Former Cowboys offensive lineman Char-ron Dorsey passes away at 46

From @ToddBrock24f7: After playing for a national champ FSU team and blocking for a Heisman winner, he opened holes for Emmitt Smith in a short Cowboys tenure.

A former Cowboys offensive lineman from the Dave Campo era has passed away at the shockingly young age of 46.

Char-ron Dorsey died earlier this week following complications from a stroke. Though his NFL career was an abbreviated one, Dorsey remained involved in the game as a coach at the middle and high school levels in the Jacksonville area, where he grew up.

Dorsey was a seventh-round draft pick in 2001 out of Florida State, where he played on an undefeated national championship squad and received All-ACC honors blocking for Heisman Trophy winner Chris Weinke.

His rookie summer with the Cowboys got off to a rocky start, though, with the 390-pound lineman leaving camp at one point after feeling pressure from coaches to drop some weight and improve his play. He returned and went on to see action in nine games during the 2001 season, including two starts (for an injured Solomon Page) late in a disappointing year for the 5-11 Cowboys.

2001 was Dallas’s first season without Troy Aikman, so Dorsey spent much of his playing time blocking for running back Emmitt Smith (in his final 1,000-yard season) in a run-heavy Cowboys offense that failed to find a real rhythm with first-year quarterback Quincy Carter.

Dorsey was waived after the Cowboys’ 2002 season opener and immediately picked up by the Houston Texans, who were playing their inaugural season. He would play in two games that year and logged one more start before being released. Dorsey made one more attempt to latch on to a roster with the New York Giants in 2003, but he missed all of training camp rehabbing from knee surgery and never made the team.

“Teams want offensive lineman to be pretty big. Maybe I got too big,” Dorsey once said in an interview.

“I battle this every year. I get question after question every year about it. It gets to the point where you get tired of hearing about it.”

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Dorsey returned to his native Florida and began coaching in youth programs, helping lead multiple programs to prominence. Over a 10-season tenure at his own alma mater, Matthew Gilbert Middle School went 87-5 and won three championships. Taking over a program in 2018 that hadn’t had a winning season in a decade, he led Parker High School to a district title in his second season.

“He’s had an impact on so many kids that have had the opportunity to make it to the next level,” said Michael Holloway, who had coached alongside Dorsey for nearly 20 years.

“No kid could come to him and tell him something that he didn’t understand. He could relate to them. I think he saved some kids,” added athletic director Brad Bernard. “If a kid came up to him and said they were going through hard times, he encouraged them to fight through it because he went through it.”

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Former Cowboys WR Golden Richards passes away at 73

From @ToddBrock24f7: The former second-round deep threat made a memorable TD catch in Super Bowl XII. He passed away from congestive heart failure at 73.

The Cowboys organization has lost one of its first generation of Super Bowl stars.

Wide receiver Golden Richards passed away on Friday of congestive heart failure at the age of 73.

Richards is perhaps best remembered for his fourth-quarter touchdown catch in Super Bowl XII that capped the scoring at 27-10 and earned the Cowboys a championship win over Denver. But despite an abbreviated NFL tenure, he still stands in the franchise’s top 50 in terms of receiving yards and the top 30 in touchdown receptions.

Born and raised in Utah, Richards was a three-sport star who started his collegiate career at BYU and then finished at Hawaii. He was selected by the Cowboys in the second round of a 1973 draft that also brought Billy Joe DuPree, Harvey Martin, and Drew Pearson to Dallas.

By his second season, Richards was named a starter at wide receiver over Bob Hayes, the former Olympic track champion whose jersey number Richards had worn in college. He quickly grew into a role as the offense’s deep threat, enjoying a career high that season in touchdowns.

Richards was targeted just once in the Cowboys’ Super Bowl X loss to Pittsburgh but put up no other stats. He was on the brink of a similarly meager outing in Super Bowl XII, sitting at two targets, one catch, and nine yards as the final quarter got underway.

Up 20-10 with seven minutes to go, Cowboys head coach Tom Landry went for the dagger, calling a halfback option play that saw Robert Newhouse lob an unlikely 29-yard throw to Richards, who reeled in the pass as he crossed the goal line for one of the most memorable plays of the franchise’s first 20 years.

Richards was traded to Chicago early in the 1978 season that followed. He played 20 games for the Bears and then signed with Denver in 1980. He never played in a game as a Bronco, as a season-ending injury in his first camp forced him into a premature retirement.

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A stint as host and producer of an ESPN outdoors show followed his gridiron days. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2011, with doctors pointing to his football career as a contributing cause. A 2022 fall caused a hip fracture and required four surgeries, according to family members, and expedited a decline in health.

“My uncle Golden passed away peacefully this morning,” Lance Richards wrote on social media, per ProFootballTalk. “I will forever remember going hunting and talking Dallas Cowboy football. He was a kind and sweet soul, and I’m so happy he’s not suffering anymore.”

Golden Richards played in 66 games for the Cowboys over six seasons. He has 90 receptions and 1,650 yards on his Dallas résumé, with 16 touchdowns.

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49ers trick play offers remember-when nod to vintage Cowboys FB in Super Bowl XII

From @ToddBrock24f7: The TD pass thrown Sunday by Juaun Jennings made him the newest member of an exclusive club started by Robert Newhouse in 1978.

Apart from the satin jacket Post Malone was sporting from the luxury suites at Allegiant Stadium, Super Bowl LVIII was awfully thin for Cowboys fans hoping their team might catch some stray shout-outs.

But the game’s first touchdown (and the only touchdown until late in the third quarter) did dig up an all-but-forgotten asterisk that recalled one of the most memorable plays in the history of America’s Team… that was also made on the biggest stage of them all… and also by a rather unlikely character.

After a scoreless first quarter and toward the end of a mostly dull second frame that featured a long field goal as the lone highlight, the 49ers found themselves knocking on the door of the red zone. On 2nd-and-10, quarterback Brock Purdy turned and ripped a lateral dart to wide receiver Juaun Jennings, who had retreated nearly 10 full yards to collect the pass. Jennings used that cushion- and just enough blocking from his teammates- to lob the ball back across the field to running back Christian McCaffrey, who streaked 27 yards into the end zone.

The pass from Jennings was his first attempt as a pro. His last throw came in 2016 while at the University of Tennessee, a 4-yard connection to Joshua Dobbs versus Texas A&M.

CBS play-by-play man Jim Nantz pointed out of Jennings’s rainbow, “It felt like it took forever to get there.” Sidekick Tony Romo added, “It was scary.”

Unexpected, too, in the moment. But the Super Bowl, especially in recent years, has actually become the testing ground for wild and wacky play calls- especially, it seems, for random players chucking the rock around for scores.

The play marked the third time a non-quarterback has tossed a touchdown pass in the past seven Super Bowls and just the sixth time it’s ever happened in the big game.

The man who founded that exclusive club? None other than Cowboys fullback Robert Newhouse. In January of 1978, his 29-yard touchdown throw to wide receiver Golden Richards served as the dagger to seal a championship victory win over Denver and made Newhouse the first non-quarterback to ever throw for a touchdown in a Super Bowl.

Newhouse was perhaps the last man the Broncos would have thought of as a deep passing threat. Already a six-year veteran when that Super Bowl XII contest in New Orleans kicked off, the 5-foot-10-inch bruiser with the famed 44-inch thighs had started his NFL career getting minimal work behind ballcarriers Calvin Hill and Walt Garrison. He put together a 930-yard rushing season in 1975 but then saw his touches decrease once Tony Dorsett joined the team in 1977.

As for letting him put the ball in the air, Dallas had tried it just twice before. Over the first three weeks of the 1975 season, Newhouse went 1-for-2 passing. And although one of those attempts did go for a 46-yard touchdown to Drew Pearson, the Cowboys didn’t try a halfback pass again for their next 45 games (including playoffs).

Some of Newhouse’s teammates didn’t believe head coach Tom Landry should go back to it at all, based on how the play had looked in practice leading up to Super Bowl XII.

For starters, the play was designed to be run to Newhouse’s right, making a more natural throw for the right-handed back.

“We ran it to his right 10 times, which is a lot easier, and he went 0-for-10,” remembered Cowboys exec Gil Brandt. “He threw the ball wide, short, underthrown like you couldn’t imagine, sideways, it was a disaster. There was no way Tom was calling that play, never mind to his left.”

But Landry did call the play, with just over seven minutes remaining in the game. The Cowboys had just recovered a Broncos fumble at the Denver 29. With the score 20-10, one more touchdown would almost assuredly put the game out of reach. And Landry called Newhouse’s number.

“When Tom called the play, I said, ‘I can’t believe he called this play,'” Newhouse once stated. “I was nervous about throwing the ball. In practice the ball had been wobbling, but Danny [White, Cowboys backup quarterback] told me to get my hip around it. I kept thinking about that when I got the ball.”

Newhouse was so unprepared to pass that he had previously covered his hands in Stickum. Dorsett had gone down with a knee injury earlier, leaving Newhouse to take over in the backfield, and he wanted to be sure he didn’t fumble.

But with a halfback-option play coming, the now-banned gluelike goo was going to be a problem.

“I was shocked. I panicked,” Newhouse would say later. “I’ve never eaten so much Stickum in my life. I started wiping it off my pants and started licking my fingers.”

Once in the huddle, Newhouse could be seen wiping his hands on teammates’ towels and even loosening his arm and cracking his knuckles in preparation for his big pass.

“We were working on that play for two weeks, and ‘House didn’t throw a spiral once,” safety Charlie Waters said. “I’m honestly not sure I ever saw him throw a spiral before that pass in the Super Bowl. He threw wounded ducks. But he was a gamer, an absolute gamer.”

Quarterback Roger Staubach took the snap and immediately pitched it to Newhouse, who took a long backward angle on his run to the left side. He had good blocking- perhaps because half the Broncos defense had also seen him prepping to throw while in the huddle and had backtracked into coverage- and floated a high, arcing, even “scary” bomb to Richards.

Denver cornerback Steve Foley was actually in good position downfield, but Newhouse’s pass was perfect. Richards snatched the ball away from Foley’s outstretched hands, and the Cowboys’ second world title was all but secured.

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Newhouse would play another six seasons- all in Dallas- but he would never attempt another pass in the NFL.

The first non-quarterback to throw a touchdown pass in a Super Bowl was also the first former Cowboys player to be brought back to the organization by Jerry Jones after he purchased the team in 1989. A universally-loved personality, he worked for several years in the team’s player relations department. Robert Newhouse passed away of heart disease in 2014 at the age of 64.

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Cowboys great Darren Woodson once again passed over for Pro Football Hall of Fame

From @ToddBrock24f7: The Cowboys Ring of Honor member is the franchise’s leading tackler and has been up for enshrinement 8 times now.

The wait goes on. Cowboys safety Darren Woodson has been passed over for enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame after an exhausting eight times as a nominee.

The announcement of the Class of 2024 came at NFL Honors in Las Vegas Thursday night as part of Super Bowl Week. Julius Peppers, Devin Hester, Dwight Freeney, Andre Johnson, Patrick Willis, Steve McMichael, and Randy Gradishar will be inducted just prior to the 2024 preseason.

Woodson’s achievements during his 12-year Cowboys career speak for themselves and should have punched his ticket to Canton long ago. The franchise’s all-time leading tackler. Three-time Super Bowl champ. Five-time Pro Bowler. Four-time first-team All-Pro. Ring of Honor member… since 2015.

“I’m happy for the guys going in,” Woodson said, per Calvin Watkins of the Dallas Morning News. “I’m disappointed I’m not going in. It’s something I can’t control.”

Woodson had been a finalist the past two years.

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“Maybe it’ll happen next year,” said Woodson. “You hope one day you’ll be elected. It’s not my time.”

Woodson has four more years of eligibility remaining

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ESPN ranks Cowboys 5 Super Bowl winners among all-time champions

From @ToddBrock24f7: The Cowboys place 2 of their championships squads inside the Top 10 in NFL history, but they also lost to the worst Super Bowl winners ever.

Next Sunday’s game in Las Vegas will crown this season’s best team, but the very nature of the Super Bowl invites comparisons to champions past. Whether it’s Kansas City or San Francisco standing under the confetti shower at the end of Super Bowl LVIII, we’ll never truly know how they stack up against any of the 57 teams who have been there before.

Or can we?

ESPN recently took on the task of ranking every previous Super Bowl-winning squad to determine the best of the best. To do it, Aaron Schatz used his own proprietary DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average) ratings that look at a team’s efficiency on a play-by-play basis when adjusted for each situation and opponent. For teams that played before 1981 (when that metric was invented), estimates were calculated using stats from those years.

What results is a comprehensive ranking of Super Bowl winners, from the weakest team to hoist the Lombardi Trophy (sorry, Colts fans) to the greatest of all time (Cowboys fans, hide your eyes).

Here’s how Dallas’s five Super Bowl-winning rosters placed, plus how the three teams that beat the ‘Boys in a Super Bowl went on to finish.

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Cowboys can join ’80, ’81 clubs with this rare distinction; playoff success not guaranteed

From @ToddBrock24f7: A perfect home record has happened just twice before for Dallas; it has not translated to postseason success.

Mike McCarthy preaches the importance of winning home games. All of them. The Cowboys head coach has repeatedly said that if a team can win all of its home contests and at least split the road dates, they’ll generally be sitting in at least decent shape for the postseason.

But even just the first part of that equation is far more difficult than it sounds. In the 62 full regular seasons that the Cowboys franchise has been in existence, only two of those clubs have put together a perfect home slate. The 2023 edition has the chance to accomplish that feat on Saturday night when they host the Detroit Lions in the regular-season home finale.

While notching a win over the surging Lions would be exceedingly important from a morale standpoint in that it would snap a troubling two-game skid (both away games), going undefeated at AT&T Stadium would be nice icing on the year’s playoff-berth cake.

An unblemished home record, though, doesn’t seem to have much bearing on deep postseason success, especially if the team has to travel in the tournament. At least that’s the lesson the 1980 and 1981 Cowboys have to teach us.

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Cowboys, Lions met for ugliest playoff game in NFL history in 1970

From @ToddBrock24f7: The Cowboys’ and Lions’ postseason 1970 tilt was memorable for the wrong reasons, but it kickstarted the first great era of Dallas football.

The Cowboys, despite their 10-5 record and guaranteed spot in the upcoming playoffs, have been playing some downright ugly ball over the past two weeks. And now the suddenly-relevant Detroit Lions come to town for a late-December visit.

For old-school fans, that confluence of scene-setting factors might bring back memories of one of the strangest games in NFL history.

While this week’s primetime matchup between the two clubs will almost certainly outpace this one in terms of excitement and scoring, Cowboys fans wouldn’t hate it if the end result (and the after-effects) followed the same basic script.

Read on to learn how a run-of-the-mill field goal, a timely sack, and a lucky tip-drill interception created the ugliest postseason win ever… and kickstarted a beautiful legacy of unparalleled success for the Cowboys.

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Milestones: Several Cowboys have chance to move up franchise record books on Sunday

While all the focus is on getting the win, accomplishing these milestones will certainly move Dallas closer to that goal. | From @ArmyChiefW3

The only statistic that ultimately matters on Sunday is whether or not a number is added to the win column. That can’t happen until late on Sunday night, so while awaiting the seconds to tick off towards the Dallas Cowboys’ (9-3) colossal matchup with the Philadelphia Eagles (10-2), there are a few milestones that would ice a victory over the proverbial cake.

In the time the Cowboys have existed, they’ve had their fair share of legendary players who have dotted the team record books with marks some may have thought unimaginable to ever be broken. While Emmitt Smith’s rushing record is safe and secure, there are a few surprising achievements that could be surpassed in Week 14.

Cowboys CB DaRon Bland’s INT numbers already put him in rare historical air

From @ToddBrock24f7: After just 28 regular-season games, Bland is alongside Hall of Famers and Ring of Honor members when it comes to his interception totals.

What DaRon Bland did in the final quarter versus Washington was unprecedented, and his 63-yard pick-six was a most satisfying dessert to top off a 45-10 holiday feast in sweet style. But now that the Cowboys cornerback has made NFL history by becoming the first player ever to notch five interception-return touchdowns in a single season, what’s next?

The easy answer is that he still has six more games to play, and anything else he does post-Thanksgiving is gravy. He’s the current league leader in interceptions (with one more than Ravens safety Geno Stone), and he’s in the conversation for Defensive Player of the Year consideration.

Even if he never ever picks off another pass, that all makes for an incredible story for a fifth-round draft pick out of tiny Fresno State who- as recently as the COVID season of 2020- was at even tinier Sacramento State.

But Bland will undoubtedly add more interceptions to his resume, and he’ll likely take some of them to the end zone.

“I’m sure it’s not going to stop,” Cowboys wide receiver CeeDee Lamb said this week. “They keep trying him, he’ll get another one.”

And with every one Bland grabs, he inches further and further up some awfully star-studded leaderboards.

In terms of career house calls, Bland already has just 31 names ahead of him. Hall of Famer Rod Woodson is the all-time pick-six king, with 12. But it took him 238 outings with four different teams to do it; Bland is over 40% of the way there, after just 28 regular-season games.

With his very next interception-return score, Bland will move into a tie with the likes of Asante Samuel, Derrick Brooks, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, and Darrell Green, who terrorized quarterbacks for a jaw-dropping 20 seasons. Bland is in his second season; no one above him on the all-time pick-six list played for fewer than nine seasons. Current free agent Marcus Peters, with six total, is in his ninth season now, the only active player ahead of Bland. Deion Jones, in his eighth year, also has five; he’s the only active player tied with Bland.

Bland is already the Cowboys’ all-time franchise leader in pick-sixes, a fact that’s a little hard to believe. But it’s true: he passed Dennis Thurman and Dexter Coakley (four apiece) with his Thanksgiving score. Even legends Mel Renfro and Lee Roy Jordan had just three each over their Ring of Honor careers. Same with Terence Newman. Chuck Howley, Charlie Waters, Darren Woodson, and current teammate Trevon Diggs? Two. And before you ask, Deion Sanders totaled nine as a pro, but just two while wearing the star.

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As far as regular old interceptions go, Bland’s 12 career picks already have him in 26th place in the annals of Cowboys history. With two more- well within reach, given his astonishing current pace of one every 2.33 games- he’ll be in the top 20.

True, he’s got a long way to go to catch Renfro’s club mark of 52 (amassed over 14 seasons), but anyone who thinks that’s beyond the 24-year-old Bland’s grasp clearly hasn’t watched him jump a route.

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Cowboys legend Darren Woodson named Pro Football Hall of Fame semifinalist for 8th time

From @ToddBrock24f7: “At some point, it’s going to happen,” the Cowboys’ all-time leading tackler said last year after not getting in as a first-time finalist.

It’s that time of year again.

In what has frustratingly become an annual tradition, Cowboys safety Darren Woodson begins his wait- for the eighth time now- to see if he will finally be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton.

The Hall has announced its list of modern-era semifinalists for the Class of 2024; Woodson is among 25 former players to reach this stage out of an original group of 173 nominees. Woodson was previously a semifinalist in 2015, 2017, and every year from 2019 through 2023. He made it to the finalist stage last year for the first time.

Woodson’s achievements during his 12-year Cowboys career speak for themselves. The franchise’s all-time leading tackler. Three-time Super Bowl champ. Five-time Pro Bowler. Four-time first-team All-Pro. Ring of Honor member… since 2015.

It’s more than enough to have also gotten him a gold jacket long ago.

“Anytime you’re in a situation where you’re up for an award and you don’t win it… I’d be a fool and lying to you if I said I wasn’t disappointed,” Woodson, now 54, said after being passed over for inclusion in the Class of 2023.

“I’m disappointed, but I’m not broken by it… I feel like, at some point, it’s going to happen.”

Tiki Barber, Julius Peppers, Antonio Gates, Devin Hester, and Steve Smith Sr. are among Woodson’s fellow semifinalists this year. So is running back Eddie George, the longtime Houston Oiler/Tennessee Titan who spent his final NFL season as a Cowboy.

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The list of 25 semifinalists will be narrowed down to 15 modern-era finalists before the final voting process. That list will then be thinned to 10 and then just five names during a meeting of the Hall of Fame’s Selection Committee after the first of the year. The Class of 2024 will be announced during Super Bowl Week in Las Vegas in early February.

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