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Aikman answers

SI's Peter King corrals the king of the Cowboys

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Posted: Wednesday August 18, 1999 05:36 PM

Troy Aikman and the Cowboys will seek redemption, after being ousted in the first round of the playoffs last season. Brian Bahr/Allsport

Sports Illustrated NFL writer Peter King met with Dallas quarterback Troy Aikman last Saturday before the Cowboys faced the Oakland Raiders in a pre-season game. The conversation ranged from last season's playoff loss to Arizona to what the future holds for both Aikman and the Cowboys.

Peter King: Quarterback Troy Aikman has been around the NFL a long time and a lot of people want to know about Aikman's future. I sat down with Aikman the day before they faced the Oakland Raiders in a preseason game. It was interesting. I saw a more relaxed Aikman -- he got engaged in the offseason, and is going to get married after this year -- and I saw a guy who I think is more ready for a season and more relaxed than I have seen in several years. I think he's got to be relaxed and got to be ready because he needs to erase the memory of how badly the season ended last year for the Cowboys.

King: Did you feel at the end of that game (a 20-7 NFC wild card loss), like everything you had worked for during the year and everything you had done well during the year, offensively especially, had gone down the tubes because you guys played so poorly?

Troy Aikman: No matter how well you play, if you don't go on and do well in the playoffs and get to the Super Bowl, you are going to be disappointed. Take, for instance, Minnesota. As well the Vikings played all year long, they've got to feel not real great about their year. But the same holds true for us. We look back now and say it was a good year for us, we accomplished some good things, but at the time it was very hard for us to do that. Now this year, going into this season, it is something that we can definitely build on.

King: What goes through your mind when a) you are going 6-10; or b) when you are just really screwing up against Arizona. Is it personally a revolting kind of time for you?

Aikman: Well, the one thing you don't ever want to do is go out and be embarrassed on the football field and I think that's what happened last year against Arizona in the playoffs. So that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. For someone like myself who had been a part of the club when we were 1-15 and knows how hard it was to get to where we were when we won the Super Bowls and we were having tremendous success to then all of sudden drop off to a 6-10 year and kind of have to go through some of those same emotions and feelings and try to fight back for respect. That's very difficult because I never really believed that we would get back to that point and even though it wasn't nearly as bad as it was in '89. It was still a year that we lost great deal of respect and we are still trying to get that back.

King: Do you feel like this team has one more run left in them?

Aikman: Well, I would like to think that we have more than one, but I definitely do. I have said I would be disappointed if, if and when I retire, if we don't win another Super Bowl and I really believe that we have an opportunity to do that. I think what (Dallas coach) Chan (Gailey) has done since coming here is he has really brought in some young players that are very talented. We went through a period there where we were losing a lot of players but we were not bringing in a lot quality young players that were helping us. And right now over the last couple of years we have been able to do that. These are guys that we are depending on and I think we are going to get right back where we expect to be and where we want to be.

King: You and Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith have kind of been the three amigos that led this offense to three Super Bowls. Do you guys ever or have you this preseason, this off-season just sat around and talked about what it is going to take to get back?

Aikman: We have spent more time this year talking about what it was like in 1992, '93, '94 and '95, that period there and how much fun we had playing the games around that time. And lot of times when you are actually going through those periods, you fail to realize how much fun it really is until you get out of them. And I think now, maybe, as we come to the twilight of our careers we are beginning to appreciate what we had and we are starting to realize that it is something that we definitely want to have back.

 

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