Scouting Report
3 - Dallas Cowboys It's morning again for America's Team, which, if
not better than in '97, at least has been
reawakened
by the arrival of Chan Gailey as
coach
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The Cowboys' conundrum is how much to rely on Smith, who
shows troubling signs of wear but remains vital to the
offense.
(John Biever)
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It was an
in-your-face to Jimmy Johnson, and for a while it looked
good. Then last year the whole thing fell
apart.
When Johnson and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones parted company
after winning Super Bowl XXVIII in January 1994, Jones made
his feelings clear: It was the organization, not the coach,
that made Dallas a
champion. The organization was so strong that it could
overcome anything—so strong that he could hire a guy
off the street to coach the Cowboys, and they'd still win
it
all.
Which Jones did, and in Barry Switzer's second year as
coach, Dallas did win it all. Then things began to slip,
and last year the wheels fell off. The Cowboys lost their
final five games to drop to 6-10. They
couldn't run the ball or stop the run. They
couldn't score. People were hurt, tired, worn-out. The
Cowboys were an undisciplined, demoralized team, and by
December they were just going through the
motions.
Everyone took heat. The offensive line had lost its punch.
The zip had gone out of Emmitt Smith's legs. Troy Aikman
was trying to run a one-receiver offense, and he was
getting hammered. The defense was soft up
the gut. Switzer resigned. Coordinator
Ernie
Zampese, coaching the same Norv Turner-style offense that won
three Super Bowls, collected his share of rips (although
he's now being hailed as a savior in New England).
And on and
on.
Then in February, Jones brought in a soft-spoken,
hard-working veteran NFL assistant named Chan Gailey from
Pittsburgh to put things in order. Jones wanted an
offensive coach, and Gailey, who had coached the attacks of
two Super Bowl teams—the Broncos
and the Steelers—has impeccable credentials. Everyone
likes his system. The run, Denver- and Pittsburgh-style, is
his platform. Stretch the strong side of the line, cut back
weak. Then there's the imaginative element, the exotics,
the four- and
five-receiver spread formations, with wideouts coming out of backfield
alignments and all sorts of trickery. What's not to
like?
So it's been a happy time at the Cowboys' new summer camp
in Wichita Falls, Texas. On one 106° Friday in July,
Aikman stripped off his shoulder pads after practice and
ran 10 voluntary 100-yard gassers, accompanied by a pair of
third-stringers. "I owe
it to the man," Aikman said of the new coach, "to
be in the best shape I
can."
Or how about the numbers All-Pro guard Larry Allen put up
on timing and measuring day? First he bench-pressed a
team-record 600 pounds. Then he ran a five-flat 40, at 320
pounds. "I was embarrassed by the season I had last
year," Allen said. "I don't
even know why I was picked All-Pro. I regard this year as a
personal
challenge."
Everything seems fine, right? But here's the bad news.
Starting with Johnson's last season in Dallas, the Cowboys
have suffered a steady talent drain to free agency, coupled
with up-and-down drafts. In the five years from 1993 to
'97, the draft, which
should have been laying the foundation of young talent,
produced only five players currently penciled in as
starters. (By comparison, the Packers produced
13.)
The offensive line was a mess last year. Left guard Nate
Newton, 36 and sore-legged, took most of the blame (and
responded by dropping 75 pounds from his '97 playing
weight), but everyone slipped—or was hurt. The only
new face is Everett McIver, an
undistinguished former Jet and Dolphin, who goes to right guard,
with Allen switching to left tackle. On paper it's an O.K.
unit. If someone gets hurt, look
out.
| Schedule |
| Sept. | 6 | ARIZONA |
| 13 | at Denver |
| 21 | at N.Y. Giants (Mon.) |
| 27 | OAKLAND |
| Oct. | 4 | at Washington |
| 11 | CAROLINA |
| 18 | at Chicago |
| 25 | OPEN DATE |
| Nov. | 2 | at Philadelphia (Mon.) |
| 8 | N.Y. GIANTS |
| 15 | at Arizona |
| 22 | SEATTLE |
| 26 | MINNESOTA (Thurs.) |
| Dec. | 6 | at New Orleans |
| 13 | at Kansas City |
| 20 | PHILADELPHIA |
| 27 | WASHINGTON |
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Then there's
Emmitt (backed up by Chris Warren, who was released by Seattle to
make room for Ricky Watters). The Cowboys like the way he
has looked in camp, but that's running against air, against
no tackling. The key to Gailey's attack is the quick
cutback, and Smith has
been rounding off his cuts. People shrug. Gotta adjust to
the new system, they say. But no one knows what they
have—the furious Emmitt of old, or an ordinary back,
a la the '97 Smith. He's taken way too many hits in his
career.
The big question in defensive coordinator Dave Campo's
unit, which always seems able to play sound football no
matter how many players leave, is the pair of young ends:
Kavika Pittman, the 1996 second-round pick who has done zip
in his two years as a
Cowboy, playing the open side, where Charles Haley once
roamed; and 1998 first-rounder Greg Ellis taking over for
the retired Tony Tolbert on the power side. The run
defense, which got battered last year when the enemy
realized it didn't have to score a
lot of points to beat Dallas and could play ball control,
should be O.K., with Chad Hennings healthy and Leon Lett
back full time. The pass rush is
iffy.
But at least spirits are high. There's a feeling that the
people in charge know what they're doing, and that's a
start. —Paul Zimmerman
By the Numbers | Inside Slant | Lineup
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