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The ’90s Cowboys won three Super Bowls with plenty of distractions.
How does a team do that?We have grown accustomed to dysfunction spelling defeat and the first sign of a distraction turning into a death sentence for the NFL locals.Daryl “Moose” Johnston played fullback on those last three Cowboys Super Bowl winners (’92-93, ’95), back when a “bad year” meant reaching the NFC championship game and losing it (’94).“There was never any smooth sailing,” DJ said. “But the thing that helped us with distractions was the leadership we had.”The L-word has all but vanished at Valley Ranch.Bill Parcells never embraced the notion since he handled all matters silver-and-blue. Now along comes Wade Phillips, hired because he wasn’t Bill Parcells, and the players celebrate the fact that they are “treated like men” (euphemism for “inmates running the prison”).And we’re still asking, “Who can be the leader(s) on this team?”Johnston, a Fox network game analyst, raised the question during the Cowboys’ inexplicable collapse at St. Louis last Sunday.“I’m a strong believer that adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals character,” Johnston said during the telecast. “[This team] is teetering right now ... it’s that critical and it’s slipping that quickly.”Johnston’s on-field analyst partner, Tony Siragusa, chimed in that Tony Romo should step up as team leader.Johnston — unsure if the L-word is a part of Romo’s core makeup — suggested Jason Witten.Either way, simply put, a team leader must: 1.) police the locker room, 2.) challenge the players and 3.) command respect for doing both tasks.“Because it becomes mentally draining on a team to answer questions [i.e., Pacman Jones, Tony Romo, Terrell Owens] and not be able to focus on the game plan,” Johnston explained during the telecast. “Instead, you’re talking about this other nonsense.”DJ gets to stay home this Sunday as part of the Fox crew at Texas Stadium for Cowboys-Buccaneers.
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