Thursday, August 27, 1998

Cowboys have talent, but not enough

By Gil LeBreton

Knight Ridder Newspapers

(KRT)

FORT WORTH, Texas - Somewhere between the 6-10 debacle of a year ago and their fans' eternally lofty expectations sit the real 1998 Cowboys.

A veteran nucleus, yet a rookie head coach. A battle-tested defense, yet a fickle pass rush. A running back who could awake and run for 1,500 yards, yet a back whose starting days could be numbered.

The consensus among the preseason football magazines seemed to be that the Cowboys are yesterday's news. Their star has dimmed.

But the problem with most of the magazines is that because of deadlines, they, too, are often yesterday's news. The Cowboys' obituaries were more than likely written by the dim light of the 1997 bonfire.

That team quit on its coach. That team couldn't run. That team couldn't get to the end zone. That team just wanted to go home.

Angered and disenchanted, Cowboys fans demanded scapegoats. Owner Jones, in no hurry, offered up the heads of head coach Barry Switzer and offensive coordinator Ernie Zampese, among others. Old legs on the roster were urged to move along.

Jones then brought in seasoned plug-ins - Chris Warren, Everett McIver, Ernie Mills and George Teague - for another run at glory.

A respectable strategy . . . if this were, say, 1996.

A funny thing happened to that sleek silver dynasty that the Cowboys had put together, the team that was supposed to win Super Bowls for the rest of the century:

It got distracted. It turned dysfunctional. It hit a speed bump the size of a Norman, Okla., sofa.

Free agency ate away the fringes of the Cowboys' cathedral. The golden icons remain - some of them - but for the most part Owner Jones has simply vacuumed the aisles and put up the "Under New Management" sign.

This is not a Super Bowl team. If it reaches the playoffs, the guess here is that it would say more about the NFC's rampant mediocrity than about the "rejuvenated" Cowboys.

The core of the cast is solid, though ever-older. Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin, Deion Sanders, Darren Woodson, Larry Allen and Leon Lett would make a substantial foundation for any Super Bowl-ambitious team.

But in the Cowboys' case, the supporting cast is held together by duct tape and dreams. In rookie defensive end Greg Ellis, new coach Chan Gailey hopes he has the next Charles Haley, or even the next Jim Jeffcoat. In veteran Ernie Mills and holdover Billy Davis, Gailey hopes he has his No. 2 receiver problem solved.

Gailey himself is a bit of a dream. After Switzer departed, Owner Jones failed to produce a head coach from interviews and/or get-togethers with ex-UCLA coach Terry Donahue and ex-49ers coach George Seifert. He turned instead to the less-flashier, long-time assistant Gailey, whose expertise is offense.

Gailey, unlike his successor, should not be a distraction on this team. He is a football coach and talks like one. His ideas on offense - multiple wide-outs, shotgun, men in motion - are eye-catching for a guy whose boldest fashion statement remains a ball cap.

Of all the Cowboys, running back Emmitt Smith could make the team's transition to Gailey easiest. Smith needs to return to pre-1996 form and start finding the end zone again. If he doesn't, there is Warren, who was deemed expendable in Seattle.

There also remain questions on the offensive line, where the burden has been placed on the modest shoulders of guard McIver and center Clay Shiver.

If anything, the NFL schedule has been sympathetic to the Cowboys' comeback struggle. By the first week of November, the Cowboys will have played the likes of Arizona, Oakland, Chicago and Philadelphia. A winning record at that point could mean another slick elevator ride back up to the playoffs.

But that looms as an ambitious itinerary, especially to a team coming off a joke of a 6-10 season.

Elevator up? ... Or down?

From here, it looks stuck on 8-and-8.

X X X

(Gil LeBreton is a sports columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Write to him at: Fort Worth Star-Telegram, P.O. Box 1870, Fort Worth, Texas, 76101.)

(c) 1998, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

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