Troy Aikman knows a thing or two about winning Super Bowls, but he’s not sure the Dallas Cowboys do these days.
Speaking with The Musers in Dallas on 96.7 KTCK-FM and 1310 KTCK-AM The Ticket on the 20th anniversary of the last championship for the ‘Boys, Aikman provided some honest, stark commentary on the state of the franchise:
“This team, for 20 years, really has been so inconsistent,” said Aikman, via the Dallas Morning News. “And unless practices change, I don’t see that changing any time soon. …And I think you’ve got to be able to look back on something and say, ‘OK, we’re building something here and these things that we do pay off,’ but I haven’t seen that, so I don’t anticipate any time soon anything being any different from what we’ve seen the last 20 years.”
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones canned Jimmy Johnson in 1993 after winning two Super Bowls in a row. Using the roster Johnson built, Jones and the ‘Boys won another Super Bowl two years later, but things went downhill fast afterwards. Since 1996, the organization has experienced 10 or more wins just six times and has made the playoffs only eight times.
Since that last Super Bowl win, the Cowboys have famously won just three postseason games and haven’t come close to sniffing a Super Bowl berth. Not coincidentally, Dallas’ roster has been shaped by Jones, who still hasn’t learned how to let other, more knowledgeable football people take over the personnel department.
Because of this, top coaches haven’t exactly been flocking to Dallas because they know they won’t have the final say on any personnel decisions, and so the merry-go-round continues to simply spin in place.
Aikman isn’t wrong here. Dallas really does need to start doing things differently. Firing Johnson all those years ago was the worst mistake Jones has ever made, and the organization has reaped mediocrity ever since his influence has been lost for good.