Tag: cowboys history

CeeDee Lamb 27 yards away from joining exclusive Cowboys club

From @ToddBrock24f7: Lamb is on the verge of his 4th straight 1,000-yard season. Michael Irvin is the only other player in team history to accomplish that feat.

At just 5-8 and on the brink of official elimination from playoff contention, there wouldn’t seem to be much left for the Cowboys to play for. But there is one star player who will have a noteworthy accomplishment well within his grasp when the team lines up to face Carolina in Week 15.

CeeDee Lamb needs just 27 receiving yards to post his fourth straight 1,000-yard season.

While some will argue that the 1,000-yard milestone doesn’t mean what it used to since the inception of the 17-game schedule (28 pass-catchers did it in 2023), it’s still a benchmark achievement.

And how rare is doing it four times in a row? Assuming Lamb hits 1K, he’ll become just the second Cowboy in franchise history to surpass 1,000 receiving yards in four consecutive campaigns.

Only Michael Irvin has pulled off that particular feat, topping the millennium mark five times in a row, every season from 1991 to 1995.

In fact, as hard as it may be to believe, Irvin and Jason Witten are the only Cowboys players with four or more 1,000-receiving-yard seasons at all in their careers. Dez Bryant didn’t do it. Drew Pearson didn’t do it. Not Tony Hill, Bob Hayes, or Frank Clarke.

After 64 years of Cowboys football, Lamb will be just the third member of that exclusive club.

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He does still need to gain those 27 yards, but in the 79 regular-season games Lamb has played in since joining the team, he’s failed to hit that number just six times.

The three-time Pro Bowler suffered a shoulder injury in Week 9 but has nevertheless played through it and even leads the league in targets, so mathematically speaking (and knock on wood; he’s been limited in practice this week) it’s just a matter of how soon it happens on Sunday.

“Trying to play as hard as I can, I’m obviously putting myself out there for the benefit of the team,” Lamb said this week. “And of course, myself, I love to compete, but it’s bigger than me.”

Officials certainly won’t stop the game on Sunday to recognize Lamb’s 1,000-yard season. The moment may not even warrant a mention from the broadcast booth. Yes, Lamb’s 27th receiving yard this weekend will put him in elite company within the Cowboys record books, but he’d be the first to say that adding to the left-hand column of the team’s 2024 win-loss record is the more important contribution anyway.

“Be able to win the game, regardless, at the end of the day, you’ve still got to win the game,” he explained, “That’s the motivation.”

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Josh Allen’s rare TD trifecta put him in ultra-exclusive club with Cowboys legend

From @ToddBrock24f7: Only 14 men have scored a passing, rushing, and receiving TD in the same game. Buffalo’s Josh Allen is the latest; Dan Reeves did it in ’67.

When Bills quarterback Josh Allen took the Week 13 lateral from wide receiver Amari Cooper and carried the ball he had originally thrown into the end zone, he completed two-thirds of a rare NFL trifecta. That one play gave him both a passing and receiving touchdown in Sunday night’s game, but Allen wasn’t finished. He followed it up by rushing for another score in the fourth quarter to ice the game for Buffalo.

In so doing, Allen became just the 14th player (and the first quarterback) in league history to notch a passing, rushing, and receiving touchdown all in the same game. Christian McCaffrey did it most recently, in 2022. LaDanian Tomlinson did it in 2005. Hall of Famers Walter Payton and Frank Gifford are in the ultra-exclusive club. too.

And so is one Cowboy.

Dan Reeves was listed as a running back during his eight-year playing career and remains the 17th-leading rusher (in yards) in Cowboys history. But he was also a dangerous pass-catcher; his 1,693 receiving yards are still in the franchise’s all-time top 40. He returned a few punts and kicks in his day, and Reeves even booted an extra point in a game in 1971.

But he had also started at quarterback for three collegiate seasons at South Carolina, graduating in 1965 as the school’s leading passer. And that experience made him a unique weapon within the Dallas offense, a weapon that head coach Tom Landry wasn’t afraid to deploy.

The halfback option pass was just one of Landry’s favorite creative innovations. But to really pull it off, he needed a legitimate ball carrier who had the smarts to read a defense and a strong throwing arm, too.

That exact skill set earned the undrafted Reeves a roster spot in Dallas.

Reeves attempted at least two throws in every single NFL season he played. He recorded a career-high seven passes in the 1967 regular season and completed four of them, also a career best. That campaign also saw Reeves log his only touchdown passes, a 74-yarder to Lance Rentzel in a Thanksgiving win over the Cardinals, and a 45-yarder two weeks later, again to Rentzel to put the final dagger in a 38-17 win over the Eagles.

But Reeves had also been in the end zone on two previous occasions that Dec. 10 afternoon, first catching a five-yard toss from quarterback Craig Morton in the second quarter, and then adding a one-year touchdown plunge in the third.

Reeves’s stat line for the day: 10 rushes for 47 yards and a touchdown, four receptions for 28 yards and a touchdown, 1-for-1 passing for 45 yards and a touchdown.

At the time, he was the eighth player in league history to complete the triple-TD feat.

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The Georgia native finished the 1967 season as the league’s 15th-ranked rusher and a top-30 receiver, not even leading the Cowboys in either category. But the multi-purpose Reeves was No. 10 leaguewide in scrimmage yards, beating out the likes of Bobby Mitchell, Charley Taylor, Dallas teammates Bob Hayes, Don Perkins, and Rentzel, and even Gale Sayers.

He also ended the regular season with the NFL’s highest passer rating (101.8) for all players who had attempted five or more throws.

Reeves would go on to heave just one more touchdown pass in his career, and it was his most memorable of all.

Three weeks after his trifecta, Landry and the Cowboys ran the halfback option again, this time in the playoffs against the Green Bay Packers, on a frozen Lambeau Field where the temperature that New Year’s Eve afternoon was 13 degrees below zero.

Down 14-10 on the first play of the fourth quarter, Reeves took a pitch from Don Meredith near midfield and lumbered to his left on the iced-over grass. But after a half-dozen steps, he stopped and fired the ball, flat-footed, 35 yards to a wide-open Rentzel, who practically walked into the end zone from 20 yards out.

The strike was a massive surprise given the arctic conditions and gave Dallas their first lead of the day, a 17-14 edge that lasted all the way until the game’s final, fateful seconds. If not for Bart Starr’s famous goal-line dive to win the now-iconic “Ice Bowl,” that unlikely 50-yard touchdown pass from the team’s RB2 might still stand today as the single most famous moment in Dallas Cowboys history.

Reeves would go on to a successful coaching career, on staff in Dallas for a decade and then running the show as head coach of the Broncos, Giants, and Falcons. Reeves passed away in 2022 at the age of 77.

Reeves unquestionably enjoyed a long and storied football career, winning Super Bowl VI as a player and Super Bowl XII as an assistant coach. He’s in the Broncos Ring of Honor and was a semifinalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame ‘s Class of 2025. But perhaps none of his days on the gridiron ever quite matched when Reeves found the end zone three different times, in three different ways, and cemented his place- alongside Payton, Gifford, Tomlinson, and now Allen- on one of the most exclusive lists in the sport’s history.

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Cowboys History: Troy Aikman proved preseason anything but meaningless in ’94 game

From @ToddBrock24f7: The touchdown didn’t count in his career stats, but Aikman used one 1994 preseason game to give one Cowboys fan the moment of his life.

Unless there’s a big contract announcement to be made (nudge, nudge), the next couple of days could be pretty quiet in Cowboys Nation. The team breaks camp in Oxnard on Thursday and returns to the Metroplex after nearly a month. There, they’ll settle back in at The Star just in time to host the Chargers at AT&T Stadium on Saturday night in the 2024 preseason finale.

Nothing that takes place on the field will really count, but that doesn’t make it meaningless. Of course, the starters won’t play much, if at all; the risk for an injury is too great. But it will be the last chance for the Cowboys’ current slate of hopefuls, wannabes, and longshots to make an impression on coaches before roster cutdown day. For them, this preseason exhibition could be a make-or-break moment for their football dreams.

And sometimes, a preseason game means even more than that. Sometimes, it means everything. This is one of those stories.

The Cowboys were going through a surreal transition in 1994. They had just won their second straight Super Bowl, but their bid at an unprecedented three-peat would have to come under the leadership of newly-installed head coach Barry Switzer. Linebacker Ken Norton Jr. and offensive coordinator Norv Turner had just left, and a promising offensive lineman named Larry Allen was learning the ropes as a fresh-faced rookie. In all, eleven seasoned Pro Bowlers from the previous year were back to lead the silver and blue as the Cowboys convened at St. Edwards University in Austin for training camp.

A new coach, injuries, the pressure of returning to the big game, and wearing targets on their backs as the NFL’s top-performing team on the field and most glamorous squad off of it: the obstacles for the 1994 Cowboys would be substantial.

But the franchise’s biggest star was about to be challenged by a young fan who was facing much worse.

Ten-year-old J.P. O’Neill was a sports-crazed kid growing up in Austin. But in the fall of 1993, he had been diagnosed with a rare form of childhood cancer. And by the following summer, his condition had worsened. A large stomach tumor was not responding to treatment, and he was getting markedly weaker by the day. A local TV reporter arranged for J.P. and his family to attend a day at Cowboys camp.

Jeff Pearlman, author of Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty, notes in his book: “Throughout the day, J.P. was treated like a king. He met players, collected autographs, basked in the glow. ‘They were all so nice to him,’ says [his father] Kim. ‘Made him feel incredibly special.'”

Troy Aikman took special notice of J.P., stopping to talk and pose for photos. As the quarterback turned to leave, Kim made a request on his son’s behalf, asking the then-three-time Pro Bowler if he could throw a touchdown pass for J.P.

“I’ll do you one better,” Aikman replied. “I’ll score a touchdown for you and send you the ball.”

Once out of earshot of J.P. and his wheelchair, Aikman reportedly pulled Kim aside, telling him he had been told that J.P. didn’t have long. If he couldn’t keep his promise in the upcoming preseason game against Minnesota, he said, he’d do it the following week.

And so on Aug. 7, Aikman played just one series against the visiting Raiders. He went 3-for-4 passing, leading the offense on a 10-play drive that spanned 65 yards.

The Cowboys’ backups would eventually fall, losing 27-19 in the second game of the preseason. But Aikman made sure the final play of his only drive that night was anything but meaningless, at least for one young fan he knew was watching.

Six yards away from the goal line, on 3rd-and-15, in a game that wouldn’t even count, the league’s reigning completion percentage leader took off running.

He was met at the goal line by three Raiders defenders, who laid into the superstar with a massive shot. But the ball crossed the plane.

Six points.

And a promise kept, even if the quarterback who preferred to shield his private life from the public declined to reveal the true motivation for the play.

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“I know people are going to say it’s preseason and I shouldn’t risk injury,” Aikman would explain after the game. “But if I’m in a position of risk, I shouldn’t be out there.”

But the O’Neill family knew the real reason Aikman had made the dangerous scramble.

“We knew the touchdown was just for him,” J.P.’s older sister would say later. “He had to tell everyone who would listen that the touchdown was his. It meant everything to my brother.”

Nineteen days after that game, J.P. O’Neill passed away. And when he was buried at a Dallas cemetery, he was holding the football that Aikman had sent him.

The Dallas Cowboys will take the field again this weekend for another preseason game. The score, the yards, the touchdowns: none of it will be entered into the record books. Just don’t believe for a moment that any of it is ever meaningless.

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‘Landry Mile’ once kicked off Cowboys training camps with grueling conditioning test

From @ToddBrock24f7: The Hall of Fame coach used to put his players through a timed 1-mile run on the first day of camp. It is not remembered fondly by most.

One month from today, the Cowboys will be in Oxnard, Calif. and 2024 training camp will have begun, with the first practice slated for July 25.

It will almost certainly not kick off the way camp once did under head coach Tom Landry.

The Hall of Fame icon was a well-known disciplinarian. He took a hard-lined, businesslike approach to the game of football, and he expected his players to do the same. But Landry had come along in a very different era, when even the top players in the league typically held down regular 9-to-5 jobs during the offseason and arrived at camp having performed no real physical exertion (outside of, maybe, mowing their own lawns) since their last game six or seven months prior.

Beginning in 1960, during the Cowboys’ very first training camp, the coach kickstarted the summer session with a nasty conditioning warmup that became infamously known as the “Landry Mile.”

A mile-long run. In cleats. Timed. Backs and ends had to finish in under six minutes; linemen got an extra thirty seconds.

“The Landry Mile wasn’t anything real significant,” legendary defensive tackle Bob Lilly once said. “It was a test of conditioning.”

But even for some of the premier athletes of the day, it proved to be a grueling challenge.

“I had never run a mile in my entire life. I failed miserably,” Ring of Honor running back Don Perkins would recall decades later. “It’s been 50 years now, but I still remember walking and crawling most of the final two laps.”

And there were consequences for not meeting the timed benchmarks.

“If they didn’t hit the target,” former Cowboys exec Gil Brandt once explained, “they’d have to run a number of penalty laps the next morning at 6 a.m.”

The Landry Mile became an opening-day staple of Cowboys training camp, with names of the top finishers often printed in the local papers. Some details of the run would vary from year to year. One summer, it might take place on a track. The next, Landry might utilize the sloping hills of wherever the team was practicing.

But the players knew the tradition would be waiting for them when they reported. And they almost universally dreaded it.

“I hated the Landry Mile,” said defensive end John Gonzaga. “I told Tom Landry, ‘If they ever make the field longer than 100 yards, I’m going to quit.’ But he said I had to run the mile anyway. He said, ‘I don’t have any time for comedians.’ So I ran it.”

“We knew we could knock out a mile, but it still was intimidating,” Hall of Fame receiver Drew Pearson said. “What we heard of as a rookie coming in was, ‘You’ve got to make the Landry Mile.’ It added to what we heard the reputation of camp was about. It was going to be hard. It was going to be brutal.”

Players struggled. Players vomited. Players passed out. Some players contemplated quitting on the spot. At least one did.

“We had this one guy, I can’t even remember his name, who was having a rough time,” remembered longtime Cowboys staffer Joe Bailey. “He came to this turn on the run and just kept going, ran a straight line right back to the locker room … changed his clothes, and was gone. We never saw him again.”

“This isn’t for me,” Brandt remembered him saying. “I didn’t come here to run track; I came here to play football.”

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But even the track stars that made up some of those early Cowboys squads had difficulty with the long distance.

“Bob used to walk it,” Pearson once remembered of Bob Hayes, an Olympic gold medal sprinter who was recruited to play football. “Poor Bob. He could go 100, maybe run that 220, but he couldn’t run that damn mile for nothing.”

“I never came close to running that mile in six minutes,” admitted Perkins. “Bob Hayes and Bob Lilly never did either, so at least I was in good company.”

And there was extra pressure, beside the clock. Coach Landry ran the Mile, too.

“You had to finish between [tight end Mike] Ditka and Coach Landry,” Pearson explained. “Mike was really in shape back then. He had his own hips and could really run. He would set the pace. Coach Landry would really push the end of it. You had to finish in between those two guys.”

Not everyone did.

“Coach Landry ran it with us and beat me by about 100 yards,” recalled nine-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle Randy White. “OK, 200 yards. I thought, ‘I can’t even beat the coach running a mile. Maybe I can’t play.'”

While a poor finish in the Landry Mile was used to weed out the occasional prospect who was obviously in over his head, the coach generally found a way to let his stars slide with a sub-optimal time. White, Hayes, Perkins: everyone knew they’d never have to repeat the long-distance feat on gameday.

But it sure got the tough work of training camp started on a fitting note.

“It was not because he wasn’t in shape,” Brandt once said of Perkins. “He just couldn’t run a mile.”

The same could be said of many of the Cowboys’ all-time heroes.

The Landry Mile eventually took a backseat during the team’s notoriously demanding training camps as the coach sought new and innovative methods for working his players.

In 1969, for example, a newfangled conditioning technique called aerobics was waiting at Cowboys camp. That introduced stationary bikes to football, the idea of emphasizing oxygen intake during exercise having first been developed by an Air Force physiologist who was a friend of Landry and had written a wildly popular book about the topic the year before.

But the Landry Mile still lives on in the fabled history of the Cowboys, just one of the tactics famously used by one of the sport’s greatest coaching minds to help turn a ragtag group of upstarts into America’s Team.

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1976: The year one swing at Cowboys training camp decided Roger Staubach’s backup QB

From @ToddBrock24f7: Clint Longley had one shining moment as a Cowboys QB in 1974. One careless moment at 1976’s camp ended his promising football future.

Training camp is where football dreams come true, where a wide-eyed youngster from a small school can prove his worth alongside the biggest, strongest, fastest, and most skilled athletes on the planet and maybe even beat the odds to earn a coveted roster spot in the NFL.

But training camp is also where many a football dream goes to die, where the grueling workouts, intense physical punishment, and exhausting mental stress that comes with cutthroat job competition prove too much for some.

When the Cowboys gather in Oxnard, Calif. next month, players will hope for a moment- one catch, one juke, one block- which will launch a career. But with that opportunity comes the knowledge that there could also be just one moment- a drop, a stumble, a miss- that brings it all crashing down.

It happens every year. But the way it happened for Clint Longley was truly one of a kind.

Longley was one of the most colorful characters in Cowboys history. Born in north Texas, Longley was known for hunting rattlesnakes in his downtime. He was nicknamed “The Mad Bomber” for his obsession with throwing the deep ball, even famously bouncing a pass or two off of Tom Landry’s coaching tower.

He’s now remembered in Dallas for two things: the gutsy relief performance in 1974 that lives on in Cowboys lore as one of the greatest Thanksgiving Day games ever played… and the cowardly move he pulled in the summer of 1976 that got him booted off the team just days before the season, left a locker room bloodied, and sent the organization’s greatest icon to the hospital.

It’s the ultimate cautionary training camp story, and it wasn’t even Longley’s first training camp.

Upon leaving Abilene Christian three credit hours shy of graduation, Longley had been picked up in the 1974 supplemental draft by Cincinnati and then subsequently dealt to Dallas for a fifth-round selection. His rocket-launcher arm quickly won him the backup job behind Staubach after veteran Craig Morton was traded away, but his maverick attitude and lightning-rod personality didn’t endear himself to Coach Landry, who prized unquestioning discipline and exacting conformity above all else.

Longley was thrust into the spotlight as a rookie, on one of the biggest stages imaginable. In the second half of the team’s Thanksgiving contest that year, Longley took over for an injured Staubach with the Cowboys trailing Washington by 13 points and facing an early elimination from playoff contention. In his very first NFL action, he engineered one of the unlikeliest comebacks in franchise history. Posting a stunning 123.5 passer rating, he led the team on three touchdown drives, including a 50-yard prayer to Drew Pearson in the final minute to pull out a dramatic 24-23 win.

Longley’s incredible off-the-cuff effort was credited to, according to offensive lineman Blaine Nye that afternoon, “the triumph of the uncluttered mind.”

Off the field, the starter-backup relationship between Staubach  and Longley was a good one.

“Clint and I sat together every trip in 1974,” Staubach said. “We would talk, he would ask me questions. I kind of thought he looked up to me in a way.”

Longley would make six more game appearances over the 1974 and 1975 seasons, including valuable mop-up duty in a playoff win over the Rams.

But in the summer of 1976, everything changed. Danny White had been picked up after the WFL folded, and there was suddenly competition for the QB2 role.

“Roger was one of the first guys to welcome me,” White explained, “and we started working out together every day. And Clint would never come when we were there. He was upset because all of a sudden, I was a threat to his job.”

“He really didn’t speak to us by the time we were in training camp,” Staubach said. “It wasn’t hunky-dory.”

“Clint didn’t like [Roger]. Clint didn’t like Danny. Clint didn’t like Coach Landry. He didn’t like those guys. That’s just the way it was,” Pearson offered. “So Clint was always doing things the opposite of what should have been done.”

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Things were awkward and icy as the team was put through the paces in Thousand Oaks, Calif. White progressed noticeably behind Staubach. Longley didn’t see any action at all in the Cowboys’ preseason finale. And with less than a week of camp to go, tensions reached a boiling point.

What started it differs slightly depending on who is telling the story. Some accounts have Longley simply overthrowing Pearson on a route. Some have Pearson falling and Longley beaning him with the ball on purpose. Words were exchanged- maybe by Pearson, maybe by Longley, maybe by Staubach in defense of his receiver, maybe all of the above.

Most versions of the story, however, have Staubach escalating the situation by making a derogatory bunny-rabbit joke about Longley’s prominent front teeth. And a challenge to fisticuffs was thrown down.

Staubach and Longley reportedly moved to a nearby baseball field on California Lutheran College’s campus. White was told to act as a lookout.

“The next thing you know, I saw Clint’s feet up in the air, and Roger slamming him to the ground,” Pearson offered. “I don’t know what Roger did. He put one of them Vietnam holds on him, that kung fu fighting.”

“I turn around and look,” White would add, “and Roger is over there, down on his knees, just pounding away at Clint.”

Assistant coach Dan Reeves finally caught wind and rushed in to break up the fight.

“If I hadn’t gotten there, Roger probably would have killed him,” Reeves would say. “And I didn’t want my starting quarterback in prison.”

But things were far from over.

A few days later, as the team dressed for practice on the final day of camp, Longley tried to exact his revenge by taking a blindside swing at Staubach’s head as the Super Bowl MVP adjusted his shoulder pads in the locker room. The two men crashed into some equipment and ended up on the ground. There was blood, a lot of it, pouring from above Staubach’s left eye.

After Randy White peeled the two apart, Longley took off running to the dorms. Pearson was actually concerned that the country boy Longley was going to retrieve a gun, of which he had several at camp (for bagging rabbits at night).

Mel Renfro would later tell Staubach that Longley had told him he was looking to get kicked off the team, and the locker-room punch had been part of a premeditated plan.

“He’s been trying to provoke me the whole training camp. He thinks he’s a coach,” Longley reportedly said of Staubach. “I’m going to disappear now. I need a vacation. I’m going to New Mexico.”

Staubach went to the hospital and received nine stitches.

By the time he got back to the facility, Longley was long gone.

“His sucker punch was as dirty as dirty could be,” Staubach would say. “That was the last I saw of him.”

White would serve as Staubach’s backup for four seasons (and the Cowboys’ punter for nine). He took over as the starting QB in 1980 and played another nine years. He would appear in 18 playoff games wearing the star.

Longley would be traded to the Chargers. (The Cowboys would use the two picks they got in return to maneuver into position to draft Tony Dorsett No. 2 overall in 1977.) Longley would complete just 12 more passes in the NFL. Two different comeback attempts in the CFL were short-lived.

Staubach would later say he was always bothered by the 1976 incident with Longley and was open to a reconciliation meeting. It never happened.

D.D. Lewis was one of the few Cowboys to see Longley after the infamous fight. The two went fishing in Corpus Christi in 2003; Longley declined Lewis’s invitation to reach out to Staubach. An NFL Films special a few years later stated that Longley was said to be selling carpet samples out of the back of a van in west Texas.

A colorful character and once a promising talent, Longley’s heroic Thanksgiving Day performance in 1974 remains one of the most legendary tales in franchise history.

But his Cowboys career ended ignominiously with one lapse in judgment less than two years later… that also remains one of the most legendary tales in training camp history.

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2009: The year a Cowboys rookie kicker was the baddest man at training camp

From @ToddBrock24f7: A 5th-round CB never fully recovered after rookie kicker David Buehler “smoked” him in a 50-yard foot race after one training camp practice.

For the 90 men who will attend Cowboys training camp in Oxnard in five weeks with an eye toward making the final 2024 roster, they know the grind is coming. They know the days will be long. They know the work will be grueling. They know that competition- and maybe the key to securing a spot on the team- can come from any of the athletes around them.

It’s a lesson one young rookie learned the hard way in 2009, when the baddest man at Cowboys camp was a first-year kicker.

David Buehler had a serious leg. Actually, the Southern Cal product had two of them. Trojans head coach Pete Carroll had offered him a scholarship to USC based, at least in part, on his 40 time, the fastest of any player at any position at the 2006 junior college scouting combine.

But the California kicker was also a gifted athlete. Standing 6-foot-2 and weighing over 225 pounds, Buehler was ripped, built like a true gym rat. In his first year at USC, he was actually listed as a fullback and safety, and he regularly played coverage on special teams while also serving as the team’s third-string boot.

Buehler eventually became the starter, but he was stronger at kickoffs than he was accurate on field goals. He went to the NFL combine, electing to participate in the speed and strength tests alongside linebackers and linemen, and beating many of them.

His efforts got him drafted by the Cowboys in the fifth round. He showed up to training camp, held that summer at the San Antonio Alamodome, with the rest of the prospective Cowboys… and a rookie cornerback named DeAngelo Smith.

Smith had played his college ball at Cincinnati. He, too, was a fifth-round draft pick, taken 19 spots before Buehler. Smith was hoping to join a secondary in Dallas that already included Terence Newman, Orlando Scandrick, Gerald Sensabaugh, and Ken Hamlin, and he was looking to stand out however he could.

After practice one day, some on-the-field jawing between the locker-room neighbors about who had to work harder in drills and who was really faster finally led to the challenge of a foot race: Smith versus Buehler, the cornerback versus the kicker.

“He was talking a bunch of trash,” Buehler would say later, “so I just shut him up. I knew I had the speed. It made me a little bit of capital, as well. So, there was a little bit on the line.”

By all accounts, Buehler “smoked” Smith in a 50-yard race that wasn’t all that close.

Buehler even slowed up and made a show of stretching out his arms as he crossed the finish line, to the enthusiastic delight of the rest of the Cowboys. Buehler tore off his jersey and chest-bumped every teammate he could find.

“The kicker just got you!” taunted wide receiver Kevin Ogletree. “He got you!”

“He’s on steroids!” yelled wide receiver Roy Williams.

Smith could do nothing but take the L.

“He just beat me fair and square,” the DB conceded.

Head coach Wade Phillips had seen the race, along with offensive coordinator Jason Garrett and several other assistants. Foot-race challenges were summarily banned shortly thereafter, with Phillips telling reporters of his kicker, “He’s not going to do that again. It’s not very smart to do those types of things. He knows it, and he’s not going to do it again.”

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He didn’t, but Buehler boasted that he could have eventually dusted others on the squad, too, including linebackers Keith Brooking and Bradie James, running back Tashard Choice, and even wide receiver Patrick Crayton.

Pitting himself against his teammates was something of a habit for Buehler; he claims he once outlifted defensive end Igor Olshansky in a bench press contest.

As for Smith, he no doubt heard about his second-place finish for the rest of that summer. He never got the opportunity for redemption, though; he was cut at the end of camp. He went on to see action in seven total NFL games, all with the Lions that same autumn.

Buehler did make the 2009 Cowboys team as a kickoff specialist, the first time the team had dedicated a roster spot to that role. Nick Folk handled field goals and extra points. For the 2020 season, Folk was gone. Buehler handled all kicking duties, making 42 of 44 PATs but connecting on just 24 field goals in 32 tries. By 2011, he was back to kickoffs only and missed most of the season with a groin injury. He was waived prior to the 2012 season.

Today, he’s remembered mostly as a big-legged specialist who could also deliver a hit (he logged 14 special-teams tackles in 2010, a single-season record for a Cowboys kicker).

And, of course, as the kicker who, 15 years ago, may have cost a young rookie cornerback a roster spot by toasting him in a foot race.

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‘Life is very fragile’: Emotional Emmitt Smith remembers former Cowboys teammate Larry Allen

From @ToddBrock24f7: Smith fought through tears to reflect on his fallen teammate on 9 seasons and urged fans to reach out to those they love.

A preponderance of Emmitt Smith’s all-time record 18,355 rushing yards came behind the blocking of Larry Allen.

From 1994, when Allen was drafted by the Cowboys in the second round, all the way through the 2002 season in which Smith became the league’s rushing king, Smith totaled 11,463 yards and scored 103 ground touchdowns while big No. 73 was helping to plow the road for him.

To put it another way, even if you count just the yards and touchdowns Smith amassed during Allen’s time in Dallas, he’d still be one of the top 20 rushers in NFL history and in the top 10 in end zone trips.

On Monday, Smith took to social media to share his thoughts on Allen’s untimely passing at the age of 52.

“Good afternoon,” a tearful Smith began on Instagram after a heavy sigh. “I’m sitting on my back patio reflecting on one of the best offensive linemen I’ve ever played with: Larry Allen.

“I got a call from my daughter. Skylar called to tell me that he passed away. I’m at a loss for words right now. Such a good dude. Great player. Super person. With deaths, bad weather, all kinds of things swirling around, loss of my folks and other friends, it just breaks my heart. I know life is very fragile, and we’re only here for a moment. And we need to make the best out of every moment and not take people for granted.

“[My wife] sent me a text last night about not taking folks for granted, and here we are today. All I can say is: live life to the fullest that you can. Love those that are closest to you, try to love those who are not near you as best you can. Let’s cut out all the bickering, all the separation, all the hierarchy and all the things that separate people- family, friends, culture, whatever you want to call it- some of those things are very minor in comparison to a human’s life.”

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“The one thing about Larry Allen I know: he had a big heart, and he lived life to the fullest. A man of very few words, but on the football field [he] was a beast. And he’ll be sorely missed; he’s always missed because he never came back to many of our functions. I don’t know it it’s because he put football behind him and moved on, but my thoughts and prayers go out to his family. My heart is just broken.”

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An emotional Smith took the opportunity to also remember several other former teammates from the Cowboys offensive line who departed far too soon.

“I sit back here reflecting on Mark Tuinei as well [who died in 1999], Larry Allen, Frank Cornish [died in 2008]. We just lost another one about six months ago [Char-Ron Dorsey passed away in early March]. Life. It reminds me of the words my mom used to say: ‘Son, keep living. You’re going to see a lot of things.” She’s absolutely right. I’ve seen people come and go. It’s hard. It really is hard.

“So, peace out. Love those around you. Hug someone today and let them know that you love them. Call somebody today and let them know that you love them. May God be with all of you, and pray for Larry Allen and his family, and also Cowboys Nation, because we lost a good one. Be good.”

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Two bye weeks per season? Cowboys capitalized the only time it’s ever happened

From @ToddBrock24f7: An 18-game NFL season, many believe, would bring back 2 bye weeks per team. The only year that’s happened was a crazy one for the Cowboys.

The NFL’s release of its 2024 schedule had fans once again weighing- among the matchups and travel schedules and kickoff times- the merits or disadvantages of their team’s assigned bye week.

The rigors of a 17-game season are real, and the bye week is one of the first things each locker room in the league looks at when their slate is officially announced. For some, the week off this year will come as early as the first weekend in October, while some squads will have to grind all the way until early December for a break.

Fourteen teams- almost half the league- will have a stretch of 12 consecutive regular-season games either before or after their bye this season. (And then it rolls right into the playoffs… for the “lucky” ones.) Keep in mind that in 1960- the Cowboys’ first year of existence- 12 games was the season.

Many around the NFL have suggested that as the regular season has grown to 17 games- and will likely expand again to 18- each team should have two bye weeks to lessen the physical toll taken on players and cut down on injuries. San Francisco tight end George Kittle has been a vocal advocate of it, especially after missing time in 2022 with a lower-leg injury. ACL tears, in particular, hit a seven-year high in 2021, the first year that teams played 17 games.

It’s worth remembering that the league has played a two-bye season once before. And while it was a wild and often weird ride, it did end with a championship parade in Dallas.

The year was 1993. And for the first time ever, the NFL played an 18-week regular season, giving each team two bye weeks during their 16-game schedules. The primary reason? The new television deals that had just been signed. But then-commissioner Paul Tagliabue (shockingly) admitted that the league was also “sensitive to the possible over-exposure of our sport” and that the extra time off for teams would “allow for greater scheduling flexibility, ease the player injury factor, and reduce team travel burdens.”

The Cowboys had byes scheduled for Weeks 4 and 8 of the ’93 season, but the drama started on opening night. With running back Emmitt Smith holding out amid a contract dispute, the defending Super Bowl champions looked lost and dropped a 35-16 Week 1 game on the road in Washington.

A rematch of Dallas’s Super Bowl XXVII blowout win over the Bills (seven   months earlier) went Buffalo’s way in Week 2. Defensive end Charles Haley famously threw his helmet at owner Jerry Jones following the 13-10 loss.

Smith had his new deal in time to suit up versus the Cardinals in Week 3. Although the Cowboys pulled out the win, most viewed the Week 4 bye as a chance to reset and start the season for real in Week 5.

Three straight wins followed, putting Dallas at 4-2 when their second bye week came in Week 8.

The back half of that 1993 season included some of the most memorable moments- both good and bad- in Cowboys history. Week 9 was the storied Halloween night game in Philadelphia, when Smith rushed for 237 yards, the most he would compile in a single game over the course of his Hall of Fame career.

Quarterback Troy Aikman went down with a leg injury in a Week 10 win over the Giants on the afternoon that Tom Landry was inducted into the Ring of Honor. Backup passer Jason Garrett was benched midgame in Week 11; Bernie Kosar came on in relief and guided Dallas to a close win over the Cardinals. The team was not so lucky in Week 12, losing to Atlanta on a day when Smith rushed for one single yard, his lowest total ever in a Cowboys uniform.

Then came Thanksgiving Day and the infamous “snow game” versus Miami at Texas Stadium. Defensive tackle Leon Lett’s misguided attempt to smother a blocked field goal gave the Dolphins an extra chance at the kick, which they made for a gutting 16-14 win.

At 7-4 with five games remaining, the NFC East was turning into a horse race, with the Cowboys trailing the Giants in the standings as December began. Dallas ripped off four straight wins heading into Week 18; New York went 3-1 over that same span, setting the stage for a winner-take-all season finale.

What happened at Giants Stadium that January afternoon is now remembered, simply, as “The Emmitt Smith Game.” Smith heroically played through a shoulder separation to rack up 237 yards of offense with only one usable arm. The three-point overtime win gave the Cowboys the division title and a first-round postseason bye.

Four weeks later, Dallas had dispatched Green Bay and San Francisco in the NFC playoff bracket and got their revenge over Buffalo and the Georgia Dome by winning their second straight Super Bowl.

Was it the two bye weeks? Probably not (though the first certainly gave Smith a little extra re-acclimation time to get himself up to speed).

But the NFL scrapped the double byes after just a single season. With just 28 teams in the league then, the off-weeks were distributed poorly (entire divisions had the same bye weeks) and left some weekends with just 10 total games. That left the networks trying to boost some putrid matchups as heavyweight showdowns for the national audience.

TV ratings actually dropped for the 1993 season, prompting the league to return to one bye per team the next season.

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But now with 32 teams, giving players an extra bye week during the season would be far more feasible while not watering down the TV lineup. But with the likelihood of an 18-game schedule coming in the near future, two byes per team may actually be a necessity.

An 18th regular-season contest would reduce the preseason schedule by a game. But the season almost certainly wouldn’t start any earlier; it would have to run later. That would, most analysts agree, push the Super Bowl to President’s Day Weekend, which would have the added benefit of keeping the Super Bowl on a Sunday while giving much of the country the next day off, thanks to the holiday.

And while that kind of hypothetical calendar would naturally have a snowball effect that in turn probably impacts dates for the scouting combine and NFL draft, it feels like the inevitable end result of the NFL desperately wanting to create an 18th game for every one of its franchises.

But, hey, it worked out for Cowboys Nation the last time players got an extra week off during the season.

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One nightmare game still haunts Cowboys DC Mike Zimmer 24 years later as he preps new defense

From @ToddBrock24f7: Zimmer previews his ’24 unit and what he expects from them while still trying to get over what happened in his first infamous game as DC.

As his second stint as Cowboys defensive coordinator begins, Mike Zimmer already knows what his primary focus will be.

It’s getting after the thing that bit him on his very first day on the job 24 years ago.

It was opening day of the 2000 season. Zimmer, who had already served on the Dallas staff for six seasons, was now wearing the DC headset for the first time, under new head coach Dave Campo. The Cowboys were at home, with the division rival Eagles and head coach Andy Reid paying a visit on a sweltering September afternoon when the temps in the Metroplex reached 109 degrees.

At one point, a thermometer on the Texas Stadium turf hit 130, but it was the Philadelphia run game that ended up cooking Zimmer and the Dallas defense.

“That year, I was coming from [being] secondary coach, and I said, ‘Turn these guys loose, let ’em rush,'” Zimmer told Matt Mosley and Ed Werder on a recent episode of The Doomsday Podcast.

“We gave up 220 yards rushing that day,” Zimmer recalled.

The heat must have gotten to Zim, because in fact, it was even worse than that. With their players famously staying hydrated and cramp-free by drinking pickle juice on the sidelines, the Eagles actually racked up 306 rushing yards in a 41-14 blowout win. It was, at the time, the most rushing yards ever allowed by a Cowboys defense in a single contest.

“The Pickle Juice Game” has haunted Zimmer ever since.

“From that day on,” he admitted, “there’s always been an emphasis on stopping the run.”

By and large, Zimmer’s defenses- in Dallas, in Cincinnati, in Minnesota- have made good on that. As pointed out on the podcast, seven of Zimmer’s 22 defenses (as a head coach or defensive coordinator) finished in the league’s top 10 in stopping the run.

Now, about to turn 68 years old, Zimmer is back, and he’s tasked with working his magic on a Dallas unit that got embarrassed in a home playoff loss to the Packers in January.

The veteran coach is still getting acquainted with his players and hasn’t even met some of his biggest stars yet, but he can already say exactly what he’ll be expecting of each of them.

“I’m demanding,” Zimmer admitted. “I’ve got a job to do: get these players playing the best they can possibly play, be as disciplined as they possibly can be, and play together as a team. We have to get guys understanding their roles and what is asked of them to do. Do your job so someone else can have success doing theirs. You might not like taking on this double-team, but that’s your job. And this guy, because you’re doing it, has got an opportunity to make some plays. Next time, he’s going to help you make some plays. That’s how it all works together, whether it’s corners and safeties, defensive line to linebacker, or whatever it is.”

Of his new centerpiece, Micah Parsons, Zimmer calls him “rare” and praises his intelligence, a trait that will allow him to remain incredibly versatile in whatever Zimmer’s tweaked system will look like.

“Usually smart guys that have outstanding ability,” Zimmer said. Their ceiling is so high that you can do a lot of things with them.”

Zimmer is also complimentary of incoming linebacker Marist Liufau, calling the Notre Dame product “brilliant” and already envisioning packages that use him and Parsons in tandem, creating confusion for opposing offenses by bringing high-motor pressure from two different spots on the field.

The Cowboys’ linebacker corps will be a particular point of emphasis in Zimmer’s overhaul. To help with the transition, the Cowboys have added veteran Eric Kendricks, who played for Zimmer’s Vikings for seven seasons. The DC says Kendricks has been “integral” in getting the younger guys acclimated to his style of play.

Strong secondaries have always been a Zimmer trademark, too, and the one he’s inheriting in Dallas is among the NFL’s best. Cornerback DaRon Bland is no longer a secret after a record-setting five pick-sixes last year, and now Trevon Diggs will be back opposite him after a season-ending injury early last year.

“The thing that stands out about him, probably more so than anything, is he’s got the best hands of any defensive back,” Zimmer said of Diggs.

That’s absurdly high praise, considering some of the DBs Zimmer has worked with over the years, including Darren Woodson and Deion Sanders. One is in the Cowboys Ring of Honor and the other is a Hall of Famer, but Zimmer says Diggs is already approaching that level.

“Obviously, Deion had good hands,” Zimmer said, “but guys have to get a ways up there before you compare them to Deion Sanders.”

Deion’s name isn’t the only blast from Zimmer’s past that’s having an influence on his 2024 crew. The team’s defensive linemen will be learning directly from former end and 1998 first-round draft pick Greg Ellis. Zimmer calls him “the best I’ve ever been around at using his hands and setting guys up with rushes,” and now he’s the team’s assistant defensive line coach.

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It all adds up to a ton of optimism surrounding the Cowboys defense, although Zimmer concedes that things may look a little different from Dan Quinn’s units the past three seasons.

“There might be a little bit of a mixture of pressure and coverage and disguise and things like that that maybe can help us,” he explained. “Maybe not get as many turnovers or all those [things], but I think if you go back and look at my history throughout [my] time, there’s been a lot of sacks, a lot of pressure, low-scoring games. That’s really what we want to try and do: keep the scores down, and if we get opportunities to get turnovers, interceptions, sacks, then so be it.”

And by all means, stop the run… to keep those memories of “The Pickle Juice Game” buried well in Zimmer’s past.

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Former Cowboys DT Chad Hennings to announce team’s Day 2 draft picks

From @ToddBrock24f7: Hennings won 3 Super Bowls in the ’90s but is perhaps best remembered for the stint as an Air Force pilot that delayed his football career.

The NFL has released its list of guest announcers who will take over for commissioner Roger Goodell on Day 2 of the NFL draft. If the Cowboys keep the 56th and 87th selections they currently own, their newest employees will be welcomed by former defensive tackle Chad Hennings.

Hennings was an 11th-round pick out of the Air Force Academy in 1988. If not for his military post-graduate commitment, the Outland Trophy winner, unanimous All-American, and UPI Lineman of the Year would have been taken much higher.

The Iowa native was deployed twice to the Persian Gulf, where he piloted A-10 “Warthogs” and was promoted to the rank of captain in 1992. Hennings had the final four years of his active-duty commitment waived after the Gulf War and was able to finally join the Cowboys in 1992.

But the team had undergone an ownership and coaching change since he had been drafted by Tom Landry, and Hennings- then a 26-year-old rookie- was reportedly nearly traded to Denver before even reporting to Dallas. But Jimmy Johnson changed his mind after watching just one workout.

The 6-foot-6 287-pounder was a wrecking ball on the field and a top-notch team leader off it. Hennings ended up being a key role player for the Cowboys defense that helped to win three Super Bowl trophies.

Hennings played nine years for the Cowboys before retiring after the 2000 season due to injuries. In 119 regular-season game appearances, he tallied 269 tackles, 27.5 sacks, five forced fumbles, six fumble recoveries, and one fumble return for a touchdown.

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In 14 playoff games, he added another 22 tackles and 4.5 sacks.

Now 58, Hennings does motivational speaking.

And he’s sure to motivate the Cowboys fans present in downtown Detroit on Friday night when he announces the team’s second- and third-round picks.

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