Cowboy defeat could lead to a lynching

ON a freezing December afternoon in Philadelphia, the Dallas Cowboys were attempting to make progress from deep within their …

ON a freezing December afternoon in Philadelphia, the Dallas Cowboys were attempting to make progress from deep within their own territory. The game was in its closing stages and, having dominated the first half, the Cowboys had been thwarted for much of the second by an Eagles side giving its best show of the season.

The scores were now level and as the Veteran's Stadium faithful bayed for Cowboy blood, another Dallas possession appeared to be coming to a premature conclusion. After three downs the visitors were at their own 29 yard line and needed another foot to keep the drive alive.

At which point Barry Switzer made the most famous call of the 1995 season. With possession swapping after four downs if 10 yards are not made, a kick seamed inevitable. Switzer, however, chose to punt in a different sense. The son of a Mississippi riverboat gambler, he staked everything on his offence making the extra inches, ignoring the dangers of conceding the ball within field goal range.

Emmitt Smith rushed but was baulked. But just as the Philly faithful began a frenzied celebration, the play was called back. An official had blown the whistle before it started to signal the two minute warning.

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Switzer had been saved from his recklessness but then, to mass incredulity, he once again chose to gamble. The Cowboys ran the same play, were again stopped, and four downs later the Eagles kicked the winning field goal.

In the television studio Switzer's predecessor, Jimmy Johnson, could hardly contain his glee. Johnson insisted that a punt was the only option. "You do that in high school, college and the pros," he said, a pointed reference to Switzer's lack of NFL experience before taking over the Super Bowl champions.

Switzer's Decision (it took less than 24 hours to acquire proper name status) became the talk of the league. Afterwards, he justified it on the grounds that a punt would have been into the wind, and the Eagles would have had a reasonable chance of driving for the winning field goal.

The Cowboys players and owner, Jerry Jones, rallied round the head coach, but few were convinced. On Dallas radio talk shows, it was acclaimed as the worst coaching decision in franchise history, and one columnist even called for Switzer's head.

Just about the only support came from Brent Kreider, an assistant professor of economics at Virginia university, who produced an equation which suggested the coach was correct, a contribution that can have done nothing to advance public confidence in the reliability of mathematical proofs.

For Switzer, the Decision symbolised a turbulent season. His Cowboys rebounded from the Philadelphia defeat and go into tomorrow's Super Bowl in Phoenix against the Pittsburgh Steelers as unbackable favourites. But the teams gathered in Phoenix this week, the talk has tended to be of the brilliance of the Cowboy players and the bone headedness of their coach.

The reasons for this stretch way beyond the Decision, and back to Jones's decision to hire Switzer. In five years, Jones and Johnson had built the Cowboys into the sport's most talented team. Where their relationship ended in a messy divorce, Jones is said to have remarked that anybody could guide the two time Super Bowl champions back to the big game. An unkind view is that Jones then sought to prove the point by appointing a nobody.

Although highly successful in college, Switzer had left Okla home five years earlier amid allegations of rules violations. Charismatic but hardly revered, he was in the highly unusual position of inheriting a team that needed no adjustments to continue its success.

Switzer, whose style was any way more relaxed than the driven Johnson's, adopted a low profile in his first year and navigated the Cowboys to the NFC Championship game where they lost to the Super Bowl winning San Francisco 49ers.

As the Cowboys prepared for this season, Switzer made a conscious decision to take firmer control. But everybody knows that the Cowboys are really Jones's team, and therein lies Switzer's biggest problem.

Any successor was going to have to put up with Jones's all pervading presence, but the complexities of the relationship between owner and head coach, allied to the continual questioning of Switzer's abilities, have made this a difficult season for the Cowboys.

All the same, reports that the Cowboys must prevail tomorrow for Switzer to keep his job persist. Jones insists this is not so, but, given the premium he has put on another Super Bowl, and the perceived gulf between the sides, defeat in Phoenix would be regarded as a catastrophe in Cowboy country, and maybe one that required a lynching.