Getty Cowboys great Emmitt Smith pulled no punches on team owner Jerry Jones
Over the weekend, legendary running back Emmitt Smith raised some eyebrows by saying he’d like to see the Cowboys make an effort at “stealing” Lions coach Dan Campbell. But in his conversation with Mike Florio and Chris Simms of Pro Football Talk, Smith was not shy about saying how he felt about the current state of the Cowboys and the direction of the team in general under longtime owner Jerry Jones.
Buckle up. After a 12-5 season in which the Cowboys won the No. 2 seed and a home game to open the playoffs, the team got knocked around by the Packers, falling behind 27-0 in the first half before going on to lose, 48-32.
For Smith, all the talk of Jones and the Cowboys aiming for a championship is ringing hollow.
“You lose credibility,” Smith said of Jones. “And if you’re losing credibility, you’re losing respect. You lose respect, you have no honor. At the end of the day, I agree to some level. Things have to change. I thought the reason why I was so convinced that [McCarthy] was going to get fired because last year there was a whole lot of talk about ‘OK, this might be it. If he doesn’t perform this year, OK.’
“You’re gonna accept 12 wins and the playoff berth, but you’re gonna accept the way we got kicked out of the playoffs? I mean, dominated.”
Current State Is ‘Not Becoming of the Mystique’
The worst part of the misadventure from the Cowboys this season was the lack of urgency from the organization after the Packers loss. The team let coach Mike McCarthy skate by, going into the final year of his contract—a guy the players now know is a lame duck.
Smith, a Hall of Famer who spent 13 years with the Cowboys and 15 in the NFL, said he was disappointed by what he saw from the team on the field.
“It is not becoming of the Dallas Cowboys’ mystique, respect, the brand,” Smith said. “It is not the appropriate representation of the brand itself. Now, Jerry understands these kind of words. The brand, right? The Star. Everything has to be pristine, but this was not that.”
Indeed, there were signs throughout the year that the Cowboys were not quite up to their record. The fact that they struggled on the road, going 4-5 away from Dallas, was the major signal. There was also the nearly nonexistent Cowboys rookie class. And holes in the wide receiver group, on the defensive line, and at linebacker presented themselves, too, but the Cowboys never addressed them.
“That right there was so disappointing not only to me, but to many of our fans and including people that was like, ‘What is that?’ It wasn’t a good look,” Smith said.
Emmitt Smith on Current Cowboys: ‘These Motherbrothers …’
Finally, there is a feeling coming from Smith about a lack of pride within the current crop of Cowboys, and at the same time, the notion that the organization is selling itself on how good it has been in the past more than on what it has on the roster now.
“I’m tired of being sold on what the Cowboys could be,” Smith said. “I’m tired. I’ve had enough of it because I’m more about what the Cowboys really are. And who we really are and who we were. That’s where I’m at. That’s where everyone else is at. How do you allow this to happen?”
Smith pointed out that when he joined the Cowboys, there was a responsibility to win as a way to honor the winners that came before.
“We honored them. We respected them. We respected the history of the game. We love the game,” Smith said. “I respect the history of the game like no other. … I respect their play and I honor who they are because I’m honoring this position and I’m honoring the game.”
He’s not getting that from the current group, and dropped a safe-for-work tag to describe the current Dallas squad: “These motherbrothers …”