Troy Aikman, Jimmy Johnson puzzled by Dallas Cowboys but have hope for Mike McCarthy
The Dallas Cowboys officially turned 60 on Tuesday as it marked the day the NFL granted late owner Clint Murchison an expansion team.
It happened at the League’s annual meeting in Miami Beach, Fla., and Cowboys became the NFL’s 13th team on January 28, 1960.
While the franchise kicked off a year-long celebration for 2020 back at its headquarters in Frisco, two Hall of Famers, who helped build the organization’s rich and storied history, were at the site where it all began, in Miami for Super Bowl LIV.
Former coach Jimmy Johnson, a newly minted member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame who won two titles with the Cowboys in 1992 and 1993, and three-time Super Bowl champion quarterback Troy Aikman are broadcasting Super Bowl LIV Sunday between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs for Fox Sports.
They lamented current struggles of the Cowboys and the 24-year drought since their last Super Bowl title in 1996.
“It’s a head-scratcher,” Aikman said. “For an organization that says that no one wants to win more than they do, how do you not win? I think everyone’s a little perplexed by the fact that not only in 25 years have the Cowboys not made it to a Super Bowl they haven’t made it to a championship game. It’s not good. It’s not good enough for the fans. It’s not good enough for the organization.”
The Cowboys have just four playoff wins over the last 24 seasons.
Both Aikman and Johnson thought the 2019 Cowboys had the talent to be in Super Bowl LIV and performed below expectations with a 8-8 finish that ultimately resulted in former Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy replacing Jason Garrett as the head man in charge.
Johnson said something was amiss internally with the Cowboys.
“I don’t know why it didn’t go better,” Johnson said. “I watched them at times and they looked as good as anybody in the league. Then I see some adversity happen and they just went blase. I think sometimes you have to be able to grit your teeth and make it happen. You have to have that inner drive to do it and sometimes they didn’t have that inner drive.”
A similarly perplexed Aikman said talent was definitely not the problem in 2019. He believes a number of teams in the league would have swapped rosters with the Cowboys.
“I thought looking at them they were really talented,” Aikman said. “I talked to coaches around the league and, to a man, there are not many coaches who wouldn’t have traded their roster with the Cowboys. It was a crazy year.
“If they had played that season over again it would have been a dramatic different result.
It’s one one of those that is hard to figure out what exactly happened. But they had a really talented roster, yes. There were not many holes.”
Both Aikman and Johnson believe McCarthy will make a difference.
Of course, Aikman, who remains an ardent critic of how owner Jerry Jones the franchise, qualified his answer by saying Cowboys will succeed if McCarthy is allowed to run the football team as he did in Green Bay.
“I am a big fan of Mike,” Aikman said. “I loved him in Green Bay. I liked his style. I liked how his teams were prepared and his resume speaks for itself. And I say it often, if he is allowed to go and run this team the way he has in Green Bay he will have success. I don’t think they could have hired a better coach.”
Aikman said he recently talked to McCarthy and said the new coach has altered his plan to keep the all same terminology on offense that the Cowboys used under Garrett. He said they will change it up some.
Aikman was surprised to hear that McCarthy is turning play calling duties over to holdover offensive coordinator Kellen Moore. But he believes the man who led the Packers to a Super Bowl title in 2011 will have a heavy hand in the offense.
“I know how much Mike likes calling plays,” Aikman said. “We were covering him in Green Bay when he had given up play calling and when he took it back he said he would never give up play calling again. I think that it’s a real compliment to Kellen Moore. But there is no way he is not just simply handing it off to Kellen Moore and he will no longer have a role in that offense. He is going to be in it day in and day out. He will be active during the games and during the practices.”
