06The cowboy dynasty of the 90s died the day that Michael Irvin couldn't get up off the carpet
11:11in Philadelphia.
11:12With stars Irvin, Novacek, Charles Haley, and Deion Sanders gone, the Cowboys tried to
11:18rebuild around Troy Aikman.
11:20But at 34, the six-time Pro Bowl quarterback had received too many hits to hang in there.
11:26The end came after the 2000 season.
11:29Starting the toll of four concussions in his last 20 starts and a chronic back problem,
11:33Aikman called it a career today.
11:34We just had some tough luck with some of our most talented players that probably had the
11:40talent level to play three or four more years.
11:44One down, four to go.
11:45Here is reason number four.
11:49Salary cap.
11:50After the new-age Cowboys won their second straight Super Bowl in 1994, the league instituted
11:56a salary cap.
11:58The salary cap has killed the Cowboys more than any other franchise.
12:03The Cowboys won with depth.
12:05We had depth at every position.
12:07I think our second team could have been as good as our first team.
12:13Restricted by the cap, Dallas did not re-sign Pro Bowlers Mark Stepnoski, Russell Maryland,
12:18and Ken Norton.
12:21What a tackle by Ken Norton!
12:25As well as future Pro Bowlers Kevin Gogan, Brock Marion, and Ron Stone.
12:31You couldn't keep players, so we had to lose good football players.
12:35I can't blame the salary cap because back in the day, whoever had a diva's pockets could
12:40go get their players.
12:41You know, and that's Jerry Jones.
12:43To generate extra revenue, Jones signed groundbreaking deals with Nike and Pepsi.
12:49The official soft drink for the NFL is Coke.
12:53We signed a deal with Pepsi.
12:55I got tremendous respect for Jerry because I've always said he's the best businessman I've
12:59ever seen in my life.
13:00George Steinbrenner and Jerry Jones are two of the few owners that are trying to make money
13:05and trying to win at the same time.
13:08There's not many owners in the NFL who would have written Herschel Walker a check for a
13:13million dollars to accept a trade.
13:15Jerry Jones maintained a great roster for a long time, and if he needed somebody, he went
13:21out and got them.
13:23If we didn't have a salary cap, Jerry would have spent the money and kept our players, and
13:28there's no telling how many we could have won.
13:31He simply didn't have the money under the salary cap to build a team around Emmitt and
13:37Troy and Michael that was as strong as the team that had won three Super Bowls.
13:43Coming up next on the Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Jerry Jones for the Collapse of the Cowboys.
13:48At that time is when we started to self-destruct.
13:53Here's reason number three.
13:55The White House.
13:56The joke among Cowboys players was that Clinton was upset with them because while the president
14:01invited the Cowboys to his White House, they never quite invited him to theirs.
14:07What some of the Cowboys called their White House lacked the proper protocol.
14:12A place where the players could go for recreational drug and sex parties.
14:18There's no use of us continuing to go in and out of hotels and all this.
14:22Let's get extra house.
14:23They would always be somewhere there all the time, having a good time.
14:27Doing what, I have no idea.
14:29I was to the best of my ability trying to do the wrong thing the right way.
14:35Michael Irvin's social behavior became symbolic of a team flying too high.
14:41During one two-year period in the 90s, Paul Tagliabue suspended 20 players for violating
14:48the NFL's substance abuse policy and seven of them were Cowboys.
14:52Defensive tackle Leon Lett and corner Clayton Holmes have violated the league's anti-substance
14:57abuse policy for a second time.
14:59There were so many off-the-field incidents.
15:02You know, I felt like a crime reporter rather than a sports reporter.
15:06All-pro offensive tackle Eric Williams was involved in a one-car accident.
15:10Eric Williams wrecked his car driving drunk.
15:13He was never the same player.
15:14It seemed like if you didn't pick up the newspapers in the offseason and see a Dallas Cowboy arrested,
15:19then something was wrong.
15:20The final straw came on March 4th, 1996, when Irvin was arrested.
15:27Michael Irvin, the Dallas Cowboys' all-time leading receiver, has been indicted on two
15:31counts of drug possession.
15:33Michael said, when the police knocked on his door, you know who I am.
15:37Meaning, I'm a Cowboy.
15:39I can do whatever I want.
15:44While many Cowboys played night games outside Texas Stadium, the team began to lose its edge
15:50on the field.
15:51What we were doing mid to late 90s was anything but giving us an opportunity to have success
15:57on the field.
15:58It seemed like every week something happens.
16:00I mean, if it goes to micro-room, if it goes to be unlit.
16:03Somebody was trying to pull this team apart.
16:05It's not Jerry Jones' fault, that the police knew where every Cowboy was every night.
16:15Three reasons down, two to go.
16:18Here is reason number two.
16:22Barry Switzer, the bootlegger's boy who had won three national championships at Oklahoma,
16:27was handed the reins of the Cowboys.
16:31We've got a job to do, and we're going to do it, baby!
16:36It was good for us, because it was a change.
16:39And sometimes you need change.
16:41After Jimmy's sometimes overbearing intensity, Barry let the players feel empowered, and got
16:49them another Super Bowl.
16:50After winning their third Super Bowl of the 1990s, Jones' Cowboys were shedding the work
16:55ethic driven into them by their former coach, Jimmy Johnson.
16:59Switzer seemed powerless to reverse the slide.
17:03I think we went from one extreme to the other, and that was just too much of a transition
17:08for some guys.
17:10There's a great story in Austin, Texas, a training camp.
17:12All the players stayed out on us.
17:14They showed up for practice, and they were just hungover and sick, and Aikman was just
17:18lit.
17:18And Switzer goes up to Aikman and says, well, what is it you expect me to do?
17:22I mean, Irvin led the party.
17:24He said, you want me to cut Michael Irvin?
17:25And Aikman's answer was, no, you don't cut Michael Irvin, but you cut that guy, and you
17:29cut that guy to send a message to the rest of them.
17:32And then you run Michael Irvin until he's throwing up in the grass.
17:35And instead, Barry Switzer started practice.
17:38About 10 minutes later, he blew his whistle and said, ah, hell, boys, let's just call
17:42it a day.
17:42The team began to lose that sense of discipline.
17:46And here's where we began to have a lot of these behavioral problems.
17:50They knew when Barry Switzer was their coach that they could get away with whatever they
17:55wanted to get away with.
17:56While many of his players were reveling in high times, Switzer was doing the same.
18:01The Dallas head coach, who has said one of his goals in the offseason is to take some
18:05soap and water to his team's off-the-field image, was arrested earlier today.
18:10You have to lead by example, and Barry wasn't a good example.
18:14Players actually ran that team at that point.
18:17You know, we had a figurehead who was Barry Switzer.
18:22In 1997, the Super Bowl champs turned into chumps, finishing the season at 6-10.
18:29Then, Switzer resigned under pressure.
18:32Jerry Jones absolutely made the right call on hiring Barry Switzer because the Cowboys
18:37won a third Super Bowl.
18:38And then he made the right call when it became evident that Switzer wasn't the right man for
18:42the job anymore by forcing him out.
18:44Barry actually was the perfect coach for that particular situation.
18:48The problem was, once they had won the Super Bowl, that's when Barry should have resigned.
18:53This team fell apart because there was no respect for the coach.
19:00Coming up on the top five reasons you can't blame Jerry Jones for the collapse of the Cowboys.
19:05Jerry wasn't the guy that flirted with another man by lifting his skirt.
19:12We're counting down the top five reasons you can't blame Jerry Jones for the collapse of the Cowboys.
19:17Here's a recap.
19:19Number five, injuries.
19:22Number four, salary cap.
19:24What would let him just let Jerry have a little bit of the spotlight?
19:27How many of us go through our lives day by day and let our boss have a little bit of
19:32the glory?
19:34Jones had given Johnson a 10-year contract in 1989.
19:38But by 1993, the coach's eyes were trained beyond the skies of Texas.
19:43Jimmy told Chris Mortensen that he would be intrigued if the new Jacksonville team were interested in hiring him as
19:49coach.
19:49The reality of it is that, hey, of course guys are intrigued.
19:55And of course I'm intrigued.
19:57That shocked Jerry, and he thought it was an act of outright betrayal.
20:00I know he made plans to move to South Florida, even when we're winning the second Super Bowl.
20:06When I sensed, after five years, that he was not long for the job, then that made me have to
20:14do things differently.
20:16Jerry was starting to understand that I was starting to lose that focus.
20:22Jerry didn't want Jimmy to leave.
20:24Jerry went to Jimmy even after the toast and even after the 500 coaches comment.
20:29And Jerry said, commit.
20:30Commit to the marriage.
20:32Jimmy said, no.
20:34Give me some money, and I'll leave.
20:36As Johnson headed back to the beach, Jones was left with a boatload of talent that could sink in a
20:41wink without the right man in charge.
20:44See, look at what Jimmy Johnson did with the Miami Hurricanes.
20:47The Dallas Cowboys were the professional version of the Miami Hurricanes.
20:51My friend Dan Jenkins, I think, wrote the line that with Miami, you don't need a referee's whistle, you need
20:57a burger alarm.
20:59Hey, that Miami team, those are all the guys that they just didn't have enough room for in the jail,
21:03so they let him go to Miami to play football.
21:05They were brash.
21:06Jimmy didn't care.
21:07Obviously, he brought a little bit of that Miami attitude with him to Dallas.
21:12Jimmy encouraged that, but he kept the rain on it.
21:15Johnson could bring in that so-called outlaw element.
21:18He could control it, and once he was gone, we saw it kind of spread.
21:25What Jimmy did here is divorce Jerry and leave Jerry having to take care of the kids.
21:31Jerry wasn't the guy that ran off to the beach and said, you take care of the kids.
21:36Well, as you can see, it takes more than a resourceful owner to sustain excellence in the NFL.
21:44I'm Brian Kenney.
21:44Thanks for watching.
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