Boys Will Be Boys

by Jeff Pearlman

  The Cardinals let Novacek walk after the 1989 season, and Dallas was the only team to offer a contract. Though Jones and Johnson would have you believe they saw magic in the 6-foot-4, 231-pounder, truth is Novacek was a low-risk shot in the dark who couldn’t have been any worse than the incumbent, Steve Folsom.

  “No one else wanted me,” says Novacek. “I was a nobody. But when I arrived in Dallas, I found a team with a cockiness and drive I’d never seen before. There was this belief that the Super Bowl was inevitable. I loved that.”

  With the Cardinals, Novacek went through signal callers like Prince goes through backup singers. From Stoudt to Gary Hogeboom to Timm Rosenbach to Tom Tupa, St. Louis offered defenses a buffet of mediocre, lead-footed stiffs.

  Then Novacek found Aikman.

  The chemistry was undeniable. Both fans of country music, cowboy boots, pickup trucks, cold beer, and spotlight avoidance, the quarterback and tight end felt an immediate kinship. Aikman supplied Novacek with the one thing he craved—a quarterback robotic in his ability to pinpoint exact locations, time after time. “Early on when I was playing with Troy he’d come out of a break and the linemen and linebackers would be blocking the visual path between he and me,” Novacek says. “All of a sudden I’d see this hand rise up and throw the ball my way. It’d get to me every time. I’d say, ‘Did you even see me?’ He’d say, ‘No, but I knew you’d be there.’ I’ll take that sort of trust over a Super Bowl title any day.”

  Aikman was even more euphoric. Here was a new breed of tight end. Sure, Novacek was far from a bruising blocker. But he utilized angles and body leverage to keep pass rushers at bay. Most important, he was uncoverable. Too fast for linebackers and too big for defensive backs, Novacek ran the 8-to-10-yard buttonhook with unrivaled effectiveness. “I called Jay ‘Superman,’” says Vinson Smith, the Cowboys linebacker. “He might have been the best athlete on the team. You looked at him and thought, ‘No way.’ Then you’d cover him and he’d catch everything.”

  In 1990 and ’91 Novacek caught 59 passes, and in 1992 his 68 receptions set a team record for the position. Where other offensive coordinators deemed Novacek undersized, Norv Turner salivated at the never-ending matchup problems. No longer did a tight end have to be burly, slow, and excessively rugged.

  Following a bye week, on January 10, 1993, the Cowboys would open the playoffs by hosting—of all teams—the loathed Philadelphia Eagles, the one franchise Johnson preferred not to play. Although the Cowboy coach knew his team was far superior to the Eagles, there was something about Philly that brought out the yips. Back when Aikman was a first-and second-year quarterback, the Eagles took pleasure in beating him senseless. One couldn’t help but wonder whether such poundings stuck with Aikman, especially after Philadelphia sacked him 11 times in a 1991 contest.

  Though the Eagles under second-year coach Rich Kotite were less intimidating than the snarling, growling Buddy Ryan incarnation, they were still an 11–5 club with a swarming, cheap shot–taking, trash-talking defense. As if this point needed to be reinforced, Philadelphia safety Andre Waters—aka “Dirty Waters”—placed Emmitt Smith atop his I-will-hit-you-late-and-below-the-knees list, telling the media, “Two of us are going to walk onto the field, but only one of us is going to walk off.”

  Instead of shuddering, the Cowboys clipped the safety’s words and added them to a locker room bulletin board layered with articles about the Eagles. Philadelphia had talked much trash over the years, and perhaps the words once had an impact. But these were the new Cowboys. The better Cowboys. Even if the Eagles could contain Smith, pressure Aikman, and blanket Irvin with cornerback Eric Allen, they lacked anyone with the skills to stick Novacek. He would make a difference—Turner was quite certain of it.

  As the Eagles sprinted into Texas Stadium before the start of the game, they were greeted by venomous spewings that laid to rest the gentlemanly reputation Landry had once established. Fans heckled Waters, insulting his mother, his father, his ugly face, and his upright style of running. They screamed and yelled and shouted and hollered—and relished one of the biggest routs in either team’s playoff history.

  Before a sellout crowd of 63,721 (many of whom paid in excess of $1,000 for scalped tickets), the Cowboys opened up a 7–3 lead on Aikman’s touchdown pass to Derek Tennell, and late in the second quarter extended the lead to 14–3 when the quarterback hit Novacek with a 6-yard bullet across the middle of the end zone. Though he caught only 3 balls for 36 yards, Novacek was an obsession for Philadelphia’s defenders. They shadowed him with a linebacker; had the strong safety cheat up—and were meticulously shredded by Smith (114 rushing yards), Irvin (6 catches, 88 yards), and Aikman (200 passing yards, 2 touchdowns). The Cowboys jumped out to a 34–3 lead and laughed all the way to the final whistle, winning 34–10.

  “There was a lot of talking before this game,” said Cowboys linebacker Ken Norton, Jr. “We did our talking on the field. I don’t think they have too much they can say right now.” The greatest joy for Dallas came in mocking Waters, who spent the afternoon flailing at opposing receivers and missing tackles. During a stop in play, Waters jogged up to Smith and whispered, “I’m gonna break your fuckin’ leg.”

  Smith laughed. “Whatever,” he said. “Whatever.”

  After the game, an eager media throng gathered around the safety’s locker, anxious for an assessment.

  For one of the few times in his thirty years, Waters had nothing to say.

  In general society, eleven years can be an eternity. It’s the difference between a seventeen-year-old kid and a twenty-eight-year-old man—high school and college graduations, marriage, home ownership, children, mortgages, investments, loans.

  In sports, however, eleven years passes like the flicking of a light switch.

  Such was the feeling in Dallas when it came to the Cowboys, the 49ers, and “The Catch.” Though eleven long years had passed since Joe Montana avoided the rush, rolled right, and found Dwight Clark skying through the back of the end zone for the NFC Championship, the pain remained as raw in Dallas as vinegar atop a paper cut. The Cowboys should have played in their sixth Super Bowl in 1982. It was there for the taking. Right there. Just stop Montana one last time and…

  Sigh.

  With the rout of Philadelphia, the Cowboys were rewarded with a trip to San Francisco, where the 49ers once again stood in the way of a Super Bowl berth. But whereas the ’81 49ers were out-of-nowhere upstarts featuring a blossoming quarterback (Montana) and dozens of no-names, the team Dallas now prepared for stood as an undisputed dynasty. These were the high-flying Niners of Steve Young, Ricky Watters, Brent Jones, John Taylor, and, of course, the incomparable Jerry Rice. With a 14–2 regular-season record, then a 20–13 win over Washington in the Divisional Playoffs, Coach George Seifert’s club was the smart-money pick to win its fifth Vince Lombardi Trophy. The Niners were 4-point favorites over Dallas, and with good reason.

  Jimmy Johnson made a career out of talking the talk and walking the walk, but any confidence he projected in the week leading up to the game served only to mask a harrowing reality: He wasn’t quite sure his team could win. “They were better than us,” says Johnson. “And not only slightly better. They had more talent, they were more experienced, and they were more complete. We were the youngest team in the league and they had four Super Bowl trophies.”

  Johnson feared the 49ers’ talent, but he was truly petrified by the field. Even at the start of the season, Candlestick Park was a below-average NFL playground, what with its surface being battered for eighty-one games every year by baseball’s San Francisco Giants. Now, after five months of abuse, Candlestick was the Everglades. “[The field] was abominable,” wrote Brian Hewitt of the Chicago Sun-Times following the Redskins game. “Footing was a rumor. And every time anybody made a cut, the movement produced a large divot. By the end of the game it looked like a Civil War battlefield.” The NFL flew in grounds consultant George Toma to resod the field, a Herculean task akin to seeding the Sahar
a. He and twenty-six coworkers replaced the grass in the middle of the field, and at one end repaired the gridiron from sideline to sideline. “This,” Toma said, “is hands down the worst field I’ve ever seen.” Making matters worse, the weekend forecast called for torrential rains.

  “I’m not gonna lie—we were nervous,” says Kevin Gogan, the veteran offensive lineman. “I knew they had a great team, but I was mainly worried about not falling on my ass in a puddle.”

  As soon as it was determined that Dallas and San Francisco would meet for the NFC Championship on January 17, 1993, members of the media began predicting how badly Jerry Rice would burn Larry Brown and Kevin “Pup” Smith, the Cowboys’ young cornerbacks.

  While the mild-manned Brown responded to such a slight with a shrug, Smith took it personally. A first-year player with a mere seven starts to his résumé, Smith genuinely believed he could manhandle the legendary Rice. “Kevin didn’t back down,” says Darren Woodson, the Dallas safety. “He and Michael Irvin would go at it in practice with these knock-down, drag-out, one-on-one drills that convinced Kevin he could play with anybody.”

  Beneath a pewter late-afternoon sky (but no raindrops), the two teams took the field for warm-ups with unusual intensity and emotion. While the 49ers tended to be significantly more low-key than Dallas, San Francisco’s players were screaming, pointing, jumping up and down, barking like starved dogs. The team’s star running back, Ricky Watters, jogged toward the Cowboys and began taunting—“Y’all are nothing! Y’all gonna get your asses kicked!” Kevin Smith decided he’d heard enough. Upon spotting Rice, he laughed aloud and screamed, “Gonna be a long day for you, motherfucker!” The receiver did a double take. He was Jerry Rice, dammit. Who the hell was Biff Smith? Or was it Pete Smith? “Jimmy used to say that cockiness borders on confidence, because if you’re unwilling to take chances you won’t get to where you want to go,” says Jim Jeffcoat. “He wanted players who believed they could beat anyone in the league on any given day. That was Pup.”

  Technically, Smith wasn’t up to the challenge: Rice had one of his better statistical games of the season, catching 8 passes for 123 yards and a touchdown. But in a sport of emotion and heart and physicality, numbers have limited reach. Beginning with the 49ers’ first offensive series, Smith was in Rice’s face and head all day, talking nonstop trash, kicking him in the calves, elbowing his ribs, knocking his shoulder pads. “All that shit I saw on TV is bullshit!” Smith yelled. “If you’re the best in the league, I’m gonna have a looooong damn career.” This was Rice’s eighth year in the NFL, and no other cornerback—not Darrell Green, not Mike Haynes, not Rod Woodson, not Deron Cherry—had ever treated him with such disrespect. Though the press had spent much of the week hyping Charles Haley’s revenge against his old franchise, it was the rookie defensive back who provided the jolt. After one too many “motherfuckers,” Haley pulled Smith aside and said, “Man, that’s Jerry Rice. You can’t talk to him like that.”

  “Fuck you!” Smith yelled. “Who the fuck are you playing with? You might as well go put on your little gold helmet, you little fucking pussy!”

  As it turned out, Smith had every right to talk trash. The Cowboys didn’t beat the 49ers so much as they thugged them. After spending all week publicly fretting about the threat of mud and rain, Johnson came out and attacked. The first half ended in a 10–10 tie, but Dallas pounded the 49ers at every opportunity. As Steve Young scrambled from the pocket in the second quarter, Russell Maryland lassoed him from behind and ripped his helmet off. When Haley knocked down a Young pass, he cursed his ex-teammate out. It was no-holds-barred football, and the dirtier the Dallas uniforms, the dirtier the attitude. “We were not going to lose that game,” says Kevin Smith. “No way.”

  Dallas broke the halftime deadlock with its first long touchdown drive of the afternoon. Starting from their own 22-yard line, the Cowboys methodically marched down the field, using eight plays to move 78 yards. On third-and-7, Aikman dropped back and zipped a 16-yard completion to Irvin, putting his team in 49er territory. On the next play, Aikman went for broke, hitting Alvin Harper down the sideline for a 38-yard gain to the San Francisco 7. Two snaps later, fullback Daryl Johnston stormed into the end zone, handing Dallas a 17–10 advantage.

  Photographic Insert

  J. Mark Kegans/Dallas Morning News

  Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated

  Above first: To celebrate his purchase of the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones (right) took Jimmy Johnson to Mia’s, one of the city’s best Mexican restaurants. Little did the men know that they would be spotted by a Morning News reporter—and that Mia’s was the favorite eatery of Tom Landry (Above second), the soon-to-be-fired legendary coach.

  Jerry Jones (left) and Jimmy Johnson strategize in the team’s “war room.” Though Jones often demanded credit, it was the Cowboys coach who was largely responsible for turning the franchise around with one dazzling personnel decision after another. Peter Read Miller/Sports Illustrated

  Though blessed with myriad athletic gifts, Herschel Walker was the type of running back Johnson didn’t want—uninstinctive and robotic. When the Vikings offered a bushel of players and draft picks in 1989, Johnson eagerly traded his star halfback. The deal was the key to the Dallas revival. Manny Milan/Sports Illustrated

  Cowboys receiver Alvin Harper soars high into the air after scoring a touchdown in his team’s Super Bowl XXVII rout of the Bills. Though Harper was as athletically gifted as Michael Irvin, his addiction to the nightlife kept him from living up to his potential. Peter Read Miller/Sports Illustrated

  Jimmy Johnson receives the ceremonial Gatorade bath near the end of Super Bowl XXVII. Though he considered the victory the crowning achievement of his coaching career, the obsessive, intense Johnson never truly relished the accomplishment. Jim Gund/Sports Illustrated

  Thanks to back-to-back Super Bowl titles, Jimmy Johnson and Jerry Jones were often all smiles (and drinks). Behind the scenes, however, the two men shared a distant, oft-heated relationship, burdened by Jones’s jealousies and Johnson’s insecurities. Al Tielemans/Sports Illustrated

  When Jones could no longer tolerate Johnson, he turned to an old friend—former Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer. Though Switzer was a charming man with a cheerful disposition, his time in Dallas was burdened by one unalienable truth: he wasn’t an especially competent coach. Lynn Johnson/Sports Illustrated

  Once as determined and team-oriented as any other Cowboy, Emmitt Smith turned increasingly self-centered with success. “He didn’t give a shit about us anymore,” says one teammate. “He was all about Emmitt, Emmitt, Emmitt.” That said, Smith was a four-time NFL rushing champ who cleared 1,000 yards for eleven straight seasons in Dallas. He made the Cowboys offense go. Robert Beck/Sports Illustrated

  Never exactly humble, Michael Irvin reached new heights of arrogance with the fame and the Super Bowls and the money. Says one teammate: “Before a game he’d have the people from Versace enter the locker room and measure him for a suit. He wanted to pick a feather from some exotic animal and put it in his derby hat. He wanted crocodile shoes with the tongue raised.” Irvin’s drug and woman problems helped bring down the dynasty. Bill Frakes/Sports Illustrated

  Deion Sanders’s arrival in Dallas after the 1994 season was accompanied by much fanfare and talk. Yet Sanders’s lazy practice habits and indifference to details helped poison the locker room. Bill Waugh/Associated Press

  Though Troy Aikman was initially optimistic about the arrival of Barry Switzer, he quickly learned to despise the man who, in his opinion, was destroying what Jimmy Johnson had worked so hard to build. Lynn Johnson/Sports Illustrated

  Defensive end Charles Haley was both a dynamic force on the Cowboys defensive line and seemingly psychotic. Shown here looming over former teammate Steve Young, Haley was known for exposing himself to peers and once urinating in a teammate’s car. V. J. Lovero/Sports Illustrated

  Tipping the scales at a whopping 360 pounds, Nate Newton was a dynamic—if not
wee bit slow—offensive lineman who was partially responsible for the fabled White House. His most famous quote as a professional athlete: “We’ve got a little place over here where we’re running some whores in and out, trying to be responsible, and we’re criticized for that, too.” Al Tielemans/Sports Illustrated

  Though little more than an excellent special teams player, Kenny Gant started a Dallas phenomenon with his Shark Dance celebration after big plays. Before long, Gant was performing at birthday parties and bar mitzvahs. Peter Read Miller/Sports Illustrated

  Emmitt Smith looks for a lane against Pittsburgh in Super Bowl XXX. The underdog Steelers held the NFL’s rushing champ to 49 yards, but couldn’t overcome two costly interceptions by quarterback Neil O’Donnell. Dallas won, 27–17. Robert Beck/Sports Illustrated

  Less than two months after the glory of Super Bowl XXX, police found Michael Irvin in a Dallas hotel room with strippers, cocaine, drug paraphernalia, and sex toys. When Irvin wore a mink coat to the ensuing grand jury appearance, it came to symbolize all that was wrong with the decaying Dallas dynasty. To date, the franchise has not returned to the Super Bowl. Bill Waugh/Associated Press

  The 49ers responded with a field goal, but on their next series the Cowboys scored again, this time on a 16-yard pass to Emmitt Smith. With 12:25 remaining in the game, Dallas held a 24–13 lead.