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19 in ’19 — #3: The final piece of The Triplets, there will never be another Emmitt Smith
By Saad Yousuf Jul 30, 2019
19 in ’19 highlights the 19 most impactful Cowboys, Rangers, Mavericks and Stars throughout the history of each franchise. Our staff voted on the top 19 from all four combined lists to create these overall rankings. You can find all of our team lists and profiles here.
For anybody who has ever completed a puzzle, the feeling of joy, relief, excitement and triumph fused together when the final piece slides into place is exquisite. Sure, the puzzle wouldn’t be complete without all of the pieces that were put in place before, but there’s a different feeling attached to the final piece. That one is special.
Emmitt Smith is special.
When we first voted on the athletes in The Athletic’s 19 in ’19 series, there was never a doubt that the Triplets of the 90s Cowboys dynasty would all claim spots near the top of the list. Michael Irvin was the first name unveiled at No. 8, followed shortly thereafter by Troy Aikman at No. 4.
That left Smith to claim his spot in the top three, and it’s only fitting that things worked out this way. After all, it was Irvin who came to Dallas first in 1988. Aikman followed him in 1989, and in October of that year, a blockbuster trade sent running back Herschel Walker to the Minnesota Vikings in exchange for a ridiculous haul of players and draft picks.
One of those picks was a first-rounder in the 1990 draft. It would become the final piece of the face of a dynasty. [HR][/HR]
Many of the puzzle pieces were already in place by the 1989 season, but the Cowboys faced a challenge fitting them together. It was arguably the most tumultuous time in the franchise’s history. A new owner was taking over, some guy named Jerry Jones, who made it one of his first moves to fire the only head coach the franchise had ever known in Tom Landry. President and general manager Tex Schramm was gone as well, and Jones hired a former college teammate and friend in Jimmy Johnson to take the helm.
Still, winning a Super Bowl was the least of the Cowboys’ problems that season. They were concerned with simply winning more than a single game. The year prior, Dallas started 0-8 and then traded Walker away to the Vikings. Their lone win came against the Washington Redskins when Aikman was hurt and Steve Walsh filled in. The dismal 1-15 season should have resulted in the top overall pick in the 1990 draft, but the Cowboys had already forfeited that selection as compensation for selecting Walsh in the supplemental draft the year prior. Consequently, Dallas’ only first-round selection was the Vikings’ pick at No. 21.
On draft day, Dallas knew exactly who they wanted. With Smith falling down the draft board, the Cowboys moved up a few spots to No. 17 to take the University of Florida product.
“That final piece to the puzzle was the key and really stood in the tradition of what the Cowboys offenses were about when they had good football teams,” Daryl “Moose” Johnston told The Athletic. “Even with the good quarterbacks, even with (Don) Meredith and (Roger) Staubach and (Troy) Aikman and Danny White, even with those guys playing the quarterback position and the receivers they had with them, it was Walt (Garrison), it was Tony (Dorsett), it was Emmitt (Smith). That was a key component to those teams that had success throughout the history of the franchise.
“Being the last of The Triplets added, you could say he was the final piece, but obviously a piece that traditionally was a key component of what the offenses used.”
It took a while to get him in the fold: Smith became the longest rookie holdout in franchise history while negotiating his contract. But once he was on the field, his impact was instantaneous. Smith started 15 games and rushed for 937 yards and 11 touchdowns to take home Offensive Rookie of the Year honors. At one point during the season, guard Nate Newton sat with Smith after a practice long after most of their teammates left the building. Newton asked Smith if he wanted to be one of the special running backs in the league. Smith responded with some math. He told Newton how many years he had to play and how much he had to average each season in order to pass Walter Payton as the NFL’s all-time leading rusher.
For the next three seasons, and four of the next five, Smith led the NFL in rushing. The first time, in 1991, he helped the Cowboys reach the playoffs after a five-year postseason drought, only for Dallas to get bounced by Barry Sanders and the Detroit Lions in the divisional round. Every time after that, though, whenever Smith won the regular season rushing title, the Cowboys finished the season by raising the Lombardi Trophy. [HR][/HR]
Throughout his Hall of Fame career, if one year could sum up Smith’s greatness, it was the 1993 season. The Cowboys were coming off a year in which they won their first Super Bowl since 1977, and Smith had captured back-to-back rushing titles. He was clearly the engine of the Cowboys offense and wanted to be paid like it. So, he held out.
The holdout spilled into the regular season, and Smith missed the first two games. The Cowboys missed him dearly, going 0-2 in his absence. Defensive end Charles Haley smashed his helmet through a wall in the locker room at Texas Stadium after the second loss out of frustration over not getting Smith signed. The following week, Smith was back in the fold.
“To me, that’s the biggest, definitive piece of evidence as to how important he was,” Johnston said. “We thought we could have a rotation that could keep us competitive and maybe shift some things into some other areas, but when your whole offense is based on the running game … I think the way that our offense functioned, we learned pretty quick those first two games that not only was he irreplaceable, but you’re not going to do it with one guy, you’re not going to do it with multiple guys.
“Your offense is going to stagnate, defenses are going to play you differently. The matchups that Michael (Irvin) and Jay (Novacek) on the outside are no longer there because they’re not worried about the running game. It was eye-opening and enlightening for everybody.”
After giving the rest of the NFL’s running backs a two-week head start, Smith came back on a mission. Over the next 13 games, he took over the league lead in rushing yards, entering the final week against the New York Giants with a slight 35-yard edge over the Los Angeles Rams’ Jerome Bettis. There was plenty on the line for the team, as well. The Cowboys and Giants both came in at 11-4; the winner would win the NFC East and secure a first-round bye, while the loser would the next week in the wildcard round. A standout performance by Smith could both clinch a third straight rushing title as well as hand the Cowboys the division.
It almost ended in disappointment. Early in the game, Smith suffered a serious shoulder injury. He was in significant pain, but the stakes were too high for him to bow out.
“He told Jimmy that he hurt his shoulder. They didn’t take him out of the game but they were using him as a decoy,” Newton said. “So, he was running up in there and getting hit and was getting hit on his shoulder anyways.”
Finally, Smith approached his coach on the sideline and asked for the ball.
“Jimmy said, ‘You want the damn ball?’ (Emmitt) said, ‘Yeah, I want the damn ball!’ and he gave it to him,” Newton recalled. “He came in the huddle and told us, ‘Hey, I’m fixing to get the ball. I’m going to run it, y’all make sure y’all get your blocks and when you can, come down there and help me get off the ground.’ Man, the rest is history.”
Smith rushed for 168 yards and caught 10 balls for 61 yards for a whopping 229-yard day, and the Cowboys beat the Giants in overtime. Bettis turned in a solid performance of his own that day, but Smith ultimately won the rushing title by 57 yards.
A few weeks later, the Cowboys were in the Super Bowl against the Buffalo Bills. The two teams had met in the regular season in Week 2 at Texas Stadium, when Smith was still holding out and the Bills had won 13-10, prompting Haley’s postgame outburst and Smith’s subsequent return to the team.
Buffalo’s offense remained consistent with the regular-season matchup, with the Bills again scoring 13 points. But with Smith leading the way, the Cowboys’ offense surged, tripling its point total from 10 to 30 and winning Super Bowl XXVII 30-13. Smith rushed 30 times for 132 yards and a pair of touchdowns while also catching four passes for 26 yards, ultimately being named the MVP of the game.
The 1993 Cowboys became the first team in NFL history to flip an 0-2 start into a Super Bowl title, though one could argue that they were two completely different teams: One without Smith and one with him. The season that began with Smith disgruntled over his contract turned into a career-defining year, and he brought his best when the stakes were highest. In a road division game against the Eagles on Halloween, Smith posted the highest single-game rushing total of his career, running all over Philadelphia for 237 yards. Two months later, again on the road against a division rival in the Giants, Smith battled through injury to put forth his most iconic performance with personal and teamwide goals on the line. It gave him his third consecutive rushing title, making him the last running back to accomplish that feat.
A few weeks later, he was named Super Bowl MVP, becoming the first — and to this day, the only — running back to win the regular season MVP and Super Bowl MVP awards in the same season.
When Johnston first heard of Smith’s goal to pass Walter Payton as the NFL’s all-time leading rusher early in his career, he didn’t think that was realistic. He admired the ambition but felt that the number was too large and too much had to go right for Smith.
Well, all of those things ended up going right. Smith played in a Norv Turner offense that was predicated on the run. He had a quarterback and a receiver in Aikman and Irvin whom defenses had to respect, so they couldn’t just routinely load the box. He never suffered a debilitating, serious injury. He had an offensive line that was unworldly. Perhaps most of all aside from his own talent, he had a fullback in Johnston who would clear any path for him.
“A lot of that success has to do with Daryl Johnston, in my opinion, as a defensive guy,” said linebacker Dixon Edwards, who played with the Cowboys during the Super Bowl runs. “I have to go through Daryl Johnston before I can get to Emmitt Smith.”
It was evident how much Johnston meant to Smith in the embrace after Smith broke Payton’s record on October 27, 2002.
“Records are meant to be broken” is a common phrase in sports. It’s often said by the greats who see somebody else come along and surpass their marks. But when it comes to Smith all-time rushing record of 18,355 yards, there’s a good chance that we will never hear it.
“The game has changed. I don’t see the game cycling back to the point where we’ve got the bell cow feature back that’s going to get the amount of reps and the amount of carries necessary,” Johnston said. “You have to perform at a high level for a long period of time. Emmitt was one of the first to really focus on taking care of his body outside of the training room in the Cowboys facility and finding stuff on his own … I really feel it’s one of those records that’s out there so far that I don’t know if anybody even gets close to that. I don’t even know if anybody passes Walter.”
There are two players currently closest to threatening the record. Buffalo Bills running back Frank Gore is the nearest at 3,607 yards back. But he’s 35 years old and has averaged 919 yards per season in his last four years. If he maintained that average going forward — which is very unlikely — he would need four more seasons to hit the mark.
It seemed for a few years that Adrian Peterson might become a serious threat, but he sits 5,037 yards back at age 33. He’s dealt with injury issues in recent years and unlikely to ever be a feature back at any point again in his career, so he would need to play upwards of five more seasons under ideal conditions to have a chance.
The idea of either approaching Emmitt calls to mind the night Smith set his famous record, when Jerry Jones immediately took the microphone to introduce him to Texas Stadium.
“There’s only one NFL rushing champion, and there’s only one Emmitt Smith,” Jones said.
Chances are, it will stay that way forever.
19 in ’19 — #3: The final piece of The Triplets, there will never be another Emmitt Smith
By Saad Yousuf Jul 30, 2019
19 in ’19 highlights the 19 most impactful Cowboys, Rangers, Mavericks and Stars throughout the history of each franchise. Our staff voted on the top 19 from all four combined lists to create these overall rankings. You can find all of our team lists and profiles here.
For anybody who has ever completed a puzzle, the feeling of joy, relief, excitement and triumph fused together when the final piece slides into place is exquisite. Sure, the puzzle wouldn’t be complete without all of the pieces that were put in place before, but there’s a different feeling attached to the final piece. That one is special.
Emmitt Smith is special.
When we first voted on the athletes in The Athletic’s 19 in ’19 series, there was never a doubt that the Triplets of the 90s Cowboys dynasty would all claim spots near the top of the list. Michael Irvin was the first name unveiled at No. 8, followed shortly thereafter by Troy Aikman at No. 4.
That left Smith to claim his spot in the top three, and it’s only fitting that things worked out this way. After all, it was Irvin who came to Dallas first in 1988. Aikman followed him in 1989, and in October of that year, a blockbuster trade sent running back Herschel Walker to the Minnesota Vikings in exchange for a ridiculous haul of players and draft picks.
One of those picks was a first-rounder in the 1990 draft. It would become the final piece of the face of a dynasty. [HR][/HR]
Many of the puzzle pieces were already in place by the 1989 season, but the Cowboys faced a challenge fitting them together. It was arguably the most tumultuous time in the franchise’s history. A new owner was taking over, some guy named Jerry Jones, who made it one of his first moves to fire the only head coach the franchise had ever known in Tom Landry. President and general manager Tex Schramm was gone as well, and Jones hired a former college teammate and friend in Jimmy Johnson to take the helm.
Still, winning a Super Bowl was the least of the Cowboys’ problems that season. They were concerned with simply winning more than a single game. The year prior, Dallas started 0-8 and then traded Walker away to the Vikings. Their lone win came against the Washington Redskins when Aikman was hurt and Steve Walsh filled in. The dismal 1-15 season should have resulted in the top overall pick in the 1990 draft, but the Cowboys had already forfeited that selection as compensation for selecting Walsh in the supplemental draft the year prior. Consequently, Dallas’ only first-round selection was the Vikings’ pick at No. 21.
On draft day, Dallas knew exactly who they wanted. With Smith falling down the draft board, the Cowboys moved up a few spots to No. 17 to take the University of Florida product.
“That final piece to the puzzle was the key and really stood in the tradition of what the Cowboys offenses were about when they had good football teams,” Daryl “Moose” Johnston told The Athletic. “Even with the good quarterbacks, even with (Don) Meredith and (Roger) Staubach and (Troy) Aikman and Danny White, even with those guys playing the quarterback position and the receivers they had with them, it was Walt (Garrison), it was Tony (Dorsett), it was Emmitt (Smith). That was a key component to those teams that had success throughout the history of the franchise.
“Being the last of The Triplets added, you could say he was the final piece, but obviously a piece that traditionally was a key component of what the offenses used.”
It took a while to get him in the fold: Smith became the longest rookie holdout in franchise history while negotiating his contract. But once he was on the field, his impact was instantaneous. Smith started 15 games and rushed for 937 yards and 11 touchdowns to take home Offensive Rookie of the Year honors. At one point during the season, guard Nate Newton sat with Smith after a practice long after most of their teammates left the building. Newton asked Smith if he wanted to be one of the special running backs in the league. Smith responded with some math. He told Newton how many years he had to play and how much he had to average each season in order to pass Walter Payton as the NFL’s all-time leading rusher.
For the next three seasons, and four of the next five, Smith led the NFL in rushing. The first time, in 1991, he helped the Cowboys reach the playoffs after a five-year postseason drought, only for Dallas to get bounced by Barry Sanders and the Detroit Lions in the divisional round. Every time after that, though, whenever Smith won the regular season rushing title, the Cowboys finished the season by raising the Lombardi Trophy. [HR][/HR]
Throughout his Hall of Fame career, if one year could sum up Smith’s greatness, it was the 1993 season. The Cowboys were coming off a year in which they won their first Super Bowl since 1977, and Smith had captured back-to-back rushing titles. He was clearly the engine of the Cowboys offense and wanted to be paid like it. So, he held out.
The holdout spilled into the regular season, and Smith missed the first two games. The Cowboys missed him dearly, going 0-2 in his absence. Defensive end Charles Haley smashed his helmet through a wall in the locker room at Texas Stadium after the second loss out of frustration over not getting Smith signed. The following week, Smith was back in the fold.
“To me, that’s the biggest, definitive piece of evidence as to how important he was,” Johnston said. “We thought we could have a rotation that could keep us competitive and maybe shift some things into some other areas, but when your whole offense is based on the running game … I think the way that our offense functioned, we learned pretty quick those first two games that not only was he irreplaceable, but you’re not going to do it with one guy, you’re not going to do it with multiple guys.
“Your offense is going to stagnate, defenses are going to play you differently. The matchups that Michael (Irvin) and Jay (Novacek) on the outside are no longer there because they’re not worried about the running game. It was eye-opening and enlightening for everybody.”
After giving the rest of the NFL’s running backs a two-week head start, Smith came back on a mission. Over the next 13 games, he took over the league lead in rushing yards, entering the final week against the New York Giants with a slight 35-yard edge over the Los Angeles Rams’ Jerome Bettis. There was plenty on the line for the team, as well. The Cowboys and Giants both came in at 11-4; the winner would win the NFC East and secure a first-round bye, while the loser would the next week in the wildcard round. A standout performance by Smith could both clinch a third straight rushing title as well as hand the Cowboys the division.
It almost ended in disappointment. Early in the game, Smith suffered a serious shoulder injury. He was in significant pain, but the stakes were too high for him to bow out.
“He told Jimmy that he hurt his shoulder. They didn’t take him out of the game but they were using him as a decoy,” Newton said. “So, he was running up in there and getting hit and was getting hit on his shoulder anyways.”
Finally, Smith approached his coach on the sideline and asked for the ball.
“Jimmy said, ‘You want the damn ball?’ (Emmitt) said, ‘Yeah, I want the damn ball!’ and he gave it to him,” Newton recalled. “He came in the huddle and told us, ‘Hey, I’m fixing to get the ball. I’m going to run it, y’all make sure y’all get your blocks and when you can, come down there and help me get off the ground.’ Man, the rest is history.”
Smith rushed for 168 yards and caught 10 balls for 61 yards for a whopping 229-yard day, and the Cowboys beat the Giants in overtime. Bettis turned in a solid performance of his own that day, but Smith ultimately won the rushing title by 57 yards.
A few weeks later, the Cowboys were in the Super Bowl against the Buffalo Bills. The two teams had met in the regular season in Week 2 at Texas Stadium, when Smith was still holding out and the Bills had won 13-10, prompting Haley’s postgame outburst and Smith’s subsequent return to the team.
Buffalo’s offense remained consistent with the regular-season matchup, with the Bills again scoring 13 points. But with Smith leading the way, the Cowboys’ offense surged, tripling its point total from 10 to 30 and winning Super Bowl XXVII 30-13. Smith rushed 30 times for 132 yards and a pair of touchdowns while also catching four passes for 26 yards, ultimately being named the MVP of the game.
The 1993 Cowboys became the first team in NFL history to flip an 0-2 start into a Super Bowl title, though one could argue that they were two completely different teams: One without Smith and one with him. The season that began with Smith disgruntled over his contract turned into a career-defining year, and he brought his best when the stakes were highest. In a road division game against the Eagles on Halloween, Smith posted the highest single-game rushing total of his career, running all over Philadelphia for 237 yards. Two months later, again on the road against a division rival in the Giants, Smith battled through injury to put forth his most iconic performance with personal and teamwide goals on the line. It gave him his third consecutive rushing title, making him the last running back to accomplish that feat.
A few weeks later, he was named Super Bowl MVP, becoming the first — and to this day, the only — running back to win the regular season MVP and Super Bowl MVP awards in the same season.
When Johnston first heard of Smith’s goal to pass Walter Payton as the NFL’s all-time leading rusher early in his career, he didn’t think that was realistic. He admired the ambition but felt that the number was too large and too much had to go right for Smith.
Well, all of those things ended up going right. Smith played in a Norv Turner offense that was predicated on the run. He had a quarterback and a receiver in Aikman and Irvin whom defenses had to respect, so they couldn’t just routinely load the box. He never suffered a debilitating, serious injury. He had an offensive line that was unworldly. Perhaps most of all aside from his own talent, he had a fullback in Johnston who would clear any path for him.
“A lot of that success has to do with Daryl Johnston, in my opinion, as a defensive guy,” said linebacker Dixon Edwards, who played with the Cowboys during the Super Bowl runs. “I have to go through Daryl Johnston before I can get to Emmitt Smith.”
It was evident how much Johnston meant to Smith in the embrace after Smith broke Payton’s record on October 27, 2002.
“Records are meant to be broken” is a common phrase in sports. It’s often said by the greats who see somebody else come along and surpass their marks. But when it comes to Smith all-time rushing record of 18,355 yards, there’s a good chance that we will never hear it.
“The game has changed. I don’t see the game cycling back to the point where we’ve got the bell cow feature back that’s going to get the amount of reps and the amount of carries necessary,” Johnston said. “You have to perform at a high level for a long period of time. Emmitt was one of the first to really focus on taking care of his body outside of the training room in the Cowboys facility and finding stuff on his own … I really feel it’s one of those records that’s out there so far that I don’t know if anybody even gets close to that. I don’t even know if anybody passes Walter.”
There are two players currently closest to threatening the record. Buffalo Bills running back Frank Gore is the nearest at 3,607 yards back. But he’s 35 years old and has averaged 919 yards per season in his last four years. If he maintained that average going forward — which is very unlikely — he would need four more seasons to hit the mark.
It seemed for a few years that Adrian Peterson might become a serious threat, but he sits 5,037 yards back at age 33. He’s dealt with injury issues in recent years and unlikely to ever be a feature back at any point again in his career, so he would need to play upwards of five more seasons under ideal conditions to have a chance.
The idea of either approaching Emmitt calls to mind the night Smith set his famous record, when Jerry Jones immediately took the microphone to introduce him to Texas Stadium.
“There’s only one NFL rushing champion, and there’s only one Emmitt Smith,” Jones said.
Chances are, it will stay that way forever.
