Cowboys’ New Era Starts Off Slow

When Tex Schramm received a phone call from Don Shula in the early morning last Feb. 24, he knew a run of football like none other was about to end. His team, America’s Team to many, soon would belong to someone else.

Schramm, Tom Landry and Gil Brandt never owned the Dallas Cowboys. All they did was nurture them, from expansion birth in 1960, into as consistently fine a team as anything in sport.

Under Schramm, the investment of the original owner, Clint Murchison Jr., grew from $550,000 to $83 million. Under Schramm, the investment of the second owner, Bum Bright, grew in five years from $83 million to $140 million.

Schramm surely sensed from his conversation with Shula that the third owner, Jerry Jones, would be running the shop himself. The call was to inform Schramm that Jimmy Johnson was making hush-hush inquiries about hiring Shula’s son David as an assistant.

So the deal was done after all. Without Schramm’s knowledge, Jones had bought the Cowboys and hired his own man, Johnson, as coach. A day later, Landry officially was gone. Then Schramm. Finally, after he’d helped with the draft, Brandt was fired.

Jones admitted to a huge public-relations fumble in not telling Landry his fate until everybody else knew it. (Schramm actually broke the news, calling Landry off the golf course. True to character, Landry continued the round. Whether his score went up or down was not reported.)

“I guess,” Jones said, “I’ll always be thought of as the Darth Vader in this situation.”

Mostly in such football changes of command, matters quickly fade, if not totally pass away. New management assumes control. Locks are changed, if necessary, and the old guard slinks into oblivion.

Not with the Cowboys. Not with Schramm, who has been such a forceful--and public--figure in the National Football League for more than four decades. Not with Landry, who in the mid-’50s devised a defense (the 4-3) still popular and who eventually may be regarded as the league’s premier coach of all time.

Such was the swift and scathing reaction to Jones and Johnson that a book (“The Landry Legend: Grace Under Pressure”) reveals the relevant details of their takeover.

To opponents, the on-the-field read so far this season seems pleasant enough. What Redskins fans ought to enjoy watching today in Texas Stadium, besides victory for their guys, is at quarterback and in the owners box. Troy Aikman is as gifted as advertised, accurate on long and short passes. And tough.

The Oilers in exhibition season tried to scramble Aikman’s mind and tarnish his first-in-the-draft reputation, with three blitzes from the strong safety and one from a cornerback. Down four times, the rookie bounced up unfazed.

Two regular-season games have seemed enough for football sophisticates in Dallas to sense that Aikman is for real and lots of those around him are not. Possibly to direct attention elsewhere when the Cowboys defense is summoned to duty, Jones has arranged for Elizabeth Taylor to be among his guests.

In truth, Schramm, Landry and Brandt did not leave much more than Herschel Walker and a reputation even Johnson probably cannot negotiate into more than a a couple of victories this season.

For three years, the Cowboys had been in serious decline, suffering their first losing season in 22 years in 1986 and earning the rights to Aikman with a worst-in-the-league 3-13 in ’88. It took a little longer, but The Cycle also had nailed the Cowboys.

The other wondrous teams of the 1970s, the Raiders, Dolphins and Steelers, also had suffered from the combination of poor position in the draft, harder schedules and less-obvious factors that erode success in the NFL.

Dallas had avoided that, with players-for-high-draft-choices trades that brought Too Tall Jones, Randy White and Tony Dorsett. Partly because of injuries, Dorsett in 1977 was the last spectacular high-round draftee.

If the Cowboys under Landry in 1989 had been no more successful than the Cowboys under Landry in 1988, Schramm would have been faced with a decision Jones allowed him to avoid.

“Maybe it all was the best thing that could have happened to Tom and myself,” Schramm told author Bob St. John. “It might have happened a little too quickly, but as it turned out Tom had an opportunity to go out with a lot of class and with people showing a lot of feeling for him. He became a hero again to everybody, even to those who had been so critical of him. . . . And with both of us gone, it closed out an era.”

Many who earlier thought Johnson drafted well are not so sure. The coach said: “I don’t want to deal in maybes.” Yet of all the rookies on a bad team, only Aikman has been able to crack the starting lineup.

Redskin quarterback Mark Rypien will be pleased to know that the Saints’ Bobby Hebert (16 for 19) and the Falcons’ Chris Miller (21 for 29) were close to unerring against the Dallas defense. At 38, Too Tall Jones is a reminder of how Doomsday can turn to Gloomsday.

Aikman has been intercepted four times in two games. But three of those were up-for-grabs throws near halftime or the end of games and another occurred when the receiver on a timing pattern slipped. Johnson having discovered Walker in the second game will be helpful, surely a reason the sloppy-tackling Redskins are only favored by less than a touchdown.

After a 3-1 exhibition season, most Cowboys fans and many Cowboys officials and players were hopeful. Still, a conversation in the clubhouse indicated optimism was not rampant.

“Hey,” said one player, “we get to play Green Bay twice this season.”

“In Green Bay,” said another, “they’re saying: ‘We get to play Dallas twice.’ ”