Boys Will Be Boys

by Jeff Pearlman

  In the early months of 1989, Jimmy Johnson visited Don Shula, seeking permission to hire Dave Wannstedt as his defensive coordinator. Wannstedt was Johnson’s longtime friend and assistant coach, and had only recently been hired by the Dolphins. Don Shula was willing to let him go—with a catch. If Johnson wanted Wannstedt, he would also have to take David Shula as offensive coordinator. It was high time the boy made it on his own.

  “Everyone knew what the deal was,” says Stepnoski. “Why else would we hire that guy?”

  In Miami, David Shula had been blessed with the Pro Bowl talents of quarterback Dan Marino and his two fleet wide receivers, Mark Clayton and Mark Duper. In Dallas, he had two rookie quarterbacks, no legitimate halfback, and one wide receiver, Michael Irvin (who would suffer a season-ending knee injury after six games). In his first year on the job, Shula was hog-tied. He would have loved to air it out, à la Marino’s majestic bombs, but felt constrained by mediocre talent.

  Consequently, Shula’s schemes were simplistic, relying on a minute number of low-risk formations and calls. The players, led by Aikman, hated them. “Nobody bought into what he was doing,” says receiver Kelvin Edwards. “Because he was so young, he wanted everyone to know that his way was the only way. He was trying to present himself as ‘The Man.’ He was ‘The Man,’ all right. He was the man who caused us to lose so many games.”

  Was Shula the sole reason Dallas went 1–15 in 1989? No. But one year later his rigidity led to problems. The tension began during training camp, when Shula urged the team to consider cutting Irvin. At his best, the self-annointed “Playmaker” was an explosive performer who used his 6-foot-2, 205-pound frame and uncommon strength to outmuscle defensive backs. But from Shula’s vantage point, Irvin was all hype, little substance. He was slow, obnoxious, unreliable, and hobbled by the knee injury.

  According to several team officials, Johnson thought long and hard about following Shula’s advice and ridding the Cowboys of Irvin. Yes, his love for and devotion to the receiver was powerful. But was Irvin a legitimate player anymore? Would he be able to separate from cornerbacks? Could he hold up? Could he…?

  In the end loyalty won out. Irvin was a Miami Hurricane. The offensive coordinator was not.

  Truth be told, few actually believed Shula to be a bad guy. Fellow assistants liked his mild-mannered demeanor. But he officially lost any of the players’ remaining respect in the days leading up to a Week 3 clash at Washington, when instead of devoting practice time to attacking the Redskin defense, he designed a plan he considered to be revolutionary.

  “We were gonna surprise the Redskins by huddling up on the sideline, calling the play, and sprinting to the line of scrimmage and running the play,” says Rob Awalt, the tight end. “First of all, you feel like a goober; like, ‘This is how a bad high school coach might do things.’ But then, to make it worse, we’d run a goddamned fullback dive. It’s bad enough when your team stinks. But when your offensive coordinator can’t get out of his own way, it’s brutal.”

  Shula’s greatest misjudgment was failing to recognize the weapon he possessed in Smith. In the Week 5 win over Tampa Bay, Smith gained 121 yards on 23 carries. The following Sunday, in the setback at Phoenix, he touched the ball 12 times. Smith rebounded with 16 carries in another win over the Bucs, but then averaged 11 handles in losses to the Eagles, Jets, and 49ers (in the aftermath of the San Francisco defeat Smith blasted the game plan as “useless”). Even Aikman, who loved throwing the ball 40 times, wondered aloud why the rookie back was being ignored.

  Any hope of a Shula-Smith bond died in the aftermath of the Cardinals game, when Shula told the media that a missed block by the rookie had cost the Cowboys. Informed of Shula’s comments, Smith addressed the media. “Lemme ask y’all this,” he said. “How many carries did I have today?”

  Twelve.

  “And how many yards did I average?” Smith asked.

  Four.

  “Well,” he said, choler mounting with each word, “if a man is averaging four yards a carry, maybe they should give him the ball more often.”

  Finally, after the Week 10 loss to San Francisco dropped the Cowboys to 3–7, Smith approached Joe Brodsky, the grizzled running backs coach, and pleaded his case. “I’m still hearing the same things I’ve heard all year: ‘We need to gain a hundred yards on the ground,’” he said. “You told us that before we played San Francisco. Then you gave the running backs fifteen carries.”

  Brodsky agreed 100 percent. Shula was lame and unimaginative, and, if the season were to be salvaged, he had to change his ways. Brodsky insisted the undersized kid from Florida was ready for a greater load. At last, in Week 11, Shula listened.

  In a breathtaking 24–21 triumph over the Rams in California, Shula let loose as Dallas exploited the league’s twenty-sixth-ranked defense. Aikman put up his first 300-yard passing game of the season, and Smith generated 171 yards in total offense. Michael Irvin, finally healthy after a nightmarish year, caught a pair of touchdowns. During the game, many in the press box noticed a striking sight—Johnson and Aikman chatting. “Because of all the conversation going on [about Aikman’s discontent], I thought it would be beneficial for me and Troy to talk,” Johnson said. “We needed to stay on the same page. We probably should have been doing it before.”

  Maybe it was Aikman’s anger. Maybe it was Shula’s enlightenment. Maybe it was the recognition that, in Smith, the Cowboys had something special. Maybe it was Irvin’s return to health. Maybe it was simply the natural progression of a young football team. Whatever the case, Dallas followed up the Rams victory with wins over Washington, New Orleans, and Phoenix. The NFL’s laughingstocks were 7–7 and in the thick of the NFC playoff race.

  For the first time in years, the Cowboys actually had a postseason picture to consider: Win at Philadelphia and Atlanta in the final two weeks of the season, and they were in. “Nobody,” says Johnson, “would have ever believed it.”

  On December 18, two days after the team stomped Phoenix, 41–10, Johnson had dinner with Wannstedt and offensive line coach Tony Wise. Over burgers and beers at Bennigan’s, he made a bold proclamation to two men who had been with Johnson since his days coaching at the University of Pittsburgh. “I told you at [Oklahoma State] that we’d win a national championship together one day, and we did,” he said. “Well, I’m telling you now that we’ll win a Super Bowl.”

  Leading up to the December 23 matchup at Philadelphia, the city of Dallas was alive with optimism. The water-cooler conversations were all pigskin. GO COWBOYS! signs dangled from building windows. Dallas had played six home games in a row with attendances in excess of 60,000. It was almost as if Tony Dorsett and Roger Staubach were back in uniform, rejuvenating a city in dire need of a jolt. Finally, the public was embracing Jones and Johnson. Bring on the Eagles, dammit. Bring ’em on…

  In Philadelphia, nobody was shaking. Having beaten the Cowboys six straight times, the Eagles walked with a can’t-touch-this swagger. The Cowboys were up-and-coming, but Philadelphia—loaded with menacing defensive stars like Reggie White, Jerome Brown, and Andre Waters—had arrived. “Everybody in this league knows the road to toughness runs right through Philadelphia,” said Eagles running back Keith Byars. “Everybody.”

  Just five snaps into the game, Philadelphia defensive end Clyde Simmons stormed past left tackle Mark Tuinei and drilled Aikman, wrapping him in a bear hug before driving him into the turf. Aikman’s right shoulder popped from the socket. He was done for the year—the sixth quarterback knocked out of a game by the Eagles that season.

  Onto the field jogged Brandon Hugh “Babe” Laufenberg, aka The Reason Perhaps Dallas Shouldn’t Have Traded Steve Walsh. A former sixth-round draft pick out of Indiana University, Laufenberg had spent the last seven years bouncing from Washington to San Diego to Washington to New Orleans to Kansas City to Washington to San Diego and, finally, to Dallas.

  What was he like as a quarterback?

  “Babe was a great guy,” says Fred McNai
r, a rookie quarterback who was cut by Dallas in training camp. “Wonderful personality.”

  In three-plus quarters of play, Laufenberg threw 36 passes, 13 of which were completed and 4 of which were intercepted. It was one of the ugliest displays in Cowboys history. Philadelphia won, 17–3.

  Amazingly, a final-week victory over Atlanta would still give the 7–8 Cowboys a wild-card birth. With Aikman at the helm, the hot Cowboys surely would have beaten up on the 4–11 Falcons. With Aikman on the sideline in a sling, however, the game rested on Babe’s shoulders.

  Oy.

  Having not thrown a pass for most of his two seasons with the Cowboys, Laufenberg’s local claim to fame was a promo spot for his weekly radio program, during which he said, “Tune in to my show and find out why I should be the starter and Troy Aikman should be driving a bus.” It was classic Laufenberg, who compensated for limited skills with a disarming sense of humor. Once, upon cutting Laufenberg, Redskins coach Joe Gibbs told him he wanted his sons to grow up to be just like the Babe. To which Laufenberg responded, “What, out of work?”

  The Atlanta game was brutal. Coming off three days of rain, Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium’s surface was a pig trough. Though teammates said all the right things, they knew victory was unlikely. “Babe,” says Awalt, “wasn’t really an NFL quarterback.” In his pregame speech, Falcons coach Jerry Glanville told his players that the Cowboys had dozens of cases of champagne on ice waiting in their locker room. So what if it was untrue? “Those fuckers already think they have this thing won!” Glanville screamed. “What the fuck kind of bullshit is that? Are you gonna let them get away with that?”

  Blitzed mercilessly, Laufenberg finished 10-of-24 passing for 129 yards, with 3 sacks and 2 interceptions. The Falcons won, 26–7.

  In the locker room after the game, Johnson was in a foul mood. Though his team could still—if you believed in miracles—clinch a playoff berth with a Rams upset victory over New Orleans on Monday night, Johnson prided himself as a realist. “The Saints can get ready to play Chicago,” he snapped in his postgame news conference. “It’s over.”

  Indeed, it was. The following evening New Orleans beat Los Angeles 20–17, assuring Steve Walsh his first playoff appearance.

  Before long, though, even the hypercompetitive Johnson was able to appreciate what the Cowboys had accomplished. A team that had won a single game one year ago was now a playoff contender. Smith ran for 937 yards and 11 touchdowns. Aikman threw for 2,579 yards. The defense ranked tenth in the league.

  “When we started this season, I don’t think anybody had it in their minds that we were headed for the playoffs,” said Johnson, who became the first man with a losing record to be named the NFL’s Coach of the Year. “Now when we go into next season, it’s going to be the goal for every individual that not only are we going to be in the playoffs, we’re going to be successful in them.”

  Chapter 8

  MAKING A RUN AT THIS THING

  Michael Irvin’s the only guy I know who can put a sweat suit on, look at you, and say, “Don’t I look good?”

  —Alonzo Highsmith, Cowboys fullback

  BY THE TIME members of the Dallas Cowboys began reporting to training camp in July 1991, it was as clear as Governor Ann Richards’s white mane that this was Jimmy Johnson’s football team—no ifs, ands, or buts.

  Of the eighty-five players on the field at Austin’s St. Edward’s University, a mere thirteen had worked under Tom Landry. As opening day crept closer, it looked as if that number just might drop to twelve.

  Whither, Michael Irvin?

  At this point in his NFL coaching career, Johnson no longer exercised blind loyalty toward his former University of Miami pupils. In private, he willingly admitted that such biased leanings had been a mistake; that bringing in overmatched ex-Hurricanes like Daniel Stubbs and Randy Shannon had damaged the team and his credibility. The greatest harm had been done the previous September, when Johnson sent second-and fifth-round draft picks to the Houston Oilers for fullback Alonzo Highsmith. Cowboy players watched in disbelief as Highsmith, a once-mighty Miami star now lacking the speed and power of his younger incarnation, started in front of Daryl “Moose” Johnston, the fullback with battering-ram shoulders and an Amtrak motor. “That was an absolute shame,” says Rob Awalt, the Cowboy tight end. “Alonzo was running one-legged. Clearly Jimmy was playing him out of loyalty, not merit. It was a joke.”

  By the start of 1991, Johnson had come to his senses. Many of the Miami imports were gone, replaced by bigger, stronger, faster, better alternatives. Shockingly, it looked like the next to be set free was going to be Irvin.

  When he was selected by Dallas with the eleventh pick in the 1988 NFL Draft, many personnel experts considered it another example of Tom Landry’s Cowboys losing their way. Sure, Irvin had been a productive player at Miami. But (like Emmitt Smith two years later) Irvin was slow. There was also the issue of attitude. With rare exception, the NFL of the 1980s was a recluse’s paradise: Shut up, put on your helmet, play hard, go home—no mess, no fuss, no pizzazz. That was not Irvin. On his first day as a freshman at the University of Miami in 1984, he was standing in a cafeteria line when a senior offensive lineman named Mike Moore cut in front of him. Instead of humbly accepting the slight as most freshmen would have, Irvin popped Moore in the head. “It was shocking,” says Highsmith. “Mike didn’t take no crap.”

  Irvin was the by-product of an upbringing that called for quick lips, creative thinking and—more than anything—hardheadedness. The third youngest of Walter and Pearl Irvin’s seventeen children (Pearl had six from her first marriage, Walter had two from a previous relationship, and the remaining nine they had together), Michael was deemed “special” well before entering the world. While attending Primitive Baptist Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, one Sunday morning in early 1966, Pearl felt someone reach out and grab her pregnant belly. Suddenly, a jolt shot through her womb. “My whole stomach went to jumping,” Pearl later recalled. “Michael leaped for joy in my stomach.” Pearl looked around but failed to spot anyone. It was, she swore, a sign. “I said, ‘This child is going to be blessed among all of my children.’”

  From the time he arrived on March 5, 1966, Michael was treated royally. He was uncommonly strong and eternally hungry. He would eat cornflakes out of mixing bowls, and if money was tight, use water instead of milk. When the refrigerator housed neither peanut butter nor jelly nor cheese, he gladly made sandwiches of bread and ketchup or bread and mayonnaise.

  Growing up in a modest three-bedroom brick house on 27th Avenue in Fort Lauderdale, Michael was poorer than poor—the Irvins were a food stamps–and–Salvation Army type of family. In elementary school he would wear black hightops purchased at the neighborhood thrift store. When his son outgrew the shoes, Walter cut the tops off and Michael would walk around with exposed toes (classmates would mockingly call them “cat heads”). “I don’t know if Michael ever realized how poor we really were,” says Rene, one of his sisters. “When you’re in the middle of it, you just go along and live your life the best you can.”

  In one room of the family home slept Walter and Pearl; in another, the ten sisters; in another, Michael and his six brothers. Michael didn’t have his own bed until college. “I’m gonna buy you a house one day,” Irvin would tell his mother. “A big, big house. I guarantee it.” Had any one of the sixteen others made such a boast, Pearl would have laughed them off. Michael, she believed.

  Though Irvin was a mama’s boy, he took after his father in looks, flamboyance, and determination. From Monday through Saturday Walter woke up at 4:30 A.M. and departed for some unknown destination to work as a roofer. He would be caked in mud and tar when he returned home after dark. Though exhausted, Walter made certain to play with his children before dragging his body into bed. He was an eleventh-grade dropout who spent his weekends as a Baptist preacher and insisted all his offspring attend college. “You have to understand where I came from,” Irvin says. “I watched my father
break his back to feed all his kids. He worked from sunup to sundown.”

  As a young teenager Irvin spent his summer days alongside his father. Both had large hands and powerful shoulders. Michael, though, possessed an ungodly athleticism his father lacked. At Piper High School, he starred in basketball, track, and football. He ran faster, threw farther, and lifted more than any other student. Willie Irvin, his older brother, forced Michael to run five miles per day in exchange for a daily trip to Burger King. “We saw that he was special,” Willie says. “I didn’t want him to waste it.”

  Not that Michael was a saint. During his sophomore year at Piper, he was suspended for punching a female student during a dispute. Already dissatisfied with Piper’s athletic and academic opportunities, Walter tranferred his son to St. Thomas Aquinas, a private Catholic school known as the alma mater of tennis star Chris Evert. It was a seminal decision—Michael emerged as the best wide receiver in the state (he caught 59 passes for 987 yards and 12 touchdowns as a senior in 1983–84), as well as a student who grasped concepts with newfound aplomb. “I realized there were people willing to help me,” Irvin said. “I was around kids who had plans. I said, ‘Man, this is what I’ve been missing.’”

  During Irvin’s first year at St. Thomas, his father was diagnosed with cancer. Having grown up in a household fortified by the idea that hope and faith conquer all, the Irvin children believed—no, knew—Walter would overcome. He didn’t. “Toward the end I’d take my father to the doctor for visits,” Irvin said. “He talked about being your own man, having passion and fire for what you believe. He said being a man is having responsibilities, being a man is taking care of your family.

  “One time I heard him say, ‘I don’t know if I can take this anymore.’ That was the biggest blow to me, hearing him say that. It’s like he was quitting.” On a fall afternoon during his senior year, Michael arrived home to find the sidewalk in front of his house lined with automobiles. When he walked inside, Pearl hugged her child tightly. Just hours earlier Walter had told his son, “Michael, I’m going home on the morning train.” Now Walter Irvin’s train had left the station. He was dead at age fifty-three. Michael fled the house and ran five miles to the St. Thomas Aquinas campus, where he cried in a priest’s arms. Then he returned to his family and renewed the promise he had made long ago. “I will take care of you,” he told his mother. “You won’t have to worry.”