Boys Will Be Boys

by Jeff Pearlman

  Meanwhile, Emmitt Smith—beloved by Dallas fans in a way Walker never was—was held to 67 yards on 19 carries. That, along with Aikman’s 3 interceptions, was more than enough charity for a fierce Philadelphia defense. The game was never close.

  “All this misery for Dallas,” wrote Randy Galloway in the Morning News, “and even Herschel gets to rub it in.”

  In the wake of the Eagles loss, Johnson looked over his men and insisted this was “a test.”

  “We’ll see who you are,” he said, “champions or pretenders.”

  In a 27–0 rout of Seattle the following Sunday, the Cowboys answered, blitzing and battering Seahawks quarterback Dan McGwire until he could be blitzed and battered no more. The younger brother of Oakland A’s slugger Mark McGwire, Dan was a 6-foot-8, 243-pound oak tree, prime for chopping. The Cowboys hit him high, low, helmet-to-helmet, helmet-to-back. They told him that he sucked, that he was a punk, that he was theirs for the taking—and his mama, too.

  The Cowboys defense sacked McGwire four times, knocked him out in the third quarter, then sacked backup Stan Gelbaugh three more times. Seattle lost yardage on five of its first fourteen offensive possessions and averaged 1.3 yards per snap, gaining 62 total yards and only 8 on its final thirty-one plays. Tony Tolbert and Jim Jeffcoat each had two sacks and safety Ray Horton returned an interception 15 yards for a touchdown. “This,” said Jeffcoat, “was the best defense I’ve ever seen us play.”

  On a wall in Wannstedt’s office hung a chart featuring the record of the 1976 Pittsburgh Steelers defense. With quarterback Terry Bradshaw battling neck and wrist injuries, the unit carried the franchise to a 10–4 record, pitching five shutouts, holding one team to 6 points, and limiting two other teams to single field goals. “Eight games without allowing a touchdown,” Wannstedt raved. “Now that’s a dominating defense.”

  The chart was not mere wall fodder, but a message to his troops of what they could accomplish. “And it began,” Wannstedt says, “with the defensive line.” On most teams, there was a clear order: Starters started, backups came in occasionally to provide a breather. Under Wannstedt, however, the Cowboys shuttled linemen as if they were commuters on a train platform. The starters were Haley at right end, Casillas and Russell Maryland at the tackles, and Tolbert at left end. But there was almost no drop-off when the reserves—Chad Hennings, Jimmie Jones, Leon Lett, and Jeffcoat—entered. “Those were the hardest-working guys I’ve ever been around,” says Hennings. “We challenged each other to be great.”

  Although Haley was the star and Tolbert and Lett on the rise standouts, the heart of the line was Jeffcoat, who at age thirty-one possessed maturity most teammates lacked. When the Cowboys initially signed Haley, Johnson called Jeffcoat into his office. “We got Charles Haley, and eventually he’s going to be the starter,” Johnson explained. “You’ve got two ways you can look at this: You can become more valuable to us because of the things you can do in the pass rush, or we can cut you.”

  Silence.

  Had Jeffcoat asked for his release, at least half the teams in the league would have jumped at the opportunity to add a proven quarterback crusher. In the nine seasons since he was drafted out of Arizona State, Jeffcoat had compiled 586 tackles and 70 sacks. “He knew the NFL game, he knew all the techniques,” says Maryland. “Jim was a true professional.” So here he was, sitting on Johnson’s couch, staring down an uncertain future.

  “The more I thought about it, the more excited I became,” says Jeffcoat, who would lead the ’92 Cowboys with 101/2 sacks. “Charles was a great player who needed to start, and I was comfortable being a sixth man. If anything, it would extend my career.”

  With a loaded defense playing its best football in years, the Cowboys were suddenly unstoppable. They followed the Seattle thrashing by beating the Chiefs and Raiders (limiting the teams to a combined 23 points), and on November 1 the Eagles came to town for the highly anticipated rematch. This time Dallas’s defense relentlessly hounded quarterback Randall Cunningham, holding him to a trio of completions through the end of the first half. With 163 yards on 30 carries, Emmitt Smith became the first runner since 1989 to exceed 100 yards against the Philadelphia defense. Dallas won, 20–10.

  Although his team suffered a humiliating 27–23 home setback to the lowly Rams on November 15, Johnson could not have asked for more. The Cowboys traveled to Washington, for a December 13 meeting with the Redskins, sporting an 11–2 mark. They had the league’s hottest defense, its top running back (Smith was first in the NFL with 1,309 yards), its elite possession receiver (Irvin had 62 catches for 1,156 yards), and—after years of struggling—its best young quarterback.

  Far removed from his days of fighting with Steve Walsh for work and with Johnson for respect, Aikman was poised, mature, and—on the streets of Dallas—a burgeoning legend. So, for that matter, were his teammates. “We could do no wrong,” says Kenny Gant. “We were on top of the world, and it was a beautiful thing. We were on a roll, and no one was gonna stop us.”

  No one—with the possible exception of their head coach.

  Chapter 11

  TURBULENCE

  If you tell your kid, “If you don’t stop messing around, I’ll spank you,” and then you don’t spank him, he’ll never stop screwing up. When Jimmy Johnson threatened to spank, you damn well better believe he was gripping a paddle.

  —Lin Elliott, Cowboys kicker

  WHEN ROBERT JONES was three months old, his father pointed a shotgun at his mother’s stomach and pulled the trigger.

  As she fell backward onto a mattress in the family’s Blackstone, Virginia, home, Pearl Jones—blood spewing from her abdomen—landed atop her youngest child and died. She was thirty-six years old.

  In hindsight, the murder may well have been inevitable. Bennie Jones was a man with violence running through his veins. He beat Pearl frequently, never held a steady job, and drank regularly. Pearl had recently moved out to live with a neighbor, further fanning her husband’s rage. Though Robert does not remember his mother’s body landing on top of him, rarely has such a minute moment in time—the hundredth of a second it took for the bullet to launch and land—made such a dramatic impact on a child; on a family; on a way of being.

  “I have one picture of my mom,” says Jones. “One picture.”

  Sitting in a Cheesecake Factory near his home in Austin, Texas, Jones is a bundle of emotions. As he speaks, tears well in his eyes. Convicted of second-degree murder, Bennie was sentenced to twenty years in prison. (Years later Robert visited his father and asked why he committed the crime. Bennie Jones replied coldly, “Because she wouldn’t listen.”) With nowhere to go, Robert and his eight siblings were scattered throughout the state of Virginia. Six of Robert’s seven brothers have served jail time. One died of a cocaine overdose. Another hung himself. Another was sentenced to life in prison for murder—he bashed a man’s skull with a pipe wrench and left the body on the railroad tracks.

  Robert was taken in by his aunt Betty and uncle Ernest, and when he turned seven his uncle was sent to jail for eight years. Though Betty Watson raised her nephew to the best of her abilities, she was a far cry from Aunt Bee. Betty partied deep into the morning hours and left Robert home alone. Sometimes he’d wake up to an empty house, a seven-year-old boy scared to death. “She had food on the table for me, but that was about it,” says Robert. “I can’t blame her, though. This is what she knew.”

  With nowhere to turn, Robert found a family in the parking lots and alleys of Blackstone. “The streets became my daddy,” he says. “To fit in, you start giving in to what society says you should do.” Located in the middle of Nowhere, Virginia, the Blackstone of Robert Jones’s youth featured three traffic lights, winding dirt roads, and a hopelessness that permeated like a cancer. There was a bleak sense of we-have-no-future-so-don’t-kid-yourself among the blacks of his environs. “I called it the ‘Country Ghetto,’” he says. “No hope allowed.” With his mother dead, his father and uncle in prison, and his sib
lings…wherever, Robert turned to booze and marijuana. He used both with striking nonchalance, as a way to fit in and to numb the pain of a joyless existence.

  At age twelve, Robert was approached by one of his brothers, Bennie, Jr., and asked to participate in the armed robbery of a liquor store. (He wisely declined.) He attended school because his aunt insisted, but did so with little vigor. He skipped classes, blew off homework assignments, ignored his teachers.

  “There was one reason I kept at it,” he says. “Football.”

  In an ocean of darkness, the sport was Jones’s lighthouse. From the time he enrolled at Nottoway High School as a freshman, Jones was faster, stronger, bigger—angrier than the others. He played with the intensity of a boy coated in scars; as if, when bulldozing opposing ball carriers, he was, in fact, bulldozing his father. Before he ever envisioned football as a gateway to a better life, Jones loved Saturdays for the temporary escapism. On the field, he wasn’t Robert Jones, victim. He was Robert Jones, superstar.

  In Billy Boswell, one of Nottoway High’s football coaches, Jones was embraced by an adult who actually believed in him. Boswell encouraged Jones to pay attention in classes; to make something of himself. Because he lacked the grades to attend college, upon graduating from Nottoway Jones (with an emphatic push from Boswell) enrolled in Fork Union Military Academy, a boarding school with a track record of turning kids around. Boasting a report card of Bs and Cs, Jones graduated from Fork Union and was recruited by nearly every big-time Division I school in the country. Wanting to stay close to home, he chose East Carolina University.

  In his four years as an undergrad Jones excelled as both student and football player, landing on the honor roll as a criminal justice major and earning all-America status as linebacker. Perhaps the most profound role college played in Jones’s life was exposing him to friends and teammates who grew up with loving nuclear and extended families. With harrowing emptiness, Jones watched the parents of others visit campus and embrace their children with hugs and kisses.

  “My number one goal in life was to have a big family of my own,” he says. “I wanted to sit down for breakfast with a wife and lots of kids and talk about what we were going to do that day. I wanted to have a huge Christmas tree with all the gifts underneath, and on Christmas morning we’d all gather around and be together. Imagine yourself as a kid, never being able to sit down and jump in your dad’s lap or just being secure in the knowledge that you had a dad at home. That was me.”

  Jones pauses, takes a long, prideful breath. He now has a wife of his own. Six children, too. But he is lost in the past. “Most people want to play in the NFL because of the fame or the money or whatever,” he says. “I saw it as a way to have a family.”

  Beginning with his arrival in Dallas as a 1992 first-round draft pick, Jones struggled to fit in. On the field, he was a 6-foot, 2-inch, 236-pound physical specimen who lacked spark. He was fast, quick, strong—but a wee bit off. Johnson named him the Cowboys’ starting middle linebacker early in camp, then stewed week to week as Jones played…well. Not amazing and not terrible—just…well. “I loved the guy, and his intangibles were very good,” says Dave Wannstedt, the defensive coordinator. “But in all honesty, he was not ready to do what we needed him to do.”

  Though Wannstedt’s assessment rings true, it fails to explain the entire story. By the time the Cowboys opened the ’92 season, Jones had married Maneesha Richardson, his college sweetheart, and was committed to staying faithful. Yet here he was, in an environment littered with temptation. With rare exception, the Cowboy who didn’t hit the strip club circuit wasn’t an accepted member of the team. The same goes for the Cowboy who didn’t drink heavily and stay out late; the Cowboy who didn’t slink toward the big-breasted hottie in the tight leather pants and strapless top; the Cowboy who didn’t smoke a joint every now and then (or, in many cases, just every now). “We were like movie stars,” said Erik Williams, the offensive tackle. “We were like rock stars. If it was a day game and we would get done around six or seven, we would go to a bar. I would call the females that I dated. Most of them were strip club women, because that’s what I did all the time. It was like a fish market. I’d view the women and pick one.” If you were going to be a Dallas Cowboy—a real Dallas Cowboy—you needed to live The Life. That meant partying hard, partying late, and, if you had the misfortune of being married, leaving your wife at home and screwing the hell out of whoever caught your eye. It meant loading up on $100 bills, heading straight for the Men’s Club of Dallas, and purchasing the longest, wettest, nastiest lap dance money could buy. It meant turning in your scruples at the door. “If you have a weak constitution, Dallas isn’t for you,” says Ray Horton, the longtime safety. “I mean, we were holding position meetings at strip clubs. Position meetings!”

  Robert Jones was conflicted. He didn’t want to go to strip clubs; certainly didn’t want to cheat on his wife. But the women were everywhere, as hot and as loose as he’d ever seen. “It was hard,” he says. “Real hard. Because all these guys are acting a certain way, and you’re trying to fit in but also maintain your sense of what’s right.” Early in the season, the rookies were required to treat veteran Cowboys to a night on the town. The team would feast on a steak dinner, followed by dessert at a strip club. The Cowboys rented a private room and had dozens of dancers thrusting and feeling and slinking in a buffet of raunchiness. The liquor was flowing, the blunts burning. “I went along and kept it from my wife,” Jones says. “Eventually she found out and we had a big argument. It’s sad, but I was only trying to be accepted.”

  Such was the difficulty Jones faced as a Cowboy, and it affected him profoundly. His anxiety was akin to that of a gay man trying to keep his homosexuality a secret. Jones did not want his teammates knowing he was—what?—honest? Decent? A loving husband? He said nothing of his commitment to his wife, let alone his family’s murderous past. Instead he talked trash and cracked stupid jokes about women and lived Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage” to the hilt. Only his stage was the Cowboy locker room, and he starred as the typical chauvinistic athlete.

  The result was a rigid man who fell far below the expectations he had been burdened with by Johnson. After drafting Jones, Bob Slowik, an assistant defensive coach with the team, raved, “He’ll give Dallas a dimension of pursuit from sideline to sideline that probably hasn’t been there in a long time.” Johnson felt the same way, then watched in dismay. To the head coach, Jones symbolized his least-favorite breed: the gifted athlete who lacked a motor. He had no idea that Jones was confused…conflicted…embarrassed. It was hard enough playing linebacker in the NFL without having a mind clouded by doubt. Jones was lost, and it showed.

  As a result, Johnson made Jones’s life miserable. He mocked him in practices, chewed him out during games, tried to coerce the kid into becoming the player he wasn’t.

  Everything came to a head on the afternoon of December 13, 1992, when the Cowboys fell apart against the Redskins at RFK Stadium. Leading up to the game, a palpable bitterness consumed both teams. Though hailed as the defending Super Bowl champions, the 8–5 Redskins were three games behind the 11–2 Cowboys, and fading fast. They were a forgotten franchise, lost in the revival of America’s Team. With a win, the Cowboys would clinch their first NFC East title in seven years.

  “I’m going after the arm,” Michael Irvin responded when asked how he would treat the cast-encased broken right forearm of Washington cornerback Darrell Green. “I’m not joking. I’m going after his arm. I don’t think the arm is healed yet. I don’t think the guy’s healthy and I’m going after that arm on every running play. I’m not making threats. Those are facts.”

  Green initially refused to believe Irvin would utter such a classless statement. The words crossed a line of decency, and served as powerful motivators to the already agitated Redskins. First we’re disrespected by the media…and now you threaten our best player?

  After controlling the first three quarters of the game, the C
owboys unraveled in a defeat that Jim Jeffcoat called “the weirdest.” The drama began early in the fourth quarter, with Dallas leading 17–10 and facing a third-and-goal from the Washington 2-yard line. Aikman took the snap, dropped back, rolled to his left, and locked eyes with receiver Kelvin Martin, who was slashing through the end zone. Though only in his fourth season, Aikman was already one of the league’s best at looking off the defense: darting his eyes left and right to keep the intended target a mystery. This time, he and Martin stared at one another like Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal in Love Story, passionately gazing into each other’s eyes…lovingly…longingly…

  WHOOSH!

  In came Redskins linebacker Andre Collins, who intercepted the ball and ran 59 yards to the Dallas 42. “That,” said Richie Petitbon, the Washington defensive coordinator, “was the biggest play of the game.”

  Though the Redskins managed only a field goal, the Cowboys officially handed the night away with 3:14 left in the fourth quarter. That’s when Aikman, preparing to throw on second-and-7 from the Dallas 5-yard line, was twisted to the ground by defensive lineman Jason Buck. As Aikman began his release, the ball popped loose and rolled backward. Attempting to make something of nothing, Emmitt Smith snatched the pigskin and inexplicably tossed it toward Redskins safety Danny Copeland, who grabbed the ball in the end zone. Touchdown, Washington.