Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has received plenty of criticism lately for his handling of the franchise, including from actor Denzel Washington.
The Cowboys haven’t been to a Super Bowl or even an NFC Championship Game in 30 years, leading to lots of frustration.
Cowboys legendary running back Emmitt Smith was recently asked about the lengthy Super Bowl drought. According to Smith, Cowboys players deserve some of the blame, too.
“Well, Jerry never caught a pass. He never ran a ball. And he [expletive] sure didn’t throw one,” Emmitt Smith said. “So at some point players gotta take on ownership of what they’ve been trained and what they’ve been taught to do.”
Emmitt Smith, who is the NFL’s all-time leading rusher, won three Super Bowls during his time with the Cowboys. Two of those Super Bowls came with Jimmy Johnson as the head coach, with Barry Switzer leading the way for the other.
Smith admitted that the franchise was a bit of a mess after Johnson left, but ultimately it was up to the players to keep the train rolling on.
"We had to do it ourselves,“ Smith said. ”We went to back-to-back Super Bowls and then we lost our leader. And we were in disarray for a year. But as the players and as the leadership of that ball club and that ball team, we took it upon ourselves to say, ‘This is what we gonna do. We don’t care who’s at the helm. Our systems are still the same; our processes are still the same. We know how to work. We’ve been trained how to work. We were built from the ground up.’
“So that foundation never left. So therefore we were able to go back and win our third.”
The Dallas Cowboys have been through six head coaches without getting back to a Super Bowl and are now on their seventh in Brian Schottenheimer, who is entering his first season.
Schottenheimer is certainly partly responsible for getting Dallas over the hump, but according to Smith, so are the players.
“At some point, you as a player have to take on ownership and develop into the leaders that you need to develop,” he said. “And it’s not all about you all the time. It’s about bringing others with you, because you can’t win by yourself.”
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