The Cowboys HOFer summed it up rather well.
The Super Bowl is happening on Sunday and obviously the Dallas Cowboys are not in. Welcome to life over the last quarter century and counting.
It feels like morale is a bit lower around the Cowboys after their latest season ended than it has been in the past. There was reason to truly and legitimately believe in the team this season, only to be let down down by the same old result, this time in the Wild Card Round.
The future offers no promises of success for the Cowboys and all we can do at this point is hope that doing the same thing again will yield a different result. They have a name for that if memory serves.
While we have all had it up to here with the Cowboys in some way, shape, or form, we are not alone. Plenty of franchise greats have taken their turn offering up what they think about another campaign ending shy of the NFC Championship Game (we don’t even talk about the Super Bowl at this point) and the latest of them is the NFL’s all-time leading rusher in Emmitt Smith.
Emmitt was a guest on San Antonio Sports Star on Friday leading up to the big game and summed up well where things currently stand with America’s Team.
“When I look at our Cowboys I’m looking for… who are we going to be? Are we going to stay the same? Or are we going to just take all of this talent and waste it over three or four or five year timeframe, assuming and expecting to do something great doing the same things over and over and over again.”
“It’s frustrating as hell. You see great talent being wasted! You see time passing!”
“As Joe Avezzano used to say, it catches up to you when it catches up to you. In other words if you don’t eliminate the little foxes in the vineyard they’re going to eat up all the doggone grapes. And the grapes will be gone, years will be gone, and you’re going to find yourself starting over again. And fans are just going to get more and more and more frustrated. With Jerry, with the team, and everything else.”
There is no doubt that the Cowboys do have talented players, and while they deserve their fair share of blame, it is ridiculous that many have come and gone already without the franchise getting over the hump. Emmitt seems fearful that the same thing is going to happen again with the team’s current nucleus and what can be said to calm those concerns? Over 25 years of history suggests that they will be realized.
Where the Cowboys seem to really fail is identifying what the “little foxes” that Smith refers to truly are. They believe it is one thing or another and yet while they tend to those there are other little foxes running around and squandering their collection of grapes.
Grapes are not forever. The Cowboys need to learn that. Quickly.