Today’s guest post comes from Tom Nawrocki, a longtime fan of the site and not of the Dallas Cowboys. What follows are his words….
I grew up in the 1970s, watching the NFL and hating the Dallas Cowboys, as all right-thinking Americans did. The Cowboys were consistently strong throughout the decade; they made the Super Bowl after the 1970, 1971, 1975, 1977 and 1978 seasons.
What was additionally frustrating for us Cowboy haters was the way they kept adding top-flight talent throughout the decade. Despite the fact that they were a perennial playoff team, they seemed to have a top draft choice nearly every season. In the middle of this run, the Cowboys had the No. 1 or No. 2 pick in the draft for three out of four years, and the fact that they made the most of those choices helped give their dynasty a second wind. But how were they able to get those top draft picks, when they were successful every year?
In the early part of the 1970s, the Cowboys’ first-round draft picks were decidedly unimpressive. In part this was because they were drafting late, but even given that, they made some bad choices. After taking future star running backs Calvin Hill and Duane Thomas back to back in 1969 and 1970, they then spent first round draft picks on:
- Tody Smith, defensive end out of USC, taken at No. 25 in 1971. The younger brother of Bubba Smith, Tody lasted two years in Dallas, making six starts.
- Bill Thomas, running back out of Boston College, taken at No. 26 in 1972. He hurt his shoulder in training camp, didn’t play till the eighth game of the season, and never started for the Cowboys or even made a rushing attempt. He was cut in 1973.
Then in 1973, they took Billy Joe Dupree, tight end out of Michigan State, at No. 20. DuPree went on to make three Pro Bowls and retired with the most receiving touchdowns of any tight end in Cowboys history. Nevertheless, Tex Schramm decided he needed to draft higher in the first round. Over the next four years, he would make three heists to land the Cowboys right at the top of the draft.
The First Heist
Schramm packaged Tody Smith along with wide receiver Billy Parks and sent them to the Oilers in the summer of 1973 for their first and third round picks in the next year’s draft. The first rounder promised to be a juicy one, since Houston had finished 1-13 in 1973.
Sid Gillman was running the Oilers then, and he had pretty much written off the subsequent year’s draft. “The scouts tell me next year will be a very poor one in the draft,” Gillman said in justifying the trade. “You can’t just pick up a Parks or a Tody Smith in the draft.”
And Parks did have a big year for the Oilers in 1973, hauling in 43 passes, good enough to tie Ken Burrough as the leading receiver among the Houston wideouts. Tody Smith started all 14 Houston games at defensive end. But the Oilers had their second consecutive 1-13 season, handing the Cowboys the first overall pick in the draft.
With that pick, the Cowboys took defensive end Ed “Too Tall” Jones out of Tennessee State. He was the first-ever player from a historically black college to be taken first overall. Jones would go on to make three Pro Bowls, despite missing a season at his peak of his career to pursue a boxing career.
With the third round pick, the Cowboys took Danny White from Arizona State. After playing in the WFL for two years, White punted and served as Roger Staubach’s backup for four years before taking over for Staubach in 1980.
And the Oilers? Bubba’s little brother lasted three and a half seasons for them. After his big 1973 season, Parks caught just 21 more passes in the remainder of his career, all with Houston.
The Second Heist
Craig Morton led Dallas to Super Bowl V, in 1971, but by 1973 he had relinquished the starting job to Roger Staubach. Morton was trying to get out of Dallas; before the 1974 season, he signed with the Houston Texans of the WFL with the intention of playing for them in 1975. But when the Texans moved to Shreveport, Morton claimed his contract was only good if the team remained in Houston.
Over the first six games of the Cowboys’ 1974 season, Morton threw but two passes. A desperate Morton missed a practice, trying to force the Cowboys’ hand, and asked to be traded. Meanwhile, in New York, the Giants went 1-5 in their first six games behind a combination of the 35-year-old Norm Snead and Jim Del Gaizo.
So the Giants pulled off a pair of trades at the deadline on October 22: They sent Snead to the 49ers for two future draft picks, and acquired Morton just in time for him to start against his old team in week 7. (Morton threw three interceptions in a 21-7 loss.) The Cowboys had their worst season in a long time, finishing 8-6 and missing the playoffs for the first time since 1965.
The cost for Craig Morton: The Giants’ first-round pick in 1975, plus a second-rounder in 1976. The Giants went 1-7 down the stretch in 1974 with Morton under center, tying the Colts for the worst record in the NFL. The Cowboys could very well have had the top overall pick for the second year in a row, but they lost a coin flip with the Colts.
The Falcons, at 3-11, were slated to pick third. But they traded up with the Colts to take Steve Bartkowski, a quarterback out of Cal (just like Morton). The Colts reportedly were leaning toward taking Outland Trophy winner Randy White out of Maryland with the first pick, but after the trade with Atlanta, he fell to the Cowboys. The Colts, taking third, ended up taking Ken Huff, a guard from North Carolina; with the fourth pick, the Bears took Walter Payton.
Morton lasted two more seasons in New York, throwing 20 touchdowns against 36 interceptions while the Giants won a total of seven games. Traded to Denver before the 1977 season, he immediately led the Broncos to the Super Bowl.
Randy White spent the first two years of his Cowboys career as a backup linebacker and special teams player before being moved to the defensive line in 1977. He then made nine straight Pro Bowls and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1994.
The Third Heist
Tampa Bay and Seattle, the new expansion teams, had the first two picks for the 1976 draft, while the Cowboys took cornerback Aaron Kyle with the 27th pick of the first round. After going 0-16, the Bucs had the first pick again in 1977, and made it clear they would take tailback Ricky Bell, who had played under coach John McKay at USC. The Seahawks, needing an infusion of talent, listened to offers for the second pick.
The Cowboys had obtained the No. 14 choice as well as a second rounder from the Chargers for the backup quarterback who had replaced Morton, Clint “the Mad Bomber” Longley. They offered those two picks plus two other second round picks to the Seahawks for the right to draft No. 2 overall.
The Seahawks, focused on accumulating talent, ended up assembling six picks in the first 90 selections. The biggest names from their 1977 draft ended up being offensive linemen Steve August, Tom Lynch and John Yarno. I’ve never heard of them either. Clint Longley started one game for the Chargers before washing out of the league.
The Cowboys took Tony Dorsett. The following January, they won the Super Bowl.
With Too Tall, Randy White and Dorsett in the fold, the Cowboys won at least 11 games in each of the next five seasons. They wouldn’t have another draft pick in the top ten until 1989 – when they took Troy Aikman at Number One.