Category: Cowboys History

Ex-Cowboys CB Adam ‘Pacman’ Jones raising children of fallen teammate

From @ToddBrock24f7: Once best known for his off-the-field troubles, Jones is now teaching the children of a late college teammate not to follow his lead.

Adam “Pacman” Jones was for many years the league’s go-to example of what not to do.

But the short-lived Cowboy, once the “NFL poster boy for bad behavior,” hasn’t turned just his own life around. Along the way, he’s also made the difference for a fallen teammate’s family, as detailed in a thoughtful piece for The Athletic by Zak Keefer.

Jones, now 39, has been raising the two sons of Chris Henry as his own for a couple years. Jones and Henry had been close friends while playing together at West Virginia; Henry died in 2009, during his fifth season in the league.

Chris Jr. is a straight-A student and though he won’t even graduate high school until 2026, he’s already received offers to play college ball at some of the nation’s top programs- Ohio State, Michigan, Georgia, and USC, as well as West Virginia. He is thought to be a lock as a top-10 draft pick whenever he declares.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a kid track the deep ball like him,” Jones told Keefer. “He’s more skilled than me and his dad were at his age.”

Chris’s younger brother DeMarcus is a budding basketball talent who will start high school in the fall.

And the boys’ legal guardian is the man who was once called “nothing but a disaster off the field” by the man who drafted him into the NFL and had at one point been suspended for 22 out of a possible 28 games.

Jones is well aware of the irony.

“I’ll be damned if these kids make the same mistakes I did,” he says.

The sixth overall pick in the 2005 draft, Jones held out for most of his rookie training camp in a contract dispute, with the Titans worried right from the jump about non-football incidents while he was in college. He had a breakout second season, but behind the scenes, Tennessee was already ready to sever all ties, thanks to a continued downward spiral of legal troubles.

Jones had been arrested multiple times since turning pro; his sheet included everything from felony vandalism and obstruction of justice to probation violations and assault. The league finally suspended Jones for the 2007 season; it was the first time in nearly a half-century that a player was suspended for an offense other than substance abuse.

In spring 2008, news broke that Jerry Jones and the Cowboys were trading for the cornerback and return specialist even before he had even been reinstated. The deal went through, and Dallas got Jones for just a fourth-round draft pick.

Having previously brought aboard Terrell Owens and Tank Johnson, the Cowboys were no stranger to reclamation projects. The Jones trade terms even included contingencies that would change the Titans’ compensation if he were to be suspended or arrested again while a Cowboy.

The club threw considerable resources at trying to help him make the most of his second chance in Dallas. Michael Irvin and Deion Sanders pledged their personal guidance; even Hall of Famer Jim Brown wanted to offer his support to the troubled Jones. The bad boy’s path to football redemption with America’s Team was a major plotline on that summer’s edition of HBO’s Hard Knocks series.

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Over the first six games of the 2008 season, Jones delivered promising results: 25 tackles, six passes defended, a forced fumble, two fumble recoveries.

But then an altercation at a Dallas hotel resulted in another suspension, this time for six games. Jones would appear in just three more contests as a Cowboy.

Jones suffered a neck injury in his first game back from injury. There were stories of Jones getting into physical altercations with the security personnel the Cowboys had assigned to him. But even more troubling was the discovery by the Dallas front office that Jones had been involved in a 2007 Las Vegas shooting that left a man paralyzed. The Cowboys officially cut Jones early in the 2009 offseason.

Jones made a return to the NFL in 2010 with the Bengals. This time, it clicked. He was named a first-team All-Pro in 2014, made the Pro Bowl in 2015, and lasted eight total seasons in Cincinnati.

He retired from the league in 2019 after a final season with the Broncos.

Jones had kept in touch with Henry’s wife and children over the years. Shortly after hanging up his own cleats, Jones and his wife invited the family to move into their Cincinnati home with them. There was no fanfare. His former coaches and teammates only found out from other people. Jones didn’t even want The Athletic story written.

He admits now he was diagnosed as bipolar in 2015 but refused medication until he retired from football because he didn’t want it affecting his play. One can only imagine how the undiagnosed condition had contributed to his infamous transgressions over his early career.

Today, Jones remains involved with league happenings as one of the hosts of the I Am Athlete podcast and as an analyst for The Pat McAfee Show; it was Jones who broke the story last week of Deion Sanders needing emergency surgery due to blood clots in this groin. He is part of a group of ex-players- including Terrell Owens- starting the Beach Football League.

But he also has other business interests, including the gym he started in the suburbs of Cincinnati. Former teammates often bring their sons for week-long bootcamps. And he runs a demanding year-round workout regimen for Chris Jr. and DeMarcus, intent on helping them make the most of their first opportunity so that they’ll never need a second or third.

It’s a lesson Pacman Jones can uniquely teach.

“Visit the past,” he tells the kids- his own as well as Henry’s- “but don’t stay in the past.”

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You have $15, build the best OL group from Cowboys’ history

What if you were able to compile an offensive line from all of Cowboys’ history? With price restrictions based on talent, who would be on it? | From @KDDrummondNFL

Everyone dreams of being as rich as Jerry Jones. Well, you won’t make it, but you do have the chance to make believe. With the lull in the football schedule while the players and coaches take vacations before training camp, why not have some fun and learn some Dallas Cowboys history at the same time?

Using the internet-famous $15 rule, you have the opportunity to build the best group of players money can buy. Using our 2019 rankings of the 100 Best Players in Cowboys history — constructed around a proprietary formula — as a baseline, we’ve assigned prices to 25 players across five positions. With $15 to spend, how would you construct the ultimate Great Wall of Dallas?

You must pick one player from each spot on the line and their total costs cannot add up to more than $15. The numbers beside each player is where they ranked in our Top 100 back in 2019.

Terence Newman, Kellen Moore among Cowboys on 2024 College Football HoF ballot

From @ToddBrock24f7: Some of the nominees were mainstays in Dallas for years; others crossed paths with America’s Team for just a brief moment in time.

Almost 200 players and over 40 coaches were announced Monday as candidates for the College Football Hall of Fame’s 2024 ballot.

And while that sounds like a lot, consider this: more than 5.62 million people have played college football over the 153 years the sport has existed. Of that number, just 1,074 of them are in the Atlanta-based Hall. That’s less than two one-hundredths of a percent (.02%).

So this is a case where, statistically speaking, it truly is a remarkable honor just to be nominated.

Ballots have been mailed to over 12,000 National Football Foundation members and current Hall of Famers. An announcement on the Class of 2024 will be made early next year, with official inductions coming next December.

The 2024 group of nominees includes notable players like Larry Fitzgerald, Terrell Suggs, Marvin Harrison, Marshawn Lynch, Randy Moss, and Michael Vick.

But there are also several names that will jump out to Cowboys fans. Some were mainstays of the team for many years, while others crossed paths with America’s Team only briefly during their football lives.

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Cowboys open -2.5 at Giants in Week 1, favored in 12 games in 2023

While looking at the game-by-game odds for the Cowboys 2023 campaign, an interesting stat arises about the most successful streaks in franchise history. From @KDDrummondNFL

Are the Dallas Cowboys on their way to another 12-5 season? That could be the case if the early betting lines for 2023 are accurate. Draft Kings has published their opening line for all 272 games on the NFL schedule and has the Cowboys favored in 12 of their contests under fourth-year head coach Mike McCarthy.

If this were to be the case, it would be the first time since the early 1990s when Dallas finished with 12 wins in three straight seasons. That run came after their third Super Bowl win and included Lombardis four and five. Dallas has finished with the same record in three straight seasons twice since then, winning only five games each year from 2000 through 2002 under Dave Campo and eight games from 2011 through 2013 under Jason Garrett.

In 2022, Dallas finished with double-digit wins in back-to-back years for the first time since a six-year run from 1991 through 1996 under Jimmy Johnson. A seven-year run from 1975 through 1981 was interrupted by the nine-game strike season of 1982 (Dallas again won double-digit games in 1983). They also had a six-year streak from 1968 through 1973. Both of those came under the incomparable Tom Landry.

An interesting tidbit lies in these factoids. Every streak of at least three consecutive seasons of double-digit wins included a Super Bowl win.

Here’s a look at each of the weekly early odds.

4 Cowboys players plus a coach make all-time 7th round NFL draft team

From @ToddBrock24f7 | Remember these legendary Cowboys’ names- all 7th-rounders- when the pickings seem slim on Saturday of draft weekend.

Draft watchers know the seventh round is when things tend to get wacky. A left-footed punter? Sure, it’s the seventh round. The lacrosse player from the tiny school no one’s ever heard of with the insane 40 time whose great-great-grandfather once played for the Pottsville Maroons? Why not?… and let’s have the pick announced by a rollerskating penguin while we’re at it. Heck, these days, the last guy taken in the seventh is actually called “Mr. Irrelevant” for the rest of his life.

But as we were all reminded watching Brock Purdy last season, there is considerable talent to be mined in the seventh round. After all, as recently as 1991, the draft featured 12 full rounds of selections; prospects taken in the seventh were considered mid-rounders.

Just to prove that the seventh round shouldn’t be an afterthought for NFL squads next weekend in Kansas City, longtime Cowboys reporter Rick Gosselin went back through the archives to assemble the All-Time Seventh-Round NFL Draft Team.

Led by quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, the team is studded with star playmakers like Bo Jackson, Jamal Anderson, and Shannon Sharpe. And that’s just the offense.

The Cowboys are exceptionally well-represented on a stacked roster that not one of today’s top teams would ever consider irrelevant. Remember these names when the picking seem slim on Saturday afternoon of draft weekend.

Emmitt Smith recalls facing Cowboys as opponent: ‘I broke down in tears’

The all-time rushing king recently remembered the difficult day in 2003 when he returned to Dallas wearing another team’s uniform. | From @ToddBrock24f7

There’s a wardrobe change coming for a new batch of NFL players as the annual roster churn of free agency will once again send longtime stars to new teams to either continue or close out their pro careers in unfamiliar uniforms.

It’s hit the Cowboys both coming and going over the years. It was certainly strange for die-hard fans to see the likes of onetime foes Eddie George, Randall Cunningham, and Terrell Owens don the star. It was even more painful when hometown heroes like Tony Dorsett, DeMarcus Ware, and Jason Witten sought greener pastures in colors other than silver and blue.

It creates awkward visuals and often uncomfortable feelings for everyone involved. Even the player in question can find himself in serious conflict, according to one Cowboys legend who lived it.

On a recent episode of The Pivot Podcast, Emmitt Smith shared what it was like to play briefly for the Cardinals. That, of course, came after 13 seasons with the Cowboys that saw him help build a dynasty, win three Super Bowls, become the sport’s all-time leading rusher, and cement his place as one of the franchise’s most beloved personalities.

“I gave it everything I had,” Smith said of his two-year stint with Arizona that started in 2003.

The Cardinals had just drafted wideout Anquan Boldin. Marcel Shipp, Damien Anderson, and Josh Scobey were in the team’s backfield. Adrian Wilson, Leonard Davis, and Josh McCown were there. Larry Fitzgerald would join them the next season.

They all made an impression on Smith, but it was the seasoned superstar Smith who left a bigger mark.

“What I appreciated about them,” Smith continued, “they were great teammates. They soaked it up like a sponge. They wanted to know what it was like. They’d see me show up at five o’clock in the morning to go work out. I’d been there by myself, and they come in about 6:30 or 7, like, ‘Dude, why are you here so early?’ ‘This is what I do.’ They’d see me in practice running 40, 50 yards down the field and jogging back: ‘Dude, why are you running so far?’ ‘I’m preparing myself for the game. [When] I get in the open, I want to take it to the house. This is the way we work.’ And they started doing it. And that part was awesome.”

Returning to face his old squad, however, was decidedly less so, the Hall of Famer admits.

The Cowboys hosted the Cardinals in Week 5 of Smith’s first season with Arizona. Smith would return to the very field where he broke Walter Payton’s all-time rushing record, less than 12 months after the fact.

Even almost 30 years later, Smith’s voice took on a very different tone as he told the story to podcast hosts Channing Crowder, Ryan Clark, and Fred Taylor.

“We rode down on that bus,” Smith, now 52, recalled. “First time I went into Texas Stadium in a bus. On a visiting bus. Got off the bus, walked into the visitors locker room, saw my Cardinals uniform. And I looked around. I felt out of place. For the first time ever, felt out of place. I sat down at my locker, looked at that uniform again. I stood up, and I’d come to realize. I said this out loud: ‘I’m not supposed to be here. This is not my room.’ I broke down in tears and cried for 45 minutes before we played that game. I mean, boo-hooed. Cried like a sobbing baby. And my teammates didn’t know what to do. I had to get myself together and go on a football field and play a game.”

Whether it was Smith’s emotions or a fired-up Cowboys defense or a combination of the two, Smith’s homecoming did not last long. Smith was swarmed early and often by Dallas defenders- led by La’Roi Glover, Dat Nguyen, Ebenezer Ekuban, and Dexter Coakley.

Smith had minus-one yard on six carries, leaving the game early in the second quarter after suffering a sprained shoulder on a big hit from a certain ascending Cowboys safety.

“Roy Williams knocked the living crap out of me; I’m going to slap him the next time I see him,” Smith remembered with a laugh.

The Cardinals lost 24-7 that day. For Smith, it marked the first time in his illustrious NFL career that he ended a game with negative yardage. Smith would go on to play 20 more games wearing Cardinal red, despite it never feeling quite right.

“We go through stuff,” he explained. “And I went through a heartbreaking moment, knowing that this is not where I’m supposed to be. This is not where God placed me. This is not what he wanted for me. He wanted me to be with the ‘Boys and do what I do with the ‘Boys. But he also had a different plan, and I had to accept that plan. That plan was to transition out and help others as I leave the game and leave them with something that they can go with.”

The lessons Smith helped impart did stick with his Cardinals teammates, even after he went unsigned by the club following the 2004 season.

Five years later, Arizona made it to their only Super Bowl. Many of the young Cardinals players that Smith had mentored in 2002 and 2003 credited him with helping them get there.

Smith eventually signed a one-day contract with the Cowboys before announcing his retirement from the game, but there was nothing quite like seeing Smith at Texas Stadium that one time in enemy colors.

“Having that moment gave me a chance to have closure,” he said.

With free agency about to kick off once again, that moment will come for a new group of players this season.

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Emmitt Smith nearly left Cowboys after first Super Bowl to play for Dolphins

For years, the popular narrative has been that Smith held out to start the 1993 season; the all-time rushing king set the record straight. | From @ToddBrock24f7

Emmitt Smith is a three-time Super Bowl champ, a six-time All-Pro, and an eight-time Pro Bowler. He led the league in rushing four different seasons, led in rushing touchdowns three times, was Offensive Rookie of the Year, was a Super Bowl MVP, and is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And he owns the most consequential record in the sport as the NFL’s all-time rushing king.

Smith is one of the most decorated players in Cowboys history… yet he very nearly achieved many of those career milestones wearing a Miami Dolphins uniform.

Smith, now 53, sat down with Channing Crowder, Ryan Clark, and Fred Taylor on a recent episode of The Pivot Podcast. And as he set the story straight about his infamous two-game absence to start the 1993 season, he also revealed how close he came to leaving Dallas after just his third season as a pro.

The Cowboys had just won Super Bowl XXVII, convincingly beating the Buffalo Bills 52-17, to complete a remarkable turnaround: from the worst team in football to world champions in four years.

Smith had been a key component. The first-round draft pick out of Florida won Offensive Rookie of the Year honors in 1990, and then led the league in rushing in 1991. He led the NFL in rushing yards as well as rushing touchdowns the next year, en route to the Cowboys hoisting the Lombardi Trophy in Pasadena.

But when 1993’s training camp rolled around, Smith was nowhere to be found. And the defending Super Bowl champs started the regular season with a fourth-round rookie named Derrick Lassic in the backfield.

The popularly-held version of the story is that Smith was holding out for a bigger paycheck from the Dallas front office, but Smith was quick to clarify what really happened.

“I didn’t hold out,” Smith corrected. “Holding out is when you have a contract, and you want more money. My contract was over. I had fulfilled my obligations.”

Smith went on to explain how his original four-year rookie contract had reverted to a three-year deal in his very first season. When the three years expired with that Super Bowl rout, Smith says he became a restricted free agent. As such, any other team could have made him an offer that the Cowboys would have had the opportunity to match.

Shockingly, the rushing champ for two years running says he didn’t receive a single offer.

“I get into restricted free agency,” he recalled, “I’ve got 30 days to negotiate with 20-some-odd teams to come play with them. And not one gave me an offer.”

So, Smith says, he took matters into his own hands.

“I picked up the phone and called Don Shula myself and told him I wanted to come to Miami and play for Miami. Because I knew Dan Marino didn’t have a running game. And I said, ‘I want to come help you, help Dan, whatever, get a championship. Bring me back to the state of Florida.’ He said, ‘Well, I don’t know if I can make that offer, because if I do make this offer and you don’t come, all my other players will see what I put on the table for you, and it’s going to mess up my chemistry.’ I said, ‘Just put something on the table that Jerry [Jones] says, “I cannot match it.”‘ He said, ‘I can’t do that.'”

Smith shared how he watched the Cowboys’ first two games of the 1993 season with his parents in Pensacola.

“It was killing me at home,” he said.

After starting the season 0-2 with losses to Washington and Buffalo, it was obvious to the Cowboys that they needed Smith back on the payroll.

“And then my phone started ringing,” he laughed.

Smith was on a plane shortly thereafter, and then at the bargaining table with the Joneses. Dallas gave Smith a new contract that made him the highest-paid running back in the NFL at the time.

But the narrative that has persisted for all these years, Smith says, instead paints him as the bad guy.

“That’s how the media twists it,” he continued. “The media twisted it as if I was holding out, and people think that I held out. No, I was negotiating. It’s a different term than ‘holdout.’ ‘Holdout’ seems like I withheld myself and my services that were already obligated. But I had fulfilled my deal. I didn’t have no more to do, except for get a new contract.”

Smith was back in the lineup for Week 3. The Cowboys won their next seven games and eventually finished the year 12-4. Smith still ended the season with 1,486 rushing yards to lead the league for a third consecutive year. The regular-season finale against New York saw Smith famously dislocate his shoulder but play on to help Dallas win the division. The Cowboys went on to win Super Bowl XXVIII; Smith was named the Super Bowl MVP and the league MVP.

Smith would play another nine years as a Cowboy, one of the most beloved and accomplished of them all.

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How Cowboys greats delivered Hall of Fame news to Chuck Howley

Suffering from late-stage dementia, Chuck Howley got a visit from a cadre of Cowboys teammates to tell him he’ll be enshrined in Canton. | From @ToddBrock24f7

The moment was a very long time in coming, 45 years, to be exact.

That’s how long Cowboys linebacker Chuck Howley had been eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. But despite a one-of-a-kind career that saw him soaring to the pinnacle of the game, leading one of the great dynasties in the sport’s history, and achieving a singular honor that not another soul who has ever played can lay claim to, Howley had never even been a finalist for Canton.

So for the moment when one of the Cowboys’ very first stars was to be finally added to the permanent constellation of football immortality, it would require an assemblage of the legends who had shined alongside him.

Roger Staubach, Bob Lilly, Lee Roy Jordan, Mel Renfro, Cliff Harris, and Charlie Waters all took part in telling their former teammate that he would be a member of the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2023. (Click here to see the full video.)

For Howley’s family, his friends, his teammates, and his fans of a certain age, last week’s announcement finally set right a long-overdue omission. But for Howley himself, it’s sadly not clear if the news of his enshrinement is even fully understood.

Howley, now 86, suffers from late-stage dementia. It’s why he wasn’t in Phoenix last week when his name was called at the NFL Honors ceremony. It’s why Howley’s son Scott took his place on the stage with legends like DeMarcus Ware, Joe Thomas, and Darrelle Revis. It’s why he wasn’t on the field at Super Bowl LVII to be recognized by the crowd.

And it’s why so many of Howley’s teammates gathered to first bring Howley the news. The more of his friends, the more gold jackets in the room, the better the chances of the message being received.

Even though it’s a message Howley had long hoped for.

“Even after all these years, my dad never gave up his dream of making the Hall of Fame,” Scott said.

He certainly always had the credentials: six Pro Bowls and five first-team All-Pros nods over 13 years with the Cowboys. Two Super Bowl appearances- a win in one, and a two-interception, forced-fumble performance that earned him MVP honors in the other. He was so dominant in that 16-13 defeat that he remains the only Super Bowl MVP ever from the losing team.

And he was the early leader of the iconic defense that dominated the 1970s and forever changed the way football is played.

“There wouldn’t have been a ‘Doomsday’ defense without Chuck,” Lilly said.

None other than Coach Tom Landry said when Howley retired, “I don’t know that I’ve seen anybody better at linebacker.”

And yet Howley fell through the Hall of Fame Selection Committee’s cracks for nearly five decades.

By the time the recognition finally came and he was named a senior finalist for the first time in August 2022, Alzheimer’s disease had already knocked on Howley’s door, eight years prior. The onetime athletic dynamo who lettered in five sports at the University of West Virginia showed no comprehension of what he was being told.

But there are still good days mixed in with the bad days. And every once in a while, a ray of sunshine pierces even the darkest clouds and fog of late-stage dementia.

Shortly after that visit last fall, Howley’s round-the-clock caregiver was talking about the possibility of making the Hall… and something happened.

“My dad looked at him and said, ‘Well, I’m going to need a new suit,'” Scott recounted. “There was a moment of clarity where he appeared excited about it.”

When the contingent of Cowboys greats arrived en masse on Jan. 24 to deliver the news of Howley’s induction, Staubach knew better than to have similar expectations.

“His dementia makes me sick when I think about it,” Staubach said. “It’s a major thrill to go into the Hall of Fame, and I am praying that he will understand. But it’s going to be tough.”

Surrounded by family and friends and teammates, Howley got the news from his former quarterback.

“Oh. Thank you,” Howley said, with a nod that one wants to believe came with crystal-clear understanding of the moment.

Staubach and his mates would gently repeat the news to Howley several times over the course of their visit. And with everything that comes standard with a Hall invitee- from gold jacket fittings to bust-sculpting sessions- he’ll no doubt be reminded often between now and August’s ceremony.

“We’re going to make sure we record every moment,” Scott said, “so that he has every opportunity to live as much of it as he can.”

But just as with the official announcement last week in Phoenix and the public curtain call at Super Bowl LVII, Howley likely won’t be in Canton to be enshrined in-person.

“It would be very difficult for him,” Scott said, as per Mickey Spagnola of the team website. “He can’t handle of lot of sensory input; the crowd and the regiment of the schedule would be hard.”

So it will fall, once again, to Howley’s family, friends, and Cowboys teammates to see No. 54’s place in football history finally solidified.

“I’m so proud to be able to tell Chuck he’s in the Hall of Fame,” Staubach said, according to columnist John McClain. “It’s an honor that’s well-deserved. He was a fantastic linebacker. He did everything. He could run, hit, drop into coverage, rush the passer. It’s such a thrill because it brings back so many memories.”

One hopes that the memories have come back- even if only in fleeting moments- for Howley, too.

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Cowboys’ Darren Woodson on wait for Hall of Fame: ‘At some point, it’s going to happen’

The wait for Woodson to get the call to Canton has lasted longer than the entire career that has unquestionably earned him the honor. | From @ToddBrock24f7

The wait is something Darren Woodson has grown used to.

Unfortunately, so is the disappointment.

For the 15th time since he became eligible in 2008, the Cowboys safety has watched another class of men he played with and against be welcomed to football immortality in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In seven of those years, his name was on the list of semifinalists and the case for his enshrinement was made in some secret room to the committee who holds the keys.

This year, for the first time ever, Woodson made it the finalist stage. He was one of 15 greats who had to go about their normal lives for the past couple weeks wondering- and waiting- for what’s become known as The Knock.

Woodson is still waiting.

His wait for The Knock has lasted longer than the entire playing career that has unquestionably earned him the right to hear it.

“Yeah, 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 said on Thursday after being passed over for inclusion in the Class of 2023.

“I’m disappointed, but I’m not broken by it.”

It would take a lot more than that to break the three-time Super Bowl champ.

The five-time Pro Bowler.

The four-time first-team All-Pro.

The Ring of Honor honoree.

The franchise’s all-time leading tackler.

The college linebacker who went on to redefine the safety position in the NFL.

When Cowboys defensive backfield coach Dave Campo visited Arizona State in 1992 to work out a cornerback named Phillippi Sparks, it was the Sun Devils’ undersized linebacker who really captured his attention.

“He’s running like crazy out there,” Campo said of Woodson. “He makes a tackle here or there, but Arizona State was so good on defense he didn’t have to make many tackles. But he was around the football all the time.”

Too small to be a pro linebacker? Probably. But Jimmy Johnson also wanted a big, strong safety who also had speed to help Dallas compete with the rest of the NFC East. So Campo put the 6-foot-2-inch, 218-pound Woodson through some DB drills.

“Footwork-wise, explosion and all those things… he was exactly what you’re looking for at that position,” Campo raved.

He promised Johnson that Woodson could start on every special teams unit from Day One and even have a shot at becoming the team’s dedicated nickel back.

The Cowboys used one of their Herschel Walker picks to select him in the second round of the draft.

Woodson started two games that fall, made the league’s All-Rookie team for his special teams play, and helped the Cowboys win the first of three Super Bowls in the 1990s.

He was in the starting lineup on opening day the following season, and the NFL had its first true “cover safety.”

“The nickel position is different,” Campo explained. “It’s tougher to play than the outside corner. The receivers in there are usually quicker and use the whole field to run away from you. That’s where Woodson separates himself from everyone else. He could line up and cover man-to-man with his speed, and was smart enough because of his safety work to understood zones. You don’t see that combination very often. He could handle anyone inside. There’s nobody he really had a problem with.”

Woodson ended his remarkable career with just 23 interceptions, never nabbing more than five in a season. But Dallas played so much man, it can be argued that’s only because he covered so well that he was rarely tested by opposing quarterbacks, even one-on-one against receivers like Andre Reed, Cris Carter, and Jerry Rice.

Hall of Famers all.

As longtime Cowboys writer Rick Gosselin points out:

“With the explosion of the passing game that has made three-receiver offensive sets staples, every team in the NFL now looks for safeties with the cover skills that Woodson brought to the Cowboys back in 1992. He was 30 years ahead of his time.”

Which only makes it harder to see so many defensive backs get gold jackets ahead of Woodson. Not all of them would seem to have a body of work that’s as stacked. One or two very recent inductees noticeably pale in comparison.

And yet, Woodson still waits.

“Going into this, my expectations were set on, ‘Hey, this is my first time on the floor,'” Woodson, now 53, said. “I’m not sure if anyone makes it the first time you get into the top 15 unless you’re a first-ballot guy. But I’m OK. I’ve got a lot of friends and family and tons of support here. I’m going to be fine.”

The fact that he got closer than ever before- only to get rejected again- and have it all happen right in his backyard of Phoenix adds to the travesty, in the eyes of many Cowboys faithful.

Just as the only team Woodson ever played for experienced in the 2022 postseason, making it one step further than last year is of little solace in the moment; it only delays the disappointment. Amplifies it.

But also just like the Cowboys have become accustomed to doing, Woodson is already looking ahead to the future.

With names like Andrew Luck, Julius Peppers, Antonio Gates, and Eric Berry headlining the list of those who will become Hall-of-Fame eligible next year, the Class of 2024 seems to be lacking in surefire first-ballot guys. That could help Woodson’s chances.

But it also requires yet another year of waiting.

“There’s an opportunity for me to continue in this process,” Woodson said, “and hopefully that opportunity is next year, the following year or whatever. I feel like, at some point, it’s going to happen. And I’m okay with that.”

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Cowboys look to break curse, record first playoff win in navy jerseys

Dallas is 0-3 in postseason games wearing navy-colored jerseys; they’ll pair them with white pants Monday, a combo that went 2-0 this year. | From @ToddBrock24f7

The Cowboys will look to break a few streaks on Monday night if they can topple the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the first round of the playoffs. A win would mark the club’s first postseason victory since 2018 and their first tournament road win since the 1992 postseason.

But if the Cowboys can escape Tampa with a victory, it will be their first playoff win wearing navy-colored jerseys… ever.

The team has announced that they will wear their navy jerseys and white pants to face the Bucs. It’s the same combo they wore in Week 5’s 22-10 win over the Rams and Week 8’s 49-29 victory against Chicago. (On Thanksgiving Day, the Cowboys did wear their throwback jerseys with white pants. While navy is the primary color, the “double-star” scheme on the shoulders makes those jerseys different than the regular navy set.)

The Cowboys first unveiled true navy-colored jerseys for the 1981 season. Prior to that, the team’s “road” jerseys were royal blue, and they were worn with the team’s regular light blue pants, and gray pants years before that.

The last on-the-field appearance for those uniforms (which many fans believed were cursed) was the 20-7 NFC Championship loss to Philadelphia in January 1981. The last postseason win in royal blue? The 1978 conference championship that put Roger Staubach & Co. in Super Bowl XXIII.

The Cowboys have played plenty of other road playoff games along the way: 11, to be exact. But thanks to the tendency of most teams to sport their colored jerseys in front of their home fans, the Cowboys were left to wear their traditional white-top set for those matchups.

Since switching to navy, Dallas has worn colored jerseys in three prior postseason games: 1982’s NFC title game loss to Washington, the 1996 divisional loss to Carolina, and 2003’s wild-card loss to, again, Carolina. All of those postseason losses came in grey pants.

As the home team, Tampa Bay got to select their jersey color for the upcoming Monday night contest. The Cowboys, forced into wearing colored jerseys, have opted to go with white pants rather than the silver pants they wore under navy in Weeks 3 and 18.

Using data compiled from The Gridiron Uniform Database, the Cowboys first used the navy-on-white pairing in 2017 and have worn it a total of eight times since then- including the two games earlier this season- but they’ve never before worn navy-on-white in a postseason game.

Their overall record in that uniform combo: 6-2.

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