Friday, August 28, 1998

Preseason finale looked frighteningly familiar

By Tim Cowlishaw

The Dallas Morning News

(KRT)

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Thursday's opponent and setting were uncommon ones for the Dallas Cowboys, but the game in ALLTEL Stadium still had the feel of a summer rerun. We have seen this script before, and there was no value in watching it again.

When Jacksonville had the ball, things happened. Big plays. The Dallas defense made the first with Dexter Coakley intercepting and scoring a touchdown, but the Jaguars rallied for 21 straight points in a 42-20 Jacksonville romp. That closed the books on a pre-season in which the Cowboys produced more NFL investigations than victories.

Say what you will about pre-season games, but for the 20 minutes the teams had their best on the field, it was easy to tell which was the club formulating Super Bowl plans and which was the team clinging to Super Bowl memories.

"It's an uncomfortable feeling for us right now," safety Darren Woodson said. "We're coming off a 6-10 season. To be honest, there's still some doubts in our minds."

In this particular game, weaknesses were exposed in the Cowboys' defense, primarily weaknesses that should not exist when the season begins next weekend.

Wide receiver Jimmy Smith, whose Dallas career consisted mostly of a case of appendicitis and a lawsuit against the club, continued to make the Cowboys pay. He scored on a pair of long touchdowns (45 and 31 yards), but they came against Kevin Mathis, who's not a real starter, and rookie Zebbie Lethridge, who's not even a real cornerback. He was Texas Tech's quarterback a year ago.

Deion Sanders, due back for the season opener, doesn't give up those plays quite so readily.

The weakness that won't go away, although Leon Lett's return will help, is the absence of a pass rush. In five pre-season games, none of the Cowboys' starting linemen recorded a sack. It's true they didn't play a whole lot of downs. But over the course of five games, they saw more than a game's worth of action, for sure, and never made the quarterback sweat.

Given that kind of comfort level, Mark Brunell picked the defense clean with an eight-for-12, 148-yard night. The Cowboys won't see Brunell's quality every week, but even Arizona's second-year passer, Jake Plummer, is a threat to chalk up big numbers on Sept. 6 if Dallas linemen don't get in his face.

Kavika Pittman did not play due to a sprained ankle Thursday. In the past, he hasn't played due to ability. And yet he is the Cowboys' only real hope at right end, the key pass rushing spot on the defense. The Cowboys aren't asking him to be Charles Haley. But for now, we don't know if he can be Shante Carver.

Rookie Greg Ellis should develop on the left side, but there will be growing pains. And there will be tackles like Jacksonville's Leon Searcy who won't let him near the quarterback this season.

So the bigger part of the rush has to come from inside. That's Lett and Chad Hennings. Lett has never had more than four sacks in a season, but he creates pressure that opens lanes for others.

The problem for Dallas is that the defense doesn't have the luxury of taking its time coming together when Lett and Sanders return. Although the bigger names reside and the bigger dollars are spent on the offense, there's little question which unit really let the team down in 1997. And that unit is still learning Chan Gailey's system, still trying to plug in a second receiver, still hoping that Clay Shiver, Everett McIver and a sleeker Nate Newton can hold their own in the middle.

The Cowboys assume Emmitt Smith will be a candidate for the league rushing title, and that assumption is based on one performance against the St. Louis Rams, perhaps the league's worst team. In four other pre-season games, Smith carried 10 times for 17 yards. Thursday night's three carries for three yards told us nothing.

If Gailey's priority was to get to the regular season healthy, consider it mission accomplished. And that is the primary concern for any team.

The 0-5 record is insignificant on its own. The fact the Cowboys rarely looked sharp is not.

"I would hope the end result would have been better," Gailey said. "If we go and play and have the season we hope to have, this won't matter. If we don't play well, then everyone will point to the pre-season."

Maybe it all comes together in a big rush on Sept. 6. Maybe the Cowboys blow out Arizona with Aikman, Smith and Irvin flashing early '90s form, and Lett and Sanders performing their vital roles in pass rush and coverage.

Maybe.

Buy it if you like. Right now it's all the Cowboys have to sell.

(c) 1998, The Dallas Morning News.

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