Cowlishaw: Hard to believe Dallas Cowboys can christen stadium with title
Column by TIM COWLISHAW
The Dallas Morning News
wtcowlishaw@dallasnews.com
In 2009, the 50th season of Cowboys football, the familiar star on the helmet remains intact. But the star of the team isn't the quarterback with the Hollywood starlet in his past, nor is it the pass rusher with the NFL records in his future.
Tony Romo and DeMarcus Ware are mere bit players this season. The stage belongs to, well, the stage itself.
Cowboys Stadium, home of the big screen to beat all big screens, opened with a George Strait concert in June. But as far as Jerry Jones and Cowboys fans are concerned, the nation's newest and grandest sports palace opens for real on national TV Sunday night, Sept. 20, when the Cowboys host the New York Giants.
The Cowboys and local taxpayers spent a few hundred million dollars to make Texas Stadium's successor successful. Jones is counting on Cowboys victories to make the place a sold-out success right away.
But as far as we know, the Jonas Brothers and ex-Beatle Paul McCartney might draw the biggest cheers there in 2009.
Right now the Cowboys' first regular-season visitor is as close to playoff success as the team can get. The Giants won a Super Bowl in the 2007 season.
The Cowboys last won a playoff game in the 1996 season.
It's not often that a franchise opens a stadium and brings home a Lombardi Trophy in the same season, but it happened here 38 years ago. If Jones or anyone else is counting on a repeat of history, they haven't looked too closely at the lack of similarities between the '09 and '71 Cowboys.
No one on the current roster has achieved playoff success in Dallas. That's at any level – wild-card, divisional round, anything.
Many of the key players on that '71 team – Bob Lilly, Mel Renfro, Chuck Howley, Lee Roy Jordan, Cornell Green, George Andrie, Bob Hayes, Ralph Neely – not only had played in the Super Bowl the year before but had endured bitter NFL championship game losses to Green Bay in '66 and '67.
There was a feeling their time had come.
The current Cowboys felt that way a year ago when a 13-3 season ended with a surprising home playoff loss to those Super Bowl-bound Giants.
But a team coming off a 9-7 season has as many question marks as it does championship expectations.
That '71 team also helped ignite its drive towards a Super Bowl by reluctantly bringing back an offensive star who was viewed as a disruptive force, Duane Thomas.
These Cowboys dispatched Terrell Owens to Buffalo.
And while there are many out there who will tell you that Owens' exit only enhances this team's hopes of winning, I can tell you two things.
One is that it didn't work that way in San Francisco or Philadelphia.
The other is that in a "down" year, Owens caught 10 touchdown passes. That's down four from what he had averaged in his first two seasons in Dallas.
And it's one more than the Cowboys' top three returning wide receivers – Patrick Crayton, Roy Williams and Miles Austin – caught a year ago.
The Cowboys' decision to release Owens in the off-season was no more shocking than Jones' choice of head coaches. Back for another run, despite a 9-7 record that was climaxed by an embarrassing 44-6 loss in Philadelphia, is Wade Phillips.
An experienced and successful coordinator and a good man by all accounts, Phillips' absence of a playoff win as a head coach fosters little confidence that 2009 will be different.
His personality isn't moving a lot of season tickets out in Arlington, either.
A few weeks in San Antonio may change this team's perspective. It's not that far removed from the team that carried the NFC's best record into the 2007 postseason.
Can the Cowboys return to that level? Maybe performing in a setting that could be created only by 21st century architects can somehow restore that element that's gone missing from this franchise since the end of the 20th.
The Dallas Morning News
wtcowlishaw@dallasnews.com
In 2009, the 50th season of Cowboys football, the familiar star on the helmet remains intact. But the star of the team isn't the quarterback with the Hollywood starlet in his past, nor is it the pass rusher with the NFL records in his future.
Tony Romo and DeMarcus Ware are mere bit players this season. The stage belongs to, well, the stage itself.
Cowboys Stadium, home of the big screen to beat all big screens, opened with a George Strait concert in June. But as far as Jerry Jones and Cowboys fans are concerned, the nation's newest and grandest sports palace opens for real on national TV Sunday night, Sept. 20, when the Cowboys host the New York Giants.
The Cowboys and local taxpayers spent a few hundred million dollars to make Texas Stadium's successor successful. Jones is counting on Cowboys victories to make the place a sold-out success right away.
But as far as we know, the Jonas Brothers and ex-Beatle Paul McCartney might draw the biggest cheers there in 2009.
Right now the Cowboys' first regular-season visitor is as close to playoff success as the team can get. The Giants won a Super Bowl in the 2007 season.
The Cowboys last won a playoff game in the 1996 season.
It's not often that a franchise opens a stadium and brings home a Lombardi Trophy in the same season, but it happened here 38 years ago. If Jones or anyone else is counting on a repeat of history, they haven't looked too closely at the lack of similarities between the '09 and '71 Cowboys.
No one on the current roster has achieved playoff success in Dallas. That's at any level – wild-card, divisional round, anything.
Many of the key players on that '71 team – Bob Lilly, Mel Renfro, Chuck Howley, Lee Roy Jordan, Cornell Green, George Andrie, Bob Hayes, Ralph Neely – not only had played in the Super Bowl the year before but had endured bitter NFL championship game losses to Green Bay in '66 and '67.
There was a feeling their time had come.
The current Cowboys felt that way a year ago when a 13-3 season ended with a surprising home playoff loss to those Super Bowl-bound Giants.
But a team coming off a 9-7 season has as many question marks as it does championship expectations.
That '71 team also helped ignite its drive towards a Super Bowl by reluctantly bringing back an offensive star who was viewed as a disruptive force, Duane Thomas.
These Cowboys dispatched Terrell Owens to Buffalo.
And while there are many out there who will tell you that Owens' exit only enhances this team's hopes of winning, I can tell you two things.
One is that it didn't work that way in San Francisco or Philadelphia.
The other is that in a "down" year, Owens caught 10 touchdown passes. That's down four from what he had averaged in his first two seasons in Dallas.
And it's one more than the Cowboys' top three returning wide receivers – Patrick Crayton, Roy Williams and Miles Austin – caught a year ago.
The Cowboys' decision to release Owens in the off-season was no more shocking than Jones' choice of head coaches. Back for another run, despite a 9-7 record that was climaxed by an embarrassing 44-6 loss in Philadelphia, is Wade Phillips.
An experienced and successful coordinator and a good man by all accounts, Phillips' absence of a playoff win as a head coach fosters little confidence that 2009 will be different.
His personality isn't moving a lot of season tickets out in Arlington, either.
A few weeks in San Antonio may change this team's perspective. It's not that far removed from the team that carried the NFC's best record into the 2007 postseason.
Can the Cowboys return to that level? Maybe performing in a setting that could be created only by 21st century architects can somehow restore that element that's gone missing from this franchise since the end of the 20th.
posted by The Gryphon at 8:19 AM
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