The Underrated Greatness Of Emmitt Smith - Part 4

The Underrated Greatness Of Emmitt Smith - Part 4


In Part 4 of this series I'll be covering 2001, the year when things really started turning bad for Emmitt, and what I believe to be the beginning of the end for him as a Cowboy. The biggest issue for the Cowboys that year was the continued decline of the team, which lead to them being more interested in evaluating players than winning games. As a result of that approach, a running back controversy was started.


Emmitt Smith/Troy Hambrick Controversy

Troy Hambrick was a practice squad player, and was discovered when the Cowboys were in the middle of consecutive 5-11 seasons. He got a lot of attention very quickly, as well as a lot of praise and a lot of people telling him he was ready. You can't fault him for wanting to play, but he was immature and classless in the way he handled it. 

Here are some quotes from Troy Hambrick as evidence:

"If I've accomplished the things Emmitt has accomplished, I would have retired. What else are you playing for? I understand he wanted the record and he didn't feel like his career was over, but 3 Super Bowl rings and all of the things he's done. You know, this is like Michael Jordan still in the league tarnishing his name and he can't make an easy dunk."

"Emmitt doesn't have to prove anything anymore. I just think it's time to let a new generation come along. Everything ends at some point. I'm not trying to be disrespectful towards anyone. But I just feel it's my time to come in and show what I can do." (after he was called on the previous quote)

"This is my time. We've been waiting on Emmitt to retire or make his move. Of course, I see it as a breakout year. Every time I touch the ball, it's a breakout carry." (after he was promoted to starter)


This controversy seemed like Tony Dorsett/Herschel Walker in 1986 all over again. It looked to me liked everybody was trying to run Emmitt Smith out of Dallas the same way they did Tony Dorsett. That whole situation with Emmitt reminded me of when the Cowboys signed Herschel Walker from the USFL and eventually put him in the starting lineup ahead of Tony Dorsett. TD was highly upset about it, and eventually came to resent Herschel. Tom Landry's initial plan was to have a "Heisman Backfield" with TD and Herschel in the same backfield. After that backfired, they moved towards having Herschel start full time. TD was upset because he felt like he was being slighted and he didn't want to be a backup running back. He felt like he hadn't lost a step, or at least lost enough to be demoted to 2nd string. Even several of his teammates said they didn't see a drop off in talent. After the 1987 season, the Cowboys traded Tony Dorsett to the Broncos for a conditional 5th round draft choice. There were a lot of hurt people in Dallas after TD left, and I was really hoping that Emmitt wouldn't leave the same way.

The situation with Emmitt in 2001 was slightly different because the offense had reached a new low and was breaking futility records, but the running back situation was basically the same as it was in 1986. Emmitt was in his 12th season, and on the verge of breaking the most sacred record in the NFL, and the Cowboys had a young running back in Troy Hambrick who could take over for Emmitt in the near future. The biggest difference between the 2 controversies is that T-Ham was forced into the starting fullback spot when Robert Thomas was lost for the season.

Here is an excerpt from a piece I wrote about the situation back then:

It seems like the Cowboys are trying to speed up the future, but they would be foolish to let Emmitt get away. With the way the team is playing right now and the way things are going, people want to say Emmitt is too old and too beat up to still be in the NFL, they say he should forget about the record and retire at the end of this season before he embarrasses himself or he has to be carried off the field. It's easy to criticize players and talk bad about them in situations like this. If Emmitt was leading the NFL in rushing and the Cowboys were winning games, the bandwagon would be overcrowded.

Everybody now is quick to say Troy Hambrick is better and more productive than Emmitt. T-Ham might have 16 fewer yards than Emmitt on fewer carries, and they do run behind the same offensive line, but T-Ham and Emmitt don't face the same defenses. When Emmitt is in the game, he is a bulls-eye. teams stack the line and run blitz A LOT more often than they do when T-Ham is in the game. When T-Ham is in the game, Jack Reilliy calls way more running plays between the tackles than he does for Emmitt. When Emmitt is in the game, Reilly will try to send him outside on a pitch or some kind of sweep. Sometimes he'll run him out of the single back formation. When T-Ham and Emmitt are both in the game with T-Ham at fullback, defenses will overload to stop Emmitt, and T-Ham will take a quick handoff from the QB with the defense thinking Emmitt is getting the ball. Emmitt is getting the short end of things. It wouldn't be ridiculous at all to say that Emmitt has been misused the past few years, even a couple of years before Reilly came back to Dallas. It would be interesting to see what Emmitt would do if he ever got a passing game to take pressure off of him. He would have better stats, and more importantly, the Cowboys would have more wins.

I agree with everything Emmitt is saying about the Cowboys putting more emphasis on evaluating players than winning games. That's what training camp and preseason are for. When you lock and load for the season, you have to commit. The object of the game is to have your best 11 players on the field at all times. It was wrong of Dave Campo to tell Emmitt to retire if he didn't like it. To me, that was a slap in Emmitt's face, after all he had done for the Cowboys. They are both at different points in their careers, and that can put a strain on any relationship. I just hope everything gets fixed soon, and like I said earlier, I pray that Emmitt won't leave the Cowboys the same way Tony Dorsett did, and that he can finish his career as a Cowboy.


One thing I forgot to mention when I wrote that, is that teams also rotated their defensive personnel. T-Ham was lucky enough that lesser quality backups were rotated onto the field when he was in the game, making it easier for him to run. Also, it's possible that Emmitt and the offensive line wore down the first string defense, and T-Ham benefited from it. Teams also put an extra man in the box for Emmitt, but not for T-Ham. In so many words, Troy Hambrick got impatient with his backup role and said so out loud. He said at training camp in 2002 that he was the best running back on the team, and that it was time for Emmitt to move on after he broke the record. T-Ham got exactly what he wanted in 2003, and he had to be humbled. He quickly found out that it wasn't as easy as he thought it was. He admitted it when he said, "They didn't tell me once teams start game-planning against you that all those big runs stop." T-Ham also said that he thought he was "the next thing to O.J. Simpson. He ran for 972 yards and a 3.5 yards per carry average. 

This story ends with an ironic twist. Emmitt Smith ended up signing with the Cardinals after he left the Cowboys, and Troy Hambrick ended up being his backup again. The Cowboys released T-Ham in 2004 after they drafted Julius Jones. He was picked up by the Raiders, and ended up gaining weight. The Cardinals traded for T-Ham, who was out of shape, after Marcel Shipp blew out his knee in training camp. He was supposed to give them the "power back" they lost when Shipp went down.


2001 - Running Into A Brick Wall

The 2001 season was a real struggle for the Cowboys as a team, but Emmitt Smith was the one who was feeling it the most because the running game was running into a brick wall. When it wasn't running into the wall, it was going backwards. Plain and simple: Emmitt had NOWHERE to run. He had to fight, bite, and claw for every yard that year. To put in perspective how tough that season was for Emmitt, I want to point out that the Cowboys started out 0-4, and Emmitt went into halftime with 2 or fewer yards in 3 of those losses. 

Here are some of the elements from a long list of things Emmitt had working against him:

1.) Good Defenses
2.) Terrible Blocking
3.) Linemen Pulling Off Of Blocks Early
4.) Tentative Running (a result of all of the above)
5.) Offensive Scheme
6.) The Worst Passing Attack In The NFL
7.) No True Fullback
8.) Right Guard Struggling Badly (revolving door at the position)
9.) Joey Galloway and Rocket Ismail were injured again and missed significant time.
10.) Defenses were stacking the line and daring the quarterback to beat them.
11.) The offense went through 4 quarterbacks that season.
12.) Defenses used run blitzes and stunts to plug up the middle and force Emmitt to the outside.
13.) There seemed to be more emphasis on evaluating players that season than winning games.


Emmitt was stuck carrying the load as the star player on a team full of lesser players. He was still too good to retire, but with the team being so bad, he was no longer seen as a hero. With the offense as inconsistent as it was for most of the season, and with Emmitt being the oldest player on offense, everybody had a tendency to blame him for their struggles. When you have an offense with 4 different quarterbacks - a rookie, 2 undrafted free agents, and a failed #2 overall pick and and an offensive line that can't open holes, you have much bigger problems than your running back. It also didn't help that late in his career Emmitt played with a bunch of young players that were lazy and didn't have a good work ethic or a passion for football. When losses start to pile up, a player that was a major contributor to the team during the times where a win was much appreciated, no longer has a function.

It required a lot of endurance from Emmitt and Cowboys fans to see him break the NFL's all-time rushing record with that broken team. There were too many people that lived for the moment that wanted to run him out of Dallas. I personally saw a running back who was still capable of playing at an All-Pro level, even if he was stepping out of bounds a yard or two earlier and fighting less when he was being gang tackled. Even with all of that, Emmitt was still picking up yards with a line that was showing weakness in running situations. He was still productive running the ball with his quarterback constantly on his back after pass attempts.....AFTER a successful running down by Emmitt. Bottom line, he was still capable of Emmitt-like production if the rest of the offense was consistent. 

As the last Triplet, Emmitt became the locker room spokesman and the player every team designed their defense to stop. Defenses had been selling out to stop Emmitt for years, but this time was different because the Cowboys didn't have a passing game. At this point, Emmitt wasn't a good fit on a bad Cowboys team. He could still run between the tackles with the quick, darting moves that he was famous for, but because he wasn't able to break the long runs the way he used to, defenses started cheating against the run because they didn't fear Emmitt taking it all the way. He would have been a better fit with a good line, where the long runs would have been frequent again. With a better line, the team could pound him for 3 quarters, wear down the defense, and allow him to put up big numbers in the 4th quarter. In Dallas, Emmitt's skills were being wasted.

Not having a passing game hurt the running game overall, and not having a dependable tight end hurt the runs inside. Without a threat at TE, linebackers could run blitz the Cowboys all day long, a lot of times hitting Emmitt in the backfield. The revolving door of inexperienced players at right guard meant that they could never develop any kind of consistency at that position. That hurt the offense because most of those blitzes came from between the right guard and center. With a decent threat at TE, at least one LB would be forced to cover him, instead of a defensive end (usually in a run blitz the DE pulls off to cover the TE). With a true threat like Jay Novacek was, it would require a linebacker AND a strong safety to cover him short and deep. That's a big part of why Emmitt was so successful when he was there. It took 2 players to cover Jay Novacek. Even though there might have been 8 or 9 in the box, by the time the play developed, 2 of them were off covering #84. The "lead draw" was the main play for the Cowboys' offense because it gave the defense time to react to the TE going out before the running play actually hit them. One or two seconds was all that was needed of the OLB and SS to start backpedaling to cover Jay Novacek, then Daryl Johnston came barreling through with Emmitt right behind him. The defense didn't have enough man power up front to account for all the blockers, so Emmitt would burst through for good yardage.

Even though his production was down by Emmitt standards in 2001, he still had a solid season by NFL standards. His 1,021 yards ranked 15th in the NFL and 7th in the NFC. Those numbers alone were enough to prove that at least half the teams in the league still would have coveted Emmitt's production. Everybody expected his 1,000-yard streak to end after he only had 9 yards on Thanksgiving Day against the Broncos, leaving him with 487 yards after 10 games. It seemed like the deck was stacked against Emmitt, considering that he needed to average 85.5 yards over the last 6 games, and at that point he had only gained more than that once all season. Then Emmitt had a stretch drive where he went over 100 yards in 3 of the last 6 games to reach 1,000 yards. He had 18 carries for 77 yards in the season finale vs the Lions to put him over 1,000 yards for the 11th straight season, breaking the NFL record set by Barry Sanders. The irony with this record, was that either way Emmitt would have passed Barry in some category to reach a milestone. The game up in Detroit got moved from Week 2 (because of 9/11) to the end of the season. If the game had been played in Week 2 as planned, Emmitt would have passed Barry for 2nd place on the NFL's all-time rushing list. Instead, he ended up breaking Barry's record for consecutive 1,000-yard seasons.

That season was all the more impressive when you think about the fact that Emmitt ran for 1,021 yards despite missing 2 games, being misused in the offense, having the NFL's worst pass offense, and playing on an offensive unit that went through 4 quarterbacks (5 if you count Tony Banks in the preseason). He also didn't have a lead blocker. After Robert Thomas went down for the season, the Cowboys moved Troy Hambrick to fullback. They even used a TE on occasion (Johnny Huggins), and sometimes they used a DT on the goal line as the lead blocker. All of those things made those 100-yard games hard to come by for Emmitt that season.......he only had 4 of them. It's hard enough for a running back to get 100 yards even without all of those elements working against him. Think about it: You have to average 25 yards a quarter, you don't always have the ball, you have 15 minutes, and you go against 8 and 9-man fronts often. It's 10 times harder when you have a QB that doesn't have the respect of opposing defenses.

At that stage in Emmitt's career, people failed to realize that his value came in 2-fold form - production and intangibles. The most important trait that he had that so few in the NFL did, was that he knew how to win. He knew exactly what it took to be a champion. The Cowboys had a roster full of young players who needed to learn that skill from him. If you need proof, just look at the 2 games that Emmitt missed with a sprained knee, against the Giants and Falcons, both away games. The Cowboys should have won both games, but didn't. The running game production wasn't the problem. Troy Hambrick ran for a respectable 77 yards against the Giants and a season high 127 yards against the Falcons, but the Cowboys gave both of those games away. What the team was missing was leadership in the huddle and a guy that could convert a crucial first down late in the game.

Emmitt, after 12 years in the NFL, was still the best running back in the league in close games when the game was on the line. He got stronger as the game went on, and always ran harder when something was on the line. Emmitt was a 2nd half player that wore teams down and them humiliated them late for game winning points. A good example of that would be the Oct. 15 Monday night game against the Redskins, where Emmitt carried the Cowboys to a 9-7 win. He had 25 carries for 107 yards for the game, and had 54 more yards called back because of penalties. He had a 13-yard run on the last play of the game to set up the game winning field goal. I was glad to see Emmitt have a game like that because a few days earlier Eric Dickerson, who was a sideline commentator for MNF at that time, made the statement "Father Time has caught up with Emmitt Smith." For more proof that Emmitt was still clutch, check out these rankings:

-1st in the NFL in total rushing yards in close games (200 yards)
-3rd in the NFL in yards per carry in the 4th quarter (5.3 YPC)
-6th in the NFL in yards per carry for carry 21 and up (4.3 YPC)


I also want to point out that the Cowboys passed for 2,218 yards in 2001, which was dead last in the NFL. It was also the team's 16-game single season franchise low. There were 28 quarterbacks all by themselves that threw for more yards. Emmitt by himself ran for more yards than any QB threw for individually. The Cowboys were ranked 3rd in the NFL in rushing offense behind the Steelers and 49ers, averaging 138.5 yards per game. The rushing and passing offense combined to give the Cowboys a 29th overall ranking in total offense. It would have been nice to see what Emmitt could do with a real passing attack and the defense not crowding the line of scrimmage looking for him with no regard for the forward pass. With all of the mess the Cowboys had going on that year, it would have been unbelievable for them to finish the 2001 season with an 8-8 record. They ended up being 5-11 for the 2nd straight year.


I'll pick up Part 5 with 2002, the year that Emmitt broke the record, and in my opinion his toughest season as a Cowboy.