Garbage out?
Jennifer Floyd Engel
StarTelegram Staff Writer
IRVING - Just as Troy Hambrick had predicted, when Emmitt Smith called his ex-Cowboys teammates "trash" this summer, a curtain was yanked back and a long-kept secret revealed.
The ugly truth is that Smith, who returns to Texas Stadium with the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday, was the distraction.
"I think, perhaps, at times, the focus on the season was based on him getting his rushing record rather than us having a successful winning percentage," defensive end Ebenezer Ekuban said. "Good or bad, it was a distraction, so we have better things to focus on now as a team, and that is winning games."
What Ekuban is saying is that 2002 was never about 10-6. It was all about 16,726, the NFL rushing record.
Nobody could say it last season. How could they bash a legend? How could they say "You can't spell Emmitt without 'I' and 'ME?'"
They couldn't. So they didn't.
They kept their mouths shut when his pursuit of the NFL rushing record eclipsed the team's pursuit of a winning season, when his personal accolades surpassed team goals, when his ego prevented making necessary changes.
They did it because they owed it to him. And they would have accepted it all and said "goodbye and thank you" had Smith kept his mouth shut. But he couldn't. He was quoted in Sports Illustrated in August as saying he felt like "a diamond surrounded by trash" in 2002.
What his Cowboys teammates felt was betrayed.
"If you have any pride of playing the game of football, it did have an effect on you," linebacker Dexter Coakley said. "Especially [coming from] a guy who had been here so long, done so much in this game, and to go out and say some of the things he said ...
"It was very painful. He was just speaking his mind. He didn't mean, literally, trash being the players."
At least Coakley does not think so.
What he knows for sure is one man's "trash" is another man's treasure.
Coach Bill Parcells has recycled a team Smith discarded as "trash" into an NFL surprise. Four weeks into what many expected to be another 5-11 season, at best, Dallas finds itself 2-1. Both victories came away from Texas Stadium, a Cowboys' Achilles' heel for almost a decade.
If, like Parcells says, confidence is only born of demonstrated ability, the Cowboys have earned the right to be confident.
"So, if you start to demonstrate some ability that you can win some games on the road, then you become more confident that you can," Parcells said. "So now they know they can do something. Now, will we continue to do that? Who knows?"
Because, in Parcells' mind, a corner cannot be turned in three games. They have to be contending at Thanksgiving. Or, at least, Halloween. He is talking about winning three games. Consecutively. Before he starts getting happy, he needs to see more.
Winning on the road is a start. It is only a start.
"Listen, we are going to have several crises this year. There isn't any doubt about it," Parcells said. "I think the key thing for a coach is you can't let a crisis lessen the vision of what you are trying to do. That is important.
"I'm not trying to teach anybody life lessons here, but that is an important lesson in life as well. ... A lot of people get very distracted at the first sign of crises. The media can be particularly distracting in crises."
Reporters talk "trash" when the coach wants to focus on improvement.
Which makes Smith's pending arrival quite timely.
He is a reminder of how things were. That is no longer how they are. Cowboys players say Smith would not recognize the Cowboys' locker room if he were to walk in today. There is a quiet confidence that did not exist during the 5-11s. There is a seriousness instilled by Parcells. There are leaders who insist on it.
"I think Emmitt took a lot of pride in knowing that he was a leader on this team. Not to take anything away from him, but there is just a lot more focus here without him here because we have Parcells and we have other key contributors who have come in and been put into that leadership role," Ekuban said. "Nothing against him, but we're just feeding off what we have now and getting better."
The next step to being better is beating the Cardinals.
Which means stopping Smith, whose modus operandi is to put up big numbers in big games.
"Emmitt cannot beat us by his damn self," safety Roy Williams said. "I am going to be for real about that."
