Philadelphia has lost a key player to injury days before a clash with the Cowboys. Dallas fans may remember this Eagle for other reasons.
Their fight song is “Fly, Eagles, Fly,” but Philadelphia will be noticeably limping into their critical Week 16 showdown with Dallas.
At stake is nothing less than the NFC East. The Cowboys can claim the division title with a win on Sunday. The Eagles’ only chance at making the playoffs will be blown with a loss to their rivals. But if Philly hopes to win this battle of 7-7 underachievers, they’ll have to do it at less than full strength.
The Eagles have placed linebacker Kamu Grugier-Hill on season-ending injured reserve, it was announced on Wednesday. The veteran in his fourth year out of Eastern Illinois has a back injury that will require surgery, according to the team.
Grugier-Hill has just 20 tackles over 10 game appearances in 2019, but had become a key member of the Eagles’ defensive rotation. The team has been decimated with injuries on both sides of the ball this year; Grugier-Hill joins Corey Clement, DeSean Jackson, Malik Jackson, Alshon Jeffery, and Darren Sproles among others on the team’s injured reserve list.
That name may ring a bell with Cowboys fans. The linebacker made headlines last December with some smack talk ahead of a late-season clash with their Dallas rivals.
“Look at Dallas’ history,” Grugier-Hill had claimed. “They always choke, so we’ll go down there and make them choke.”
The Cowboys won the game that followed, 29-23, in a game that went to overtime and gave Dallas the lead in the NFC East. They went on to secure the division title a few weeks later.
Ezekiel Elliott and Tony Pollard combined for a monster game versus the Rams and hope their two-headed beast keeps rolling against Philly.
e Dallas Cowboys enjoyed their best game of the season on Sunday, thoroughly thumping the defending NFC champions from Los Angeles as they fought for their playoff lives. While highlights like Jason Witten making a one-handed grab and Tavon Austin finding himself all alone on a long touchdown pass made for fun television, it was largely a ground-based attack that propelled the team to a 44-21 win and a renewed sense of hope regarding a second straight division title.
The Cowboys ran for 263 yards against the Rams, their best effort of 2019 and highest single-game rushing total since 2017. Ezekiel Elliott logged 117 yards on 24 carries and found the end zone twice, while rookie Tony Pollard had his most productive day as a pro, racking up 131 yards on just 12 carries. The notion of the pair being a lethal double-headed backfield beast has tantalized fans ever since the club drafted the speedy Pollard out of Memphis and then cemented Elliott’s place on the team with a lucrative contract extension. Sunday felt like the first real unleashing of that monster, and it makes this Cowboys squad perhaps the scariest 7-7 team in memory as they ratchet up their ground game for a late December surge toward the postseason.
“We know how good our offensive line is,” Elliott said after Sunday’s win. “When we go out there and handle our business, when we go out there and execute, we’re hard to stop.”
“How many rushing yards did we have today? Like, 300? Close to it?” Elliott asked after the Week 15 win. “We ran the ball really well today. The O-line, I don’t know what they ate for breakfast, but they did a hell of a job and made it easy on us backs.”
Three-fifths of that offensive line- center Travis Frederick, guard Zack Martin, and tackle Tyron Smith- were just named to the 2020 Pro Bowl, along with Elliott.
“It starts up front,” quarterback Dak Prescott said in his postgame remarks Sunday. “Communicating. Those guys coming off the ball was beautiful. And then you look at the runners, the way they did. Broke tackles, made people miss. Both of those guys. That was so impressive.”
But Elliott may actually want to investigate what his line ate for breakfast last week and order it in bulk for Sunday. Up next for the group is a Philadelphia Eagles front that ranks third in the league in run defense, allowing an average of just 90.4 yards per game. They’ve given up over 100 rushing yards just four times all year. One of those instances, however, came against Dallas in their Week 7 meeting, when the Cowboys as a team rolled for 189 yards on the ground.
Now the Cowboys’ rushing attack will look to build off last Sunday’s 263-yard outing in the Philadelphia rematch that would award Dallas the NFC East crown with a victory.
“It’s great to know that a single win gets us in there, but that’s not our goal,” Elliott said. “Our goal isn’t just to make the playoffs. We want to keep this thing rolling, we want to ride this momentum.”
“Momentum is a dangerous thing,” Prescott echoed. “And it’s about getting it on our side.”
The acquisition and development of Pollard cannot be understated when reflecting on the 2019 season. The 22-year-old was selected in the fourth round of April’s draft. The speedster’s skills at returning kicks was documented, but it was hoped that he could be a potent change of pace to Elliott in the Dallas backfield, too.
Pollard’s usage has been up and down this season, but maybe he’s suddenly getting some of that momentum his quarterback mentioned. Against the Rams, Pollard logged double-digit carries for the first time since Week 3. That game saw the team rush for 235 yards as a whole, their previous top performance before this past Sunday. Granted, it’s a small sample size, but good things seem to happen when both Elliott and Pollard are heavily involved.
Yesterday, the Dallas Cowboys became the 1st team in the last 10 seasons to have multiple rushers (Ezekiel Elliott and Tony Pollard) gain 70+ yards after contact in the same game. pic.twitter.com/PLbbBvDtLP
Prescott has definitely noticed the electrifying jolt his first-year weapon brings to the offense. He marveled of Pollard, “He’s just something else. Arm tackles and all that stuff, he’s just getting through it. He continues to make plays anytime the ball’s in his hands, and he’s a special player. Thankful we have him.”
“Seeing him just become a better player is kind of crazy,” Elliott said of Pollard. “I remember his first OTA, he was kind of a little timid and not really running as hard. We didn’t have on pads. But just to see him from there to now, it’s awesome. He’s a smart player, but also very skilled. He has a very bright future.”
For his part, the rookie has embraced the mentorship that the two-time league rushing champ has offered.
“He’s been like a big brother since I got here,” Pollard said of Elliott. “Taking me under his wing. Showing me, teaching me things that I didn’t know at first. He’s done a great job of that.”
And when both of them are ripping off hundred-yard days, it’s good to be a Cowboy: offense, defense, or otherwise.
“It’s just fun,” Pollard said of the team’s dominance on the ground on Sunday. “It just keeps the sideline excited, me and him talking… it’s just a good feeling: both guys clicking, the O-line’s clicking, the defense is rolling, special teams.”
“That’s what we’re built for. We’re built to be a balanced team,” Tyron Smith said of the Week 15 win, the first time since October 2018 that the Dallas ground game has outrushed Prescott’s passing totals. “I think the identity has always been there. It’s just, for us, doing it as a team, knowing what we’ve got to get done.”
Now they’ll have to get it done against the Eagles, a team they’ve beaten in each of their last four meetings. And they’ll have to get it done in Philly’s own house, a trip that coach Jason Garrett’s squads typically do well with.
Dallas Cowboys at Philadelphia Eagles results with Jason Garrett as coach:
“It’s a playoff game,” Prescott said of Sunday’s showdown. “Obviously, simple as that: it’s a playoff game. It’s a rival, it’s a team in the division, it’s a must-win game. We have to approach it as a playoff game, and that’s the way we will.”
The Cowboys’ prolific rushing attack was a revelation against the Rams in Week 15. Week 16 should prove to be more challenging, with an even tougher opponent versus the run and a divisional crown on the line.
Elliott knows what he and Pollard did last week obviously won’t count at Lincoln Financial Field, but it just might have helped give the team a good running start.
“I think we did set up some momentum. But we’ve still got a lot of work to do, got lot of work to do this season. And we’re just getting started.”
Ezekiel Elliott and three of his blockers may have been named to the 2020 Pro Bowl already, but the Cowboys still have plenty of business to attend to in the 2019 season. In fact, the team is still adding to their roster for the final two games and …
Ezekiel Elliott and three of his blockers may have been named to the 2020 Pro Bowl already, but the Cowboys still have plenty of business to attend to in the 2019 season. In fact, the team is still adding to their roster for the final two games and what they hope will be a strong postseason push.
Focus is starting to shift to this weekend’s showdown with the Eagles, but fans and media alike are still soaking in the decisive win last weekend against the Rams. As always, owner Jerry Jones had things to say, this time about Sean Payton and Troy Aikman and the hypothetical roles some are eyeing them for in Dallas. All that, plus sounds from the sideline and a peek inside the booth with Tony Romo. Here’s all the News and Notes.
Jerry Jones dispels Sean Payton rumors :: 105.3 The Fan
New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton used to be the offensive coordinator for the Dallas Cowboys under Bill Parcells. He’s also been extraordinarily successful in his current role as head coach of the New Orleans Saints. Even still, he’s long been rumored to be the apple of owner Jerry Jones’s eye. But on the record, Jones says there’s no fire coming from all that smoke.
Jerry Jones on report that Cowboys sought Sean Payton last offseason: "That’s just not the case."
Jones had plenty more to say about the hypothetical future of the Dallas franchise, this time about former playcaller Troy Aikman. In his current job as lead analyst for FOX Sports, Aikman has been critical of his former employer and the power structure that he intimated has hampered the team’s success since he retired after the 2000 season.
“He emptied the bucket just like I did to become a Cowboy,” Jones said on 105.3, as quoted in an exclusive recap by Mike Fisher. “I would wager that if he (’emptied the bucket’) to buy the team, he would do it exactly like I do it. I would wager that.”
Fisher points out that he believes Jones is referring to how involved Aikman would be as a team owner, not suggesting his style would be the same as Jones’s own.
Aikman has made no secret of his interest in perhaps one day being in a team’s front office. But he does not believe that opportunity will be in Dallas.
“I just don’t think Jerry Jones will bring in anyone that will serve in a role such as the one I would prefer,” Aikman has said.
Linebacker Malcolm Smith may not exactly be a household name, but he is a known commodity to Cowboys passing game coordinator Kris Richard. Oh, and he’s a Super Bowl MVP. The former Seahawk was signed by Dallas on Tuesday, adding sorely-needed depth to a linebacker corps that is suddenly without Leighton Vander Esch, Joe Thomas, and rookie sensation Luke Gifford.
Smith has spent time recently with New Orleans and Jacksonville, but saw little to no action with those clubs. The 30-year-old had the game of his life in Super Bowl XLVIII, notching 10 combined tackles (six solo), deflecting a pass, recovering a fumble, and returning an interception for a touchdown in the Seattle’s 43-8 victory over Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos.
Bill Parcells liked to profess, “You are what your record says you are.” To a certain extent, that’s true. But football is largely random. It’s the smallest sample size of any major sport. The ball is a weird shape and bounces funny. So while a team’s record is what determines their lot in life, there are far better predictors out there, one of which is EPA. In this metric, the 7-7 Cowboys are currently a top-five team and rank No. 2 offensively. That may not make fans feel any better, but it should. If Dallas is able to take the NFC East, they can be as formidable as anyone in the playoffs.
The Cowboys have lacked the kind of sideline juice that defines many success stories in the NFL. A year ago, wide receiver Amari Cooper provided exactly that. On Sunday against the Los Angeles, it was provided by seasoned veterans: linebacker Sean Lee and tight end Jason Witten. Lee chose to return to the Cowboys on a modified deal, eschewing more money and a chance at a starting job elsewhere to stay with the team that drafted him. Witten bounced back to Dallas after a dalliance with Monday Night Football. For one day at least, the two veterans provided the kind of boost the Cowboys sorely needed.
Ask Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz how he plans to slow down the Cowboys’ top-rated offensive attack on Sunday, and he’ll point to some of the usual things that all coaches harp on: stopping the run, playing clean football, defending well in the red zone, and winning third down battles.
But Schwartz is particularly worried about pursuit, an issue he says is different from poor tackling.
“When you’re pursuing well as a team, you don’t notice missed tackles,” he offered.
His unit let Adrian Peterson run away from them several times last week versus Washington. This week, they’ll be chasing guys like Dallas running back Ezekiel Elliott.
“He’s a strong, contact runner. We’re going to have to put a lot of hats on him,” Schwartz said. “It’s not going to be one-on-one tackling.”
The shrouds of mystery surrounding injuries to players on the Dallas Cowboys isn’t a new thing. Often, it seems both the organization and players are willing to forego immediate surgery in hopes that short-term rehabilitation can get the player back on the field. This offseason, Tyrone Crawford opted for the rehab route, which ultimately may have cost him the majority of the 2019 campaign.
–TT
Cowboys beat a winning team :: FOX Sports
If you can’t find humor in what’s been a disappointing season, then perhaps an evaluation of priorities are in order. The Cowboys finally got a win over a team with a record over .500 and, of course, that’s cause for celebration. Headphones are required for the video below.
It’s always more fun to listen to players on the sideline during a victory than it is during defeat. This is no exception. It’s rare to actually learn much from these videos, but there’s one new fact that all Cowboys fans will learn: what linebacker Sean Lee really has in his water bottle during games. After his eye-popping performance Sunday, maybe the entire team should follow his lead.
In an insightful peek behind the curtain, Richard Deitsch embedded with the A-team of CBS Sports during Week 14’s Chiefs-Patriots clash. Among the juicy tidbits for Tony Romo fans to savor? His hotel routine on gameday mornings, his drink of choice while calling the game of the week, and his pregame vocal warmups that include singing along (loudly) to a playlist featuring Lady Gaga, Bruce Springsteen, and U2. If Romo can hit Bono’s high notes in ‘Red Hill Mining Town,’ the former Cowboys quarterback knows he’s ready to take the mic for kickoff.
The article details the nuts and bolts of how the broadcast comes together and also touches on Romo’s future with the network. His contract expires at the end of this season, but his friend Jim Nantz hopes their partnership in the booth goes on for a long while.
“If we could get 15 years,” Nantz says, “that would be a career goal for me. That would cover five or six Super Bowls in that span. I am 60 and Tony is not even 40 yet. He turns 40 in April. He’s like three years younger than Tom Brady! At that point, I would be 75. How I would love to be able to play this out for a generation of games together.”
There’s no love lost between the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles. 1989’s Bounty Bowl didn’t start the feud, but it sure deepened it.
November 23, 1989. “Blame It on the Rain” by Milli Vanilli was the No. 1 song in the country. Harlem Nights starring Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor had just unseated Look Who’s Talking from a month-long run atop the box office. The Berlin Wall had come tumbling down two weeks prior. A gallon of milk cost $2.34. A gallon of gas was just over a buck. And, at least on the visitors’ sideline of Texas Stadium that Thanksgiving Day, the price for laying out Cowboys kicker Luis Zendejas was $200.
Saturday marks the 30th anniversary of the “Bounty Bowl,” one of the ugliest incidents in team history, an unfortunate stain on the league’s rich Thanksgiving Day tradition, and one of the most notorious chapters in one of the nastiest rivalries in the National Football League.
“Why would I place a bounty on a kicker who can’t kick worth a damn?”
The Cowboys were a dismal 1-10 entering the Week 12 game of the 1989 season; Jerry Jones had just purchased the team in February. Jimmy Johnson had replaced the legendary Tom Landry as coach. The team’s best player, Herschel Walker, had been traded away a few weeks earlier, and Troy Aikman was nearing the three-quarter mark of his rookie campaign as starting quarterback of the league’s worst squad. Hosting its annual Thanksgiving Day contest was one of the lone chances that season for the struggling Cowboys to shine before a nationwide audience. The opponent that day? The 7-4 Philadelphia Eagles, helmed by coach Buddy Ryan.
Down by a 10-0 score coming out of halftime, Dallas kicked off to open the third quarter. Moments after sending the ball deep on his first kick of the game, Zendejas was leveled by Eagles linebacker and special teams player Jessie Small. Replays seem to show that Small bypassed several members of the Cowboys coverage team to get to Zendejas. Once there, he delivered a massive blow that sent the 175-pound kicker flying and left him wobbling as he tried to stand.
In today’s game, the hit would have drawn an immediate flag, resulting in not only a penalty for the Eagles, but a stiff fine for Small from the league. But on that day in Irving in 1989, it was- incredibly enough- Zendejas who was flagged, for a low block. (In retrospect, Zendejas was clearly crouching in anticipation because he knew a big hit was coming; more on that later.) And for his bone-crunching blow, Small actually made money- directly from Coach Ryan, no less- according to blockbuster accusations leveled after the 27-0 loss by Johnson and the Cowboys.
The first-year coach claimed that Ryan had placed a bounty on Zendejas, promising a $200 cash payment to the Eagles player who flattened the kicker. Zendejas, coincidentally (or not, depending on your interpretation), had been cut by the Eagles less than a month earlier and then signed by Dallas.
Ryan laughed off the accusation as absurd.
“Why would I place a bounty on a kicker who can’t kick worth a damn?” he asked, according to Mark Eckel of NJ.com. “The guy was in a six-week slump. I wanted him in the game.”
Zendejas had, in fact, missed two field goals in Dallas’s previous game versus Miami. He did not seem to be, at least on the surface, a dangerous playmaking threat truly worthy of the personal ire of the Eagles coach.
The Dallas kicker, though, felt he had proof of the bounty. Eagles punter John Teltschik had warned him before the game that he was a target for a big hit. But there was more.
“Watch out for yourself…”
“In the days leading up to the game,” wrote Ray Didinger in a 2014 piece on the Eagles team website, “a story circulated in Dallas that Zendejas had received an ominous phone call from Eagles special teams coach Al Roberts. According to Zendejas, Roberts told him that Ryan had instructed his players to go after their former teammate.”
Zendejas claimed that upon his release in Philadelphia, he had been notified by Roberts, not Ryan directly. At the time, the kicker took to the media to voice his disappointment, calling his coach’s move “classless.”
”Buddy didn’t have the decency to tell me to my face; he had an assistant coach do it,” Zendejas said of his termination. ”When I phoned to ask him about it, he hung up on me.”
Roberts’s warning for Zendejas to “watch out for yourself” on Thanksgiving 1989 in the game that was quickly dubbed the “Bounty Bowl” was just the latest evidence of bad blood between Ryan and the Cowboys. Ryan, in fact, harbored a hatred for the rivals from Dallas ever since taking over in Philadelphia in 1986. That hatred that grew exponentially the following season.
During the 1987 NFL players’ strike, Dallas saw several high-profile members of their roster cross the picket line to continue playing. Ryan accused then-coach Landry of running up the score on his replacement players in a 41-22 win. After the strike had ended and full-time players returned, Ryan got his revenge on Dallas. He instructed his starting offense to run a fake kneeldown play – after two actual kneel-downs – in the final seconds of a game the Eagles were already leading 30-20. The ensuing rub-it-in touchdown beat the Cowboys by 17 points. In 1989, Ryan saw a chance to kick the rebuilding team when they were down, in their own stadium and on national television.
But the notion of Ryan placing a price tag on the heads of opposing players wasn’t even a new one.
“Ron Wolfley, a Pro Bowl special teams tackler for the [then-]Phoenix Cardinals, disclosed [in 1988] that he had heard that the Eagles had a bounty on him during the 1987 season,” as per a 1989 New York Times piece by Dave Anderson. He goes on to write that, in an Eagles-Bears game that same 1989 season, “similar bounties were whispered to be on Mike Tomczak, the quarterback, and Dennis McKinnon, a wide receiver,” and adding, “Ryan, who has feuded openly with Mike Ditka, also supposedly had offered a bounty if any of the Eagle players flattened the Bears’ coach on the sideline.”
To be sure, the Cowboys were well aware of the bounty rumors when they took the field that Thanksgiving Day. And Zendejas wasn’t the only Dallas player with a supposed price on his head.
“He never used the word ‘bounty.'”
In the first half of the game, Aikman was slammed to the ground by Eagles linebacker Britt Hager well after an aborted-play whistle. The hit, despite broadcasters Pat Summerall and John Madden clearly being entertained by the “fracas” that followed, necessitated X-rays for Aikman. Johnson claimed the Eagles had also put a $500 contract on his rookie quarterback.
“As far as I know, he never pointed out a guy,” Hager answered. “I never heard, ‘Go take the kicker out.’ Who would say, ‘Go take the kicker out?’ That’s why we all kind of laughed about it.”
He admitted, though, that Ryan wasn’t above at least insinuating that opposing quarterbacks were fair game for his players.
Eckel explains, “Ryan would say to me after the fact that he would tell his players at times before games, ‘I want to find out who their backup quarterback is today.” But he never used the word ‘bounty’.”
Anderson adds that Zendejas himself “spoke of having seen ”Buddy call guys out and give them $100” for what the kicker called a weekly Big Hit award but what Ryan called a Big Play award.
“Ryan acknowledged those $100 bonuses to his Eagle players, but insisted they were for an interception or a jarring tackle that caused a fumble in the context of the game, not for leveling a certain opponent.”
But, Sabin writes: “At the time, Hager and the Eagles special teams and defensive players would collect a pool of money and redistribute it for big hits, ‘decleaters,’ sacks, and turnovers. It wasn’t an uncommon practice in the NFL during a bygone era when the league’s image was less sanitized and the game wasn’t as scrutinized. In fact, the Cowboys had a similar system, according to [Dallas fullback Daryl] Johnston.
“‘There was no intent of malice,’ Johnston explained.”
But to anyone watching the 1989 Thanksgiving Day contest, there was clearly intent of malice in the Eagles hit that left a diminutive kicker staggering off the field.
Didinger, the famed Philadelphia sportswriter, had a private film session with Jimmy Johnson at Valley Ranch several days after the Bounty Bowl.
“On the film, you could see Small take a straight-line course to Zendejas. He actually ran right past Bill Bates, the Cowboys’ best special teams player, to get to the kicker who never made a tackle in his entire career.
“‘Why would he do that,’ Johnson said referring to Small, ‘unless somebody told him to do it?’
“I had to admit Johnson had a point.”
“You all know what you were doing!”
The New York Times quoted Zendejas as saying of Ryan after the Thanksgiving Day game, ”If I could’ve stood on my two legs, I would’ve gone over and decked him… We’ll play again in two weeks. If I see him then, I’ll deck him then. Honestly, I will.”
Zendejas did share words with several of his ex-Eagles teammates when the Thanksgiving game ended. Small, in fact, was overheard by Didinger telling Zendejas, ”I was just doing my job.” The Cowboys’ kicker reportedly replied, ”You know what you were doing! You all know what you were doing!” An Eagles’ trainer offered his hand; Zendejas slapped it away.
Johnson himself intended to confront Ryan right there on the field after the final gun. But the Eagles coach hurried off the Texas Stadium field, skipping the traditional coaches’ face-to-face meeting.
According to Didinger: “It was true Ryan left the field as soon as the game ended, but he did that every week. He didn’t believe in postgame handshakes. Professional courtesy wasn’t his thing.”
Johnson famously said of the moment, “Oh, I would have said something to Buddy, but he wouldn’t stand on the field long enough. He put his big fat rear end into the dressing room.”
In his response, Ryan, as he did with most things, deflected the criticism with a joke.
“I resent that,” Ryan said. “I’ve been on a diet, I lost a couple of pounds. I thought I was looking good, and he goes and calls me fat. I kind of resent that.”
The teams played again two weeks later. It was not nearly enough time, though, for tempers to have cooled. “Bounty Bowl II” had become a promoted event, and it carried the animosity into the Veterans Stadium stands, with Philadelphia fans pelting Cowboys players, NFL officials, CBS broadcasters, and even their own players with ice-packed snowballs in one of the most chaotic game environments ever seen at an NFL venue.
On the field, Zendejas was left alone, and he never went after Ryan. But Aikman took several hits during the game along with Eagles quarterback Randall Cunningham; nine total sacks were recorded in a notably physical 20-10 Eagles win. Cowboys punter Mike Saxon was also roughed up during play, drawing an unnecessary roughness flag.
“He never truly admitted it.”
As for the initial Bounty Bowl accusations, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue- on the job just one month when it happened- followed up by interviewing a handful of players. There was even talk of a recording Zendejas had supposedly made of the phone conversation where the Eagles assistant had warned him of the bounty, but the kicker never turned over any such tape.
In the end, according to the Dallas Morning News, “the league dropped the inquiry, saying it found no ‘convincing evidence of an intent to injure any Cowboys player or to make contact with any player outside the rules of the game.'”
The 1989 season ended with the Cowboys finishing 1-15, the second NFL team to ever do so. Their league-worst record would have given them the top pick in the 1990 draft, but the team had given up that pick by taking quarterback Steve Walsh in the first round of the previous year’s supplemental draft. The Cowboys eventually traded picks with the Steelers to re-enter the first round; they selected running back Emmitt Smith 17th overall.
The Eagles came in second in the NFC East in 1989 and lost to the Rams in the wild card round of the playoffs.
Ryan never admitted to a bounty system in the years that followed, maintaining that position until his passing in 2016.
Johnson, now a FOX studio analyst, recalled Ryan’s denials in a 2014 interview.
“He sloughed it off. He never truly admitted it,” Johnson said. “I think Buddy was trying to play games. I kid him, ‘You had one of the great all-time defenses, but you never won a playoff game.’ I had the last laugh.”
Johnson’s championships may have afforded him the luxury to find humor in it long after the fact, but the Bounty Bowl saga remains a seminal part of the lore of the Cowboys-Eagles rivalry any time the franchises meet. Thirty years of hindsight has perhaps turned the original controversy into just a colorful chapter from a distant era; nothing, though, has diminished the intense dislike the two teams have for one another to this day.
