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Cowboys' 'Rudy' not ready for prime time against Raiders

By Gil LeBreton

Knight Ridder Newspapers

(KRT)

IRVING, Texas - That was no postgame traffic jam.

That was 63,544 patrons, rushing to the post office to send get-well cards to Troy Aikman.

Once upon a time, Jason Garrett's Dallas Cowboys teammates called him Rudy, after the overachieving Hollywood walk-on of the same name.

But hold that sequel. Garrett's second start of the season Sunday in place of the injured Aikman proved to be a real-life, Sunday matinee bomb.

Six days after he had played mostly mistake-free football against the Giants in New York, quarterback Garrett combined crippling sins with general ineffectiveness and squandered one to the Oakland Raiders, 13-12.

"He played good in spurts; he played real well in spurts," Cowboys coach Chan Gailey said, opting to be kind. "And he has some things, I'm sure, that he wishes - and I wish - he had done over."

The problem was inconsistency. Garrett completed 18 of 33 passes for 222 yards. But he mostly failed to find the end zone and, worse, wiped would-be vital points off the board with two bad throws for interceptions.

Abiding Gailey's instructions, he was sacked only twice. But the Oakland defense rained a variety of blitzes on Garrett, and his patience betrayed him.

"We've got to be a consistent football team," Gailey said, "before anybody can talk about us 'arriving.' And we have not done that yet."

Psst, Rudy. He's talking about you.

Granted, unlike last Monday night in the Meadowlands, Garrett's supporting cast did not exactly stand up in his behalf. Balls were dropped. The offensive line had trouble carving a consistent path for Emmitt Smith, who ran hard.

But Garrett couldn't keep the team moving. The Cowboys had the ball in Oakland territory on six of their first seven possessions. They came away with only a field goal.

"Obviously, it was a pretty rough day for us, offensively," Garrett said. "We made some errors. Certainly, the two turnovers hurt a great deal."

But let's not mince pronouns. Garrett himself made a horrible throw to Michael Irvin in the third quarter that turned a cinch, 7-yard touchdown into an end-zone interception.

The defender, rookie Charles Woodson, had been fooled. He was standing there, alone, when Garrett hurried and threw the pass right to him.

"My fault," the Cowboys quarterback said. "If I had thrown the ball inside more, Michael would have had a chance to make the play."

Garrett's other calamitous decision came in the final two minutes. Though the Cowboys only needed a field goal to send the game into overtime, Garrett, again impatient, misread the Raiders safety and overthrew a bomb in the direction of . . . Billy Davis?

"I thought the safety had settled in, and I tried to throw a deep post," Garrett said. "He did a good job of settling and getting back to make the play."

But Garrett saw wrong. In the Raiders' locker room, Turner said he had deep coverage all the way, and when he saw Garrett's shoulder dip, he knew Jason was throwing long.

Aikman, of course, has thrown an interception or two before. Aikman has also been 1-1 before, which is Garrett's record since Aikman broke his collarbone two weeks ago.

But Troy has the rings. Garrett has, for the most part, only Thanksgiving Day, 1994, the day he beat the Green Bay Packers and became forever the Cowboys' "Rudy."

The Raiders' lack of respect for Garrett was apparent in the way that they chose to attack the Cowboys' defense. Quarterback Jeff George threw only 20 passes and, eschewing the Al Davis tradition, seldom even looked long.

In other words, the Raiders' idea was to play it close to the vest, trusting that Garrett couldn't beat them.

Psst, Rudy. They were right.

Garrett played not only like an NFL backup quarterback, but a mediocre, seldom-used one. It would not be out of line, therefore, to criticize the decision, back in April, that made Garrett the Cowboys' No. 2 quarterback and not Wade Wilson. The veteran Wilson has won NFL playoff games and been to the Pro Bowl, but Gailey made the call and anointed Garrett as the backup.

Wilson, who ended up signing with Oakland and was in uniform Sunday, would have earned $500,000 this season as Aikman's stand-in. Garrett was a less-expensive choice with a base salary of $300,000.

You get what you pay for. Better hold that sequel.

(c) 1998, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

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