8. January 14, 1996: Emmitt’s playoff pounding of the Packers
The 1994 season had ended in disastrous fashion, with a brutal NFC Championship loss in San Francisco. If not for an absurd chain of events in the first 7:27 of that game, Dallas might have gone to an unprecedented third straight Super Bowl. Instead, they got 364 days to stew over the missed opportunity to claim the ’94 conference crown.
Hosting the championship game after the 1995 season, Dallas set out to exorcise those demons by wearing down the visiting Green Bay Packers with a relentless diet of Emmitt James Smith III.
Of Smith that day, Cowboys offensive coordinator Ernie Zampese recounted that the defending rushing champ “had the fire in his eyes.”
But Emmitt had to work to keep that fire burning. Of the Cowboys’ 77 offensive plays, Smith carried the ball on nearly half of them. The longer the game went on, it seemed, the harder Dallas relied on No. 22 to chew up yardage and chew up the clock. And the better Smith got.
Dallas nearly doubled Green Bay in total time of possession en route to a 38-27 win that punched the Cowboys’ ticket to Super Bowl XXX. Smith finished with 150 yards and three touchdowns, tying his career high with a staggering 35 rushing attempts.
“Once you get past 25 carries, you’re running on empty,” Smith said later. “You just go. Every time I got up, it just seemed like they handed it to me again.”