COMMENTARY : Switzer, Cowboys Backed Into Next Season

When it was over last weekend, the Cowboys came toward the tunnel leading to their dressing room, and as they did they passed directly underneath the makeshift studio for Fox Sports, where Jimmy Johnson sat with his back to them and to the field at Candlestick Park.

Johnson, dressed in a black suit, did not turn around, and so he did not see Emmitt Smith enter the tunnel in tears. He did not see Troy Aikman, his uniform a muddy mess, stare curiously into the 49ers crowd, a sea of red all around him, as if Aikman finally had discovered what the end of this kind of day looks like when you lose, when you are not the champions of the world anymore.

“I felt worse for Troy than any of them,” Jimmy Johnson said later, in that same runway, perhaps 30 yards from the door to the Cowboys’ locker room. “He got hit so many damn times, and he just kept getting up and coming back.”

Johnson wore a black overcoat over the black suit. He coached the Cowboys to two Super Bowls and now they would not make it back to a third without him. Jerry Jones, the owner, thought anybody could coach his team, and so he finally paid off Johnson and hired Barry Switzer, who had not coached a day of pro football in his life, and had not coached any football in years. Jones found out how that all worked out. It worked out to 38-28 for the 49ers.

The moments that told everything about how the 49ers had improved on the field and how the Cowboys had lost so badly at head coach came in the fourth quarter, when the Cowboys still had a chance despite every bad thing that had happened to them at Candlestick, despite all the things that had gone wrong from the start.

The Cowboys should have been gone after being down 21-0 in the first seven minutes, but they still had a chance in the last seven minutes. It was 38-28, but Aikman, hit so many times, was still there, with a second-and-10 from the 49ers’ 43-yard line. Here, Aikman threw down the left side, deep down the left side, for Michael Irvin.

With Deion Sanders on Irvin.

The throw was there and Sanders was there and so was Irvin, who was forced to jump. And Irvin could not make the play. If he had, it would have been 38-35. Maybe the Cowboys could have come all the way back. Switzer thought Sanders, who had an arm on Irvin, had interfered. Switzer went a little crazy. He went out on the field and bumped a referee while trying to demonstrate what he said Sanders had done to Irvin. And Switzer was given the 15-yard unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty he deserved.

Aikman had made third-down plays all day. When it was 21-0, he threw an amazing long touchdown pass on third down to Irvin. But now, because of the penalty, he had third-and-25 from his own 42. He managed a 14-yard completion to Alvin Harper. Fourth down. Aikman was sacked by Tim Harris. The 49ers were going to the Super Bowl, the Cowboys were not.

“Sure, it’s a mistake and I gave them 15 yards,” Switzer said. “I contributed to us getting beat.” When he was asked to contribute something, Switzer gave 15 yards to the other side. Then he whined about the officials and the condition of the field. He was a champion at Oklahoma once, but Switzer seemed to have forgotten how champions operate.

Switzer did not make the turnovers that put the Cowboys behind 21-0 and made the champions of the football world feel as if they were climbing up the steep, muddy hill at Candlestick the rest of the way. But the Cowboys, the best team in sports the past few seasons, lost this game because they played sloppy football and hurt themselves with thick-headed penalties all all over the place. It was fitting that Switzer committed one of those penalties. At least you knew he was there.

Steve Young played well enough, on the day when he finally quarterbacked his team into the Super Bowl. Sanders was superb before he ever got near Irvin, taking Harper out of the game. But while he was blanketing Harper, there was the genius of Irvin on the other side of the field, catching 12 passes for two touchdowns and nearly 200 yards. Even Smith, before he injured a hamstring in his good (right) leg, gave the Cowboys more of a game (74 yards, two touchdowns) than they could have expected.

And the real spectacle of the NFC championship game was how the Cowboys, even playing with such tremendous heart, kept finding ways to beat themselves. There were bad turnovers and more bad plays after that and bad play calls. They let the last 49ers punt of the first half roll dead, when Kevin Williams had so much room to run. Then Charles Haley was offsides, turning third-and-10 for the 49ers into third-and-5. The 49ers got the first down and kept going for more points. The list is much longer than this. If you are a champion, the list of big plays is always supposed to outnumber the one with mistakes.

We have heard all season about how much looser Switzer is than Johnson, and last Sunday it finally caught up with everybody, Jones and Switzer and the Cowboys. Sometimes Johnson can sound as if he is the only coach ever to win anything. I’m not so sure he was as broken up about his ex-team losing as he acted afterward. But Johnson’s teams forced big mistakes and did not make them in January. The Cowboys would have had a better chance to beat the 49ers, a much better chance, if he had been on the field, not sitting with his back to it.

“I think there will definitely be a lot of speculation as to what we could have done out there if Jimmy were the coach,” Jones said. Before the game, Jones screamed he didn’t want Johnson on the field. But then Jones had gotten Johnson off the field long ago.

“I don’t give a . . . about him,” Johnson said. “I never would have been a distraction to those (Cowboy) players. But if I’d wanted to be on the damn field, I would’ve been on the damn field.”

It was too late for him to help. Maybe Johnson would have called for a running play on third-and-10 from the 49ers’ 12-yard line when the Cowboys had their first chance to get back to 24-14. Maybe Johnson would have called for three passes in the last 70 seconds of the first half from his 16-yard line, and not worried about giving the ball back to Young for the touchdown pass to Jerry Rice that gave the 49ers enough points to go back to the Super Bowl for the fifth time. You wonder. Johnson did not make too many mistakes at this time of year. He was always at his best in the big games.

“You can’t give the ball to Young with that much time (42 seconds) left,” Johnson said.

Somehow there was still a chance in the fourth quarter. Sanders was there with Irvin. He was hired to be there, not to dance. It never got to 38-35. So we will never know what would have happened if it had. Switzer, who was supposed to show anybody could coach the Cowboys, got his team a 15-yard penalty after that. The Cowboys moved back across midfield and it was the same as backing into next season.