Bottomed Out?

For the most telling sign that Dallas Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith is not what he used to be, we take you to the fourth quarter of his team's dismal game against the New York Giants on Sunday. New York was sitting on a 13-9 lead. The Giants Stadium crowd was frenzied. Twelve minutes remained. The Dallas offense trotted out to its 25, taking over after a Giants punt. So just what was Smith doing on the Cowboys' sideline? "We wanted to save him for the last five minutes," running backs coach Joe Brodsky would explain after the Giants' 20-17 victory.

With the game on the line, the 11th-leading rusher in NFL history was being rested? After only 16 carries on a cloudless 67° day, the four-time rushing champion was watching Sherman Williams carry the mail? "Pretty strange seeing a Hall of Famer on the bench just then," New York cornerback Jason Sehorn admitted later.

What was Smith thinking?

"That maybe I should be in the game," he said afterward.

What should have been an encouraging afternoon's work for Smith (19 carries, 91 yards, a 4.8-yard average) turned very weird. Earlier in the week coach Barry Switzer had announced that the 28-year-old Smith would be spelled periodically: "Father Time gets everybody," Switzer said. But no one expected Smith to be sitting for all or parts of five series' in a close game. "Today is the most rest I've ever had in a game in the eight years I've been here," he said later. "This probably should have happened a long time ago."

Five games into his eighth NFL season, Smith is dealing with disappointment much more often than he is enjoying success. The same can be said for his offensive line. No NFL weapon—not the passing attacks of the San Francisco 49ers or the Green Bay Packers, not the electric running of the Detroit Lions' Barry Sanders—was as universally feared as the vaunted Cowboys running game in the first half of the '90s. But for nearly a season and a half, the ground game has hit one roadblock after another. On most Sundays, Smith has looked like a pedestrian runner. Last season you could blame three floating bone chips in his right ankle, but those were surgically removed last January. This year, while there are a number of reasons for Dallas's continuing inability to rush the ball, some of the blame must fall on the muscular shoulders of this proud back.

The question around the NFL is no longer whether Smith should be mentioned in the same breath as Sanders as the league's best runner. It's whether he is in the top five, or top 10, anymore. The Denver Broncos' Terrell Davis has outrushed him by more than 500 yards in the last 21 games. The Minnesota Vikings' Robert Smith, the New England Patriots' Curtis Martin, the Pittsburgh Steelers' Jerome Bettis, the Tennessee Oilers' Eddie George and even a New York Jet, Adrian Murrell, have outperformed Smith of late. We're not talking just about stats. We're talking burst, explosion, drive. Four years ago Smith took over games by darting through holes and smashing into linebackers or by quickly cutting back across the grain. Now, more often than not, the cuts are less decisive and the burst is only average.

One day last week a surprisingly upbeat Smith spent his lunch break insisting that while he may not be the back he was four years ago, he can still be a dominant player. There have been few negatives of any kind during his career, but now his ability is suddenly being called into question.

"I can feel a difference in my game," he admitted. "Maybe I don't have [the burst] I had four years ago. But who's the same player he was four years ago? I know this: There's a lot more great football left in me. No way do I think I'm at the end."

It may be that the football world simply has to get used to thinking of Smith, and the Dallas offense, in a different way. During the period in which they won three Super Bowls in four seasons, the Cowboys could march out that monster line, fullback Daryl Johnston and Smith, and steamroller to eight or nine wins a year. "I wish people could accept the fact that we're different," left guard Nate Newton said on Sunday, after Dallas fell to 3-2. "We ain't rolling over people the way we were two years ago. To win we've got to play hard and make no mistakes."