Five Signature Moments from Dallas Cowboys History

New series preview! Relive the most unforgettable -- good and bad -- moments from Cowboys history!

New series? New series! Let’s get right to it, with an explanation at the bottom.

5. Tony Dorsett 99-yard touchdown

Date: January 3rd, 1983

The Cowboys are better than you.

That’s the message that was drummed into NFC teams – and their fans – from the early 1970s through the mid-1990s. The Cowboys quarterback was more heroic than yours. Their lines were bigger and stronger than yours. Their coaches were smarter than yours. Their tactics more advanced than yours. Their cheerleaders were sexier than yours. And their playmakers, like Tony Dorsett, were faster and more dynamic than yours.

Even if you beat those Golden Age Cowboys, they found ways to upstage you or exact some terrible price from you. Such was the case for the Vikings in the 1982 season finale. They beat the Cowboys 31-27 on Monday night. But Dorsett provided the historic highlight with a play that set a record which can only be tied (by Derrick Henry in 2018), never broken.

Tony Dorsett, who was not supposed to carry the ball on the play, went 99 yards for a touchdown Monday night to set a National Football League record for the longest run from scrimmage, even though he had only nine Dallas Cowboy teammates on the field with him.

The missing man was Ron Springs, the fullback, who was to have been the ballcarrier on the play, which started inches from the Dallas goal line.

In fact, said Al Lavan, the Cowboys' offensive backfield coach, it was a ''straight-hitting play where you're hoping to gain two or three yards and then do it again and punt.''

Springs had left the Metrodome field, where the Minnesota Vikings defeated Dallas, 31-27, in the mistaken belief that the Cowboys were going to use their Jayhawk formation for the run inside right tackle. In the Jayhawk, named for Jay Saldi, who was the original second tight end in the formation, and Hawk Dorsett, Dallas lines up with two wide receivers, two tight ends and a lone running back - Dorsett.

The first-down play, however, was to have been run from a Double X, with two tight ends, only one wide receiver and both Dorsett and Springs lined up in an I-formation in the backfield. From the Double X, the fullback, Springs, carries the ball.

No matter. When Danny White, the quarterback, turned around to hand off the ball, there was Dorsett to carry it. ''And though Ron Springs has some pretty good moves himself,'' said Lavan, ''there were a couple of things on that play that only Tony could do.''

''I just saw a lot of green,'' said Dorsett. — Excerpted from Michael Katz, New York Times, January 15, 1983

Dorsett helped the Cowboys win Super Bowl XII as a rookie in 1977, then spent a long career as one of the superstars of a franchise in slow, incremental decline. Danny White had replaced Roger Staubach by the 1982 season, and Tom Landry would soon prove unable to keep pace in an era of player strikes and rival leagues. Yet Dorsett, among others, kept the Cowboys in the Super Bowl picture for years, helping them reach the NFC Championship a few weeks after that loss to the Vikings.

Eagles fans of the early 1980s era saw Dick Vermeil’s team rise and fall during the blip in Cowboys geological time when Landry replaced Staubach with a punter while barely missing a step. Seeing Dorsett finish with 1,000 yards in a nine-game season made us feel like serfs in the Cowboys’ kingdom. I remember a playground exchange with our neighborhood Cowboys fan one January afternoon.

PRETEEN COWBOYS FAN: Did you see Dorsett run for 99 yards last night?

PRETEEN ME: So what? The Cowboys lost.

PRETEEN COWBOYS FAN: So what? We’re going to the playoffs and the Eagles suck.

Vikings fans, as some of the other moments on this list reveal, must have felt even more helpless.

4. The Herschel Walker Trade

Date: October 12th, 1989

The Minnesota Vikings' release of running back Herschel Walker last week slammed shut the book on arguably the most one-sided trade in modern National Football League history. The trade with the Dallas Cowboys left the Vikings looking like dupes of the decade and left their fans to ponder what the team could have been thinking when it made the deal.

The Cowboys received five players, seven conditional draft picks tied to the status of those players, and a 1992 first-round pick in exchange for Walker and two third-round picks. Now that the effect of the conditional picks can be seen, the net result of the trade reads like the fine print in a bad lease agreement.

It was clear at the time of the Oct. 12, 1989 trade -- and it has been reinforced in recent conversations with the principals -- that everyone was thinking, "Gee, what a good deal" for both sides.

Dallas got the picks it needed to rebuild. Minnesota got the player it thought would catapult it into the Super Bowl. And Walker got a chance to play for a Super Bowl contender. – Timothy W. Smith, New York Times, June 7, 1992

No one in 1989 thought that running backs were “fungible” or that they “don’t matter.” That’s because running backs were not fungible and mattered a great deal. NFL football was played using simpler strategies by men who were a step slower and several points lighter back then. The best running backs were often the best athletes on the field. And no one doubted that Walker was one of the greatest players in professional football, having dominated the USFL before rushing for 1,514 yards for the down-and-out 1988 Cowboys.

Jerry Jones had only recently purchased the Cowboys. He fired Tom Landry, whose regime had not kept up with changing times. Jerrah hired his old college pal Jimmy Johnson, fresh off some national championships for the University of Miami, to rebuild what was suddenly a talent-destitute team.

"In my mind and in Jimmy's mind we knew that we'd have to find ways to improve the team and we knew that more draft picks would get us where we wanted to be," Jones said, per the article quoted above. The trade was Johnson’s idea, but it was the entrepreneurial Jerrah who sparked a midseason bidding war among multiple teams. The Vikings, perennial playoff also-rans at the time who believed they were one player away from the Super Bowl, got swept up in the excitement.

The picks the Cowboys acquired in the Walker trade became, after some finagling, Emmitt Smith, Russell Maryland, Kevin Smith and Darren Woodson, among others. Johnson would use the Cowboys’ own picks on important players like Alvin Harper, Leon Lett and Erik Williams; he had already drafted Troy Aikman, Daryl Johnson, Mark Stepnoski and many more.

The Walker trade was an undeniable turning point in Cowboys history, a personnel masterstroke and all-time swindle that launched the last great era in the franchise’s history. The Cowboys suddenly ricocheted back to the top of the standings at a time when the Eagles and Giants, among other teams (including the Vikings), were starting to shovel dirt on them.

The Walker trade also marked a turning point in the history of NFL roster-building tactics, and not just because running backs were about to become far less relevant.

Teams of the 1970s traded away first-round picks for veterans all the time; George Allen reached the Pro Football Hall of Fame by doing so. The 1980s brought work stoppages and the USFL, both of which made the draft even less appealing: why draft a college kid who might choose the Houston Gamblers or hold out through November when you can trade for a veteran instead? The Vikings were using an out-of-date playbook when they traded for Walker. It was Johnson – and Jerrah – who saw that the draft was the best way to build a roster in the dawning era of increased information technology and unparalleled stability.

And what a roster they built.

3. Tony Romo fumbles the snap

Date: January 6th, 2007

“Signature Moments” are not “Greatest Moments.” They are moments that mark turning points or typify an era.

The Cowboys have been the NFL’s Silver Age supervillains for decades: once impressive and scary, they now occupy more of an ironic, nostalgic thread in the league’s narrative tapestry. This was the moment when they turned from Magneto into the Mole Man.

Getting over such a loss is difficult. Almost impossible, even.

When the Cowboys walked off the field that Saturday night in Seattle, Stephen Jones, his face sunken after the loss, jumped into an SUV parked against the wall in the bowels of Qwest Field. He didn’t want to see anyone. Maybe he wanted to scream. Cry. Vent. He needed to get away.

Inside the quiet locker room, Romo sat at his stall next to [Aaron] Glenn. Romo had just finished crying, and his solemn look told everything. He was coming to grips with what happened and just kept shaking his head. Glenn was talking to him, encouraging Romo about positive plays in the game. Jerry Jones and Owens approached him, offering support.

Glenn tapped Romo on the knee and said in a hushed tone, “It’s okay. We’ll be alright.”

Things would not be alright for Romo. Not that night, at least.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever felt this low,” Romo said after the game. — Calvin Watkins, The Athletic, January 2019

Romo was a come-from-nowhere sensation in 2006; the league’s merchandising apparatus was already chugging at full steam to frame him as The Next Great Cowboy. Bill Parcells, meanwhile, gave the Cowboys a gravitas and professionalism they lacked after Jerry Jones fired Jimmy Johnson and promoted himself to El Supremo. The Cowboys were suddenly scary and sexy again when they arrived in the 2006 playoffs; it was easy to imagine another run of excellence fueled by Romo, Parcells, Terrell Owens, Jason Witten, Aaron Glenn, DeMarcus Ware and others.

Then came that fumbled hold for a game-tying extra point: an all-time blooper for a new age when all-time bloopers would live forever thanks to the nascent blogosphere and prenatal phenomenon of social media.

Parcells retired from coaching two weeks after that playoff loss, frustrated and exhausted by Jerrah and T.O. Parcells would later also implicate Romo in his departure: “All you got to do is kick a field goal, the most elementary of plays, and then you just don’t do it,” he said in 2018. “And so I don’t want to go through that process again. Too much blood.” It was Parcells, of course, who kept Romo as his holder instead of switching to disgruntled backup Drew Bledsoe or punter Mat McBriar. Whatever.

Instead of becoming the Next Great Cowboy, Romo became the Goodtime Cowboy Casanova, and the Cowboys became America’s Meme. The punchline era of Cowboys history has now lasted almost as long as their era of dominance. And it all started at a moment when the mythmaking had gotten just a little too far ahead of the reality.

2. Larry Brown’s Super Bowl Interceptions

Date: January 28th, 1996

Early 1990s Cowboys football was a blur of Troy Aikman-to-Michael Irvin bombs and thumping Emmitt Smith touchdowns. The Wowboys pulverized opponents in a way which defied “Signature Moments.” It’s hard to generate memorable clutch plays when leading 28-10 at halftime of the Super Bowl. The Cowboys seemed to lead every game 28-10 in those days. There’s no need to be clutch when you are simply overwhelming.

What’s sometimes forgotten about those teams is that any opponent that managed to somehow neutralize the “Triplets” also had Alvin Harper, Jay Novacek, Moose Johnston and a star-studded line to worry about on offense, plus a diverse cast of troublemakers on defense. By 1995, Deion Sanders headlined that defensive cast, which also featured Charles Haley, Leon Lett, Darrin Woodson and Brown, who had already earned two Super Bowl rings as a starter and intercepted six regular-season passes as opponents built their gameplans around never throwing to Sanders’ side of the field.

Despite their galactic starpower, the Cowboys weren’t quite as dominant in 1995 as they were in 1992 or 1993, largely because Jimmy Johnson and his staff had been replaced by the laconic, deferential Barry Switzer. The Cowboys looked vulnerable late in the season and needed some late-game Triplet heroics to get past Brett Favre’s Packers in the NFC Championship Game. Then, for the first time, they found themselves in a real fight in the Super Bowl.

The Cowboys scored on their first three possessions and took a 13-0 lead six minutes before halftime. The Steelers survived by gutting out a 13-play, 54-yard drive that ended with quarterback Neil O'Donnell throwing a six-yard touchdown pass to wideout Yancey Thigpen 13 seconds before the intermission.

A game was on, and had it not been for Brown's two interceptions—on O'Donnell passes that seemed as though they were intended for the Dallas cornerback—it might well have been the Steelers heading off into the night in search of a victory party. Both interceptions set up Cowboys touchdowns, the latter a four-yard run by tailback Emmitt Smith that clinched the game with 3:43 to go.

"All Brown did was stand out there. No MVP award should have been given," Steelers running back Erric Pegram said. "It's the first MVP award where the guy didn't earn the thing."

In another sense, though, Brown deserved his moment. In August his son Kristopher was born three months prematurely, and he died in November. Cornerback Deion Sanders's arrival as a free agent in September meant that Brown had to play most of the season under the pressure created by the opposing quarterback's tendency to throw away from Sanders. Two days before the game Brown predicted he would get two interceptions because he knew the Steelers would come at him.

"This is a classic ending to the season," safety Brock Marion said. "With the trauma Larry endured this year, and then to be the best player in the best and biggest game, what a good story." – Mike Silver, Sports Illustrated, February 1996.

Brown is often remembered as one of the worst free agent signings in history because a fading Al Davis overreacted to his Super Bowl heroics with a five-year $12.5-million (gasp!) contract. But Brown was a championship-caliber starter for five years in Dallas, and his performance in Super Bowl XXX brought down the curtain on a 25-year era when the Cowboys were the smartest, best-run organization in the NFL.

The Triplets carried on for years after rank-and-file Wowboys like Brown moved on, but the Cowboys slowly crumbled. Aikman, Sanders and the others made the team great. But it was the Johnson-assembled deep roster of rank-and-file contributors like Brown that made them unstoppable and historic.

1. The First Hail Mary

Date: December 28th, 1975

The first Hail Mary was not a Hail Mary as we now define it. It was a bomb from Roger Staubach to Drew Pearson, with Staubach pump-faking to Golden Richards running a post to freeze the safety, not an “everyone meet in the end zone for a tip-drill” play. There were 32 seconds left, not three. It was second down, not fourth.

Yet Staubach’s game-winning touchdown pass to Pearson against the Vikings in the 1975 playoffs, coming in an era where last-second heroics of this sort were so rare as to feel nigh-impossible, not only added to the NFL’s lexicon and tactical arsenal, but to the Cowboys’ mystique.

There is something to be said for a man who believes in the miraculous. Staubach is such a fellow. In a playoff game three years ago he had thrown two touchdown passes in the last minute and a half to beat the San Francisco 49ers 30-28. Heck, he only had to throw one now.

Tom Landry gave Staubach credit for calling the play. "I was just standing on the sideline feeling very disappointed that we had played so well and were going to lose," the coach said later. "I knew our only chance was to throw one long and hope for a miracle."

In the huddle Staubach said only a couple of words again: "Streak route." Which is what Drew Pearson wanted to hear.

Pearson began the streak down the sideline to his right as Staubach drifted back to set up from the shotgun formation. Nate Wright and Pearson were in a footrace now as the ball went into the air. Pearson looked to be winning the race for a second, but the ball was slightly underthrown and was going to reach its mooring somewhere around the Minnesota five-yard line. Pearson noticed this, but Wright did not. As Pearson pulled up, Wright went in front of him, and only Pearson and Wright will ever know whether there was any pushing off. Wright either slipped, tripped or was pushed to the grass just as Pearson turned and got his hands on the ball at his belt. Pearson felt the ball slip down, wedged it "between my elbow and my hip," and then stepped into the end zone to the accompaniment of the most enormous swell of silence in the history of gatherings of 46,425 wearers of the purple.

No one knew for a matter of seconds that it actually was a touchdown, not even the Cowboys. Everybody saw something orange or red flutter to the ground and thought it was an official's flag—obviously an interference call against either Pearson or Wright.

Even Pearson saw it. "When I looked again, it was a real orange," he said. And what it mostly was, of course, was a real touchdown. – Dan Jenkins, Sports Illustrated, January, 1976

(Decades later, Pearson would admit to some “non-deliberate” contact. “What I’m saying is there’s contact, OK?” he told Pro Football Talk. “We’re actually playing football out there; it wasn’t tennis or golf.”)

The Cowboys would end up losing Super Bowl X to the Steelers. It’s arguable that the Hail Mary contributed little to their “America’s Team” status.

It’s also arguable that Pearson’s touchdown meant everything to the Cowboys’ legacy. It was controversial. It was miraculous. It smacked of both divine intervention and infernal machinations. It was a moment of dazzling evanescence in an era defined by blood, mud and slush.

The Cowboys were a marquee franchise before the first Hail Mary. Afterward, they were the team that rode into town, broke your heart, stole your girl, then rode off into the sunset with a song and a smile. They became, depending on your perspective, roguish outlaws setting the stage for a new American era or the preening villains that East Coast/Midwest palookas loved to hate.

And they did it with a prayer on their quarterback’s lips.

Pedants will note that the Pearson touchdown was not the first game-winning bomb (even by Staubach) to be called a Hail Mary. Thanks, pedants!

About the Five Signature Moments Series

Welcome to the new historical series here at Too Deep Zone! This is the soft launch. Look for more installments as summer heats up.

Five Signature Moments was Matt Lombardo’s idea. Other series ideas I toyed with sound better in theory than in execution. “Top 5 Running Backs” (Receivers, whatever) had the potential to be a research slog, as purple prose from the past is not always easy to find for such players. “Top 5 Coaches” ran the risk of me trying to contextualize 15-year careers in 800 words on sunny July mornings. I may visit such series in the future, but the All-Time Top 5 QB series grew a little cumbersome as it progressed, and I’m not ready to plow quite so deeply into the archives just weeks after finishing it.

Five Signature Moments installments will be shorter than most of the All-Time Top 5 QB segments. But I am opting for the all-killer/no-filler approach. You’ll get some video clips, some quotes from sportswriting legends and my thoughts, with less parsing of day-by-day controversies or injury reports from 1991. There will still be plenty to discuss and debate in the comments. But ideally, these will be quicker to produce, meaning I will be able to get a bunch of them out in late June and July, when you do not want to read anyone’s thoughts on whether Brock Purdy is better than Justin Herbert.

As noted in the Tony Romo lowlight, “Signature Moments” are not “Greatest Moments,” though of course they share a large subset. The goal is to encapsulate a team’s highs, lows and eras in a few pictures and a few thousand words. I’ll be focusing on signature plays, trades and quotes, not the “moment” when a team wins the Super Bowl. I’ll be painting with a broad brush, but also striving to be as intimate as possible. Easy peasy!

So what makes something one team’s Signature Moment but not another? It comes down to historical resonance. Leon Lett will appear in some other team’s Signature Moments, because that’s where his most memorable plays are most historically resonant. The Walker trade was seismic enough to be both a Vikings and Cowboys moment, but we should have other fish to fry once we reach the Vikings. Upcoming segments should help sort out what goes where, especially when we discuss the Giants and Washington lists.

We’ll be starting in the NFC East, so the Giants and Eagles will be up in a week or two. I hope you enjoy the series! And remember: new subscribers get six months of access to Lombardo’s Between the Hashmarks newsletter AND a portion of the proceeds donated to The Trevor Project all through June!

I also plan to transition from public domain images like this one to more goofy photoshops as the series unfolds.