The Underrated Greatness Of Emmitt Smith - Part 2

The Underrated Greatness Of Emmitt Smith - Part 2


In Part 1 of this series, I talked about 3 of the biggest reasons why I believe that Emmitt Smith was underrated. The 3 reasons I gave are:

1.) The Supporting Cast Double Standard - Emmitt gets penalized for the teammates he had, while other all-time greats that played on stacked teams get a pass.

2.) The Offensive Line Cop-Out - As good as Emmitt's offensive line was, they got way too much credit for his success.

3.) Intangibles/Impact On The Other Units - Emmitt was the prototype for what championship caliber teams want from their running back......extend the drive, wear down the defense, score the touchdown to put the game away.


Starting with this piece, I'll be focusing more on what Emmitt did in his later years, after all the Super Bowl years were over. Before I get into that, I want to point out a couple of things:

-Most people don't realize that Emmitt actually racked up most of his yards post-1995, after the Cowboys started to decline and Jimmy Johnson was long gone. In that time, Emmitt put up 8 straight 1,000-yard seasons, including his NFL record (5,789 yards) for most rushing yards after turning 30. Only 2 other running backs have ever managed 5,000 yards after 30, and they were John Riggins with 5,683 yards, and Walter Payton with 5,101 yards. Out of all the intangibles that Emmitt had, the one that amazed me the most was his durability. In his 13 years with the Cowboys, Emmitt only missed 4 games due to injury. That kind of durability has only been matched by Walter Payton (missed 1 game in 13 years) and Jim Brown (never missed a game). You could even give Emmitt a slight edge over them if you take into account that he was the workhorse for his team every year on every level he played, as well as all of the NFL playoff games he played in. When you think about it, Emmitt played a little over 16 seasons in his 15 years in the NFL.

-What people that only pay attention to stats don't realize, is that before a set of significant injuries slowed down Emmitt's pace in his prime, he was on pace to SHATTER the all-time rushing record way before he actually did, along with every other major rushing record. Emmitt was about to rewrite the NFL record book for running backs. Barry Sanders wasn't the only running back that had a legitimate chance at 20,000 yards. Emmitt was also on pace for a 2,000-yard season through the first 9 games of the 1995 season, and had a decent shot at it until around Thanksgiving. There were a few games where he could have easily added to his totals if not for leaving early due to injury or the team putting the game out of reach early.


The Cowboys had a simple, but very efficient offense in the early 90's. If the defense had 7 in the box, then they would run Emmitt all day. If the defense had 8 or 9 in the box, then they would start throwing the ball to Michael Irvin. If the defense rolled a safety over the top to double team The Playmaker, then Jay Novacek would get some passes in his direction. If another safety was rolled over the top for him, then Troy Aikman would go deep to Alvin Harper. Once the Cowboys' passing game started clicking, then the opposing defense would back that extra man out of the box, leaving them with 7 again. Once they did that, the Cowboys would go right back to handing the ball to Emmitt. There was a little bit more to it than that, but that sums up how the Cowboys' offense operated back then.

I enjoyed watching the Cowboys so much because EVERYBODY, including the other team, knew what was coming and STILL couldn't stop it. I never got tired of watching that kind of dominance every week. Those were some of the best times of my early teenage years. Back then, I just knew the Cowboys would dominate forever.....but then I learned a lesson. When free agency came along, that was when I learned that pro sports are a business first. The biggest lesson that I learned was that it costs money to keep a good team together. That well-oiled machine took ALL parts to function properly. Once the first part went missing, the machine started to fall apart. Alvin Harper, the Cowboys' deep threat, left after the 1994 season and signed with the Buccaneers. Even with him gone, the machine could still function at a high rate. It was when Jay Novacek's bad back forced him into early retirement that the machine broke down. At that point, opposing defenses could put 8 in the box to stop Emmitt, roll a safety over the top to double team Michael Irvin, and leave 1 on 1 coverage on the backside receiver because the TE was no longer a threat. That makes the numbers those 2 players put up that much more impressive, because if the Cowboys had another true threat at TE, the machine would have kept rolling, and the Big 3 would have still been among the league leaders late in their careers.

We all know about the perception that Emmitt played only on stacked teams, with a powerhouse offensive line and All-Pros at every position, and that we don't know how he would have done without all of that. That's not true. As a matter of fact, nothing could be further from the truth. People that truly understand the game and don't have a bias against the Cowboys know very well how Emmitt would have done on a losing team, with a mediocre to bad QB and an average to bad offensive line, because those are exactly the kinds of teams that he played on after the Super Bowl years, up until the end of his career with the Cardinals. The deteriorating supporting cast along with a lot of injuries in his prime are what accelerated Emmitt's decline.


Here is what Emmitt had to endure after the Super Bowl years were over:

1996

Here are the things Emmitt had going against him in 1996:

1.) There was no cohesion in the offense whatsoever. They didn't even play together as a unit until the season opener.

2.) Several key players were out because of injuries and suspensions.

3.) The offensive line got older.

4.) Defenses were stacking 8 and 9 in the box to stop Emmitt.

5.) A long list of injuries: 2 sprained ankles, sprained left knee, strained back, bruised ribs, bruised shoulder, bruised and jammed neck, spinal cord contusion - Emmitt was hurting from the top of his head to his ankles. His ability to accelerate and cut was reduced by a half-step or split-second, which is enough to separate the best from the rest. Emmitt lost push-off speed and power, and his ability to start and stop, then restart in another direction became fractionally slower. By medical measurement, he lost 18% flexibility in his right ankle.


The 1996 season seemed like it was doomed from the start. In the preseason game against the Broncos, which was Emmitt's first game, he made a 5-yard run when Erik Williams was sideswiped and fell off-balance against the back of Emmitt's knee. He ended up suffering a sprained left knee and right ankle. The injury looked much worse than what it was, and Emmitt said that it felt like the worst injury of his career. I was nervous as all hell after seeing that happen, and you could hear a pin drop at Texas Stadium while Emmitt was being tended to. Even former Olympic gold medal sprinter Michael Johnson, who was a guest commentator that night, was worried about Emmitt's health. Things went from bad to worse after Michael Irvin was suspended for the first 5 games and  learning that Jay Novacek wouldn't be able to play because of his bad back. The Cowboys had a mix-and-match lineup to start the season. For starters, Larry Allen was moved from RG to LT, and George Hegamin took his place. Because of this and all of the other switches on the offensive line, the run blocking was as coordinated as 3rd grade recess. Daryl Johnston played some TE, and even Deion Sanders played a lot of receiver with Michael Irvin being out.

In the season opener against the Bears, Emmitt was misused. The Cowboys didn't have Michael Irvin or Jay Novacek, and still decided to go pass-happy on early downs, ignoring Emmitt. He got 18 carries for 70 yards in that game, but that wasn't enough. For all I know, they might have been trying to lighten his load, but at the same time Emmitt Smith was the reason the Cowboys won so many games. They could have run him more to take some pressure off the passing game, which was obviously feeling those losses. Fewer people were open, and the receivers that were open were dropping the ball. Then add 9 penalties along with a couple of wasted timeouts because of things like people being in the wrong formations. It was also a close game until 4 turnovers finally did the Cowboys in.

This was also the game where it went from bad to worse for Emmitt, who was already playing with a bad knee and ankle. Here is how it went down:

The play was a bootleg right by Troy Aikman, which ended up losing yards. At the beginning, Troy faked a handoff to Emmitt, who tried to sell the fake by jumping over the pile as a decoy and ended up landing on his head and right shoulder. He laid motionless on the field for several minutes until he was finally carted off. I didn't get much sleep at all that night because I was worried that Emmitt was paralyzed and would never play again. It turned out that Emmitt suffered a spinal cord contusion, which would further limit his explosion, agility, and power for the whole season. Those skills were a big part of what made him "Emmitt". I remember hearing and reading about him waking up one night during that season, putting his feet on the floor to stand up and then crumpling to the floor because his legs went completely numb. Emmitt also developed bone spurs in both of his ankles because of a change in step to overcompensate for the spinal injury. He finished that season, just one year after his record-setting production in 1995, with 327 carries for 1,204 yards, a 3.7 yards per carry average, and 12 touchdowns. To me, that's amazing considering that he was never at 100% physically at any point of the season because of all those injuries he had to play through, along with defenses selling out to stop him every week.

In both 1996 and 1997, the sports world watched Emmitt's production dwindle down even more from 1,204 yards in '96 after a career season the year before, to 1,074 yards in '97. Everybody in the media was talking about how he looked like a RB that was quickly declining. They even predicted that for the rest of his career, that he could be a workman-like 800-yard back if he worked at it. A few of the all-time great RBs in NFL history thought Emmitt's workload had caught up with him. I even remember reading a Football Digest article in 1998 that talked about Emmitt Smith and Barry Sanders being equals up until 1996, and then Barry blew past Emmitt, and that his career even soared to new heights. They even said that Emmitt probably wouldn't even be in the NFL by the time Barry broke Walter Payton's record. Everybody said it looked like Emmitt was hitting a wall, basically pronouncing his career over and saying that he was washed up.


1997

Emmitt had another injury-plagued year in 1997. He had an ankle that was still bothering him, bruised ribs, a strained groin, a slightly separated shoulder, and he even played 1 game with the flu. Like I mentioned earlier, his decline was sped up by an aging and increasingly ineffective line. The Cowboys' offense was built around the power running game, which means that the middle of the offensive line has to be dominant and blow people off the ball. That wasn't the case in 1997, and it was the single most important reason for the decline of the Cowboys that season. They started a new undersized center (Clay Shiver), an out of shape and injured left guard (Nate Newton), and a left tackle who was never 100% (Mark Tuinei)......that's 3/5 of the offensive line. It's also the main reason that all 3 of The Triplets had bad years.

Here is what the power running game is designed to do:

1.) Keep Defenses Honest - They won't be so quick to blitz if you have a running back that's a threat to score on any play. That's why Troy Aikman had a bad year, and he was pressured more than any QB that I could remember.

2.) Give The Lead Receiver A Clear View To The QB - This goes especially for play-action passes because the weakside linebacker has to play up to the line for run support instead of dropping back into the slant zone. With the offensive line struggling, the linebackers were able to drop back more.

3.) Allows Elite RBs To Have 1,500+ Yard Seasons - Once again, I believe Emmitt Smith did an amazing job for a running back that was supposed to be washed up, especially with all those injuries and not having the line he had during the Super Bowl years. Emmitt's greatest asset besides his vision was his ability to make linebackers miss and/or grab their reaching arms and move them out of his way. He could still do that, but he had to have an offensive line that could give him a hole to run through. When teams started blitzing up the middle, it threw off the blocking schemes of the line, combined with the injuries and out of shape linemen, Emmitt couldn't find a hole. Not even Barry Sanders could have done much of anything under those conditions.


Execution wasn't the problem for the Cowboys offense, a lack of innovation is what cost them. Defenses started changing, and they stayed the same and got stale. It's bad enough that the Cowboys didn't have a threat at TE to replace Jay Novacek or a receiver to compliment Michael Irvin, but the coaches keep trying to force the running game inside where all the blitzes were coming from instead of running outside more. That wasn't where Emmitt was at his best, but the Cowboys did have Sherman Williams, who had that extra burst of speed to be effective on the outside. Every team in the NFL figured out that the way to stop Emmitt was to bring linebackers in the gaps between the tackles. That's the biggest reason why Emmitt wasn't himself and the Cowboys were being outschemed. Defenses were attacking Emmitt's strength, which was running between the tackles.

I also saw some hesitancy from Emmitt at that time. He wasn't attacking the line of scrimmage like he used to. There was a lot of uncertainty. It was a combination of his injuries and him being unsure of either his linemen or blocking scheme. He was also being held back by an old offensive line with Clay Shiver, a young overmatched center, and the left side of the line was old (Mark Tuinei, 37, Nate Newton, 35). In other words, the line was too old on the left side, too inexperienced in the middle, and a shadow of itself on the right. Also, since the Cowboys had become so predictable, defenses would just stack the line and wait on Emmitt. He wasn't even getting a chance.

There was a reason why Troy Aikman wanted the Cowboys to move up in the 1997 draft and take Tony Gonzalez (with all-due respect to Jason Witten). From time to time, I fantasize about how he likely would have almost instantly opened the offense back up and took the extra man out of the box for Emmitt. I'll even take it a step further. What if the Cowboys had also went on and drafted Randy Moss the next year like everybody expected them to, instead of Greg Ellis? That would have been one NASTY offense if they could have pulled that off. I won't even mention the line, because if they had all that talent on the offense, I believe they almost certainly would have bolstered the line. I believe the Cowboys would have been right back to winning Super Bowls with that offense, and Emmitt probably would have gotten a couple more rushing titles. I can't help but fantasize about that once in a while, but I guess it turned out the way it was supposed to.

I will say one last thing about 1997: If anybody had told me that a team with Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin, Troy Aikman, and Deion Sanders on it would only win 6 games and not make the playoffs, I would have laughed in their faces and told them they were crazy. I don't think anybody saw that kind of season from the Cowboys. I'll be picking up with 1998 in the next installment.