Tuesday, September 3, 1996

Let's wait to see if Emmitt Smith is all right
By Rich Hofmann
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
(Sept. 3, 1996)

CHICAGO (KRT) - It was just past 11 p.m. here, a terrible night for the Dallas Cowboys. A game is one thing, though. A stretcher is different.

Emmitt Smith was the decoy on the play. The decoy - which tells you all you need to know about where the Cowboys were Monday night in their 22-6 loss to the Chicago Bears. It was a bootleg right by Troy Aikman, a bootleg play that ended up losing yards. And at the beginning, there was a fake handoff to Emmitt Smith with 3 minutes, 41 seconds left in the game.

A fake handoff and a dive.

He's done it dozens of times, to be sure. Fake, leap, land on the pile as Aikman scurries outside behind him, scurries free as the defense converges on the best running back in the NFL today.
Fake, leap, land on the pile.

Except there was no pile.

In person, it looked as if Smith landed hard on his right shoulder. After the game, the Cowboys' orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Robert Vandermeer, said Smith told him he landed on his head. Whatever. There was nothing to cushion his fall - no teammate, no opponent, neither of his outstretched hands. And with the play continuing on behind him, nobody really paid all that much attention as Smith landed on the natural turf that covers Soldier Field.

But then he didn't get up.

For five minutes more, doctors and trainers and other medical personnel hovered over him. For all that time, a stadium that had rocked with the surprising turn of events was struck silent.

With extreme caution, the medical people placed Smith onto a stretcher, then lifted him onto a cart, then drove him off to be X-rayed in a room underneath the stadium.

And then came the word after the game.

"He's complaining of numbness and tingling down his left arm and his left leg," Vandermeer said. "The preliminary X-rays taken here did not show any fractures of the neck or the low back. But we feel the safest thing to do is transfer him to the hospital tonight, then get studies done in the morning, a CAT scan and an MRI to rule out fractures to the neck or the back."

At this point, it was after midnight in Chicago; a dreadful night had turned into a worse tomorrow.

Soon after Vandermeer spoke, Smith was taken to nearby Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The doctor said Smith never lost consciousness, wasn't in a lot of pain and that he was able to move his arms and legs. That is the good news. But the tingling and numbness are a real concern.

Asked if he was cautious or optimistic, the doctor said: "I'm cautious. You have to be with the complaints he has."

Even if everything turns out to be OK, Vandermeer said Smith would miss at least one game.
"We'll have to see how he feels," the doctor said.

With that, a league holds its collective breath. There will be plenty to chew over in the next few days, after the Cowboys came out and played a reasonably atrocious game to open their defense of the Super Bowl XXX title. There will be plenty of tut-tutting and we-told-you's, plenty to go around.
But let's remember the real thing here.

Let's wait to see if Emmitt Smith is all right.

Many of the Cowboys left Soldier Field Monday night apparently unaware of Smith's exact injury. There were a lot of hushed good wishes expressed on his behalf, and you can be certain that they came from many different parts of the Cowboys' souls.

On one level, Smith is one of their friends and one of their leaders. In the NFL, this camaraderie stuff can sometimes be just stuff. In Smith's case, you sense that the affection is real. When Aikman stands up there and says, "I haven't heard the word - all we can do is keep our fingers crossed," you sense there is more in those words than a mindless expression.

When Deion Sanders stands there and says, "I prayed for him. I hope he's OK. I hope he's OK. I don't know, but I'm praying for him," well, the sincerity outshines even the neon.

They are football players. They live with the physical danger every week. They're lying to you if they ever say they really get used to the brutality of the whole thing. It's gruesome. They all have stories.

But don't kid yourselves. Friends or otherwise, they're all professionals - which means that they play for money, which means that they know who's important and who isn't important in the rather elementary business of winning games and putting bread in everybody's mouth. And Emmitt Smith is important. Emmitt Smith is as important as they get.

He was misused Monday night, a night when the Cowboys - without suspended wide receiver Michael Irvin and tight end Jay Novacek - still decided to go pass-happy on early downs and ignore their dominant running game and their dominant running back.

Smith got 18 carries for 70 yards, which is some, but not enough. This was a close game until the middle of the fourth quarter, when four turnovers finally caught up to the Cowboys.

They could have run Smith more. They could have taken some pressure off the passing game, which was obviously feeling the loss of Irvin and Novacek. Fewer people were open. The people who were open were dropping the ball. Throw in nine penalties and a couple of timeouts blown because of people in the wrong formations and whatnot, and the Cowboys needed to simplify the process Monday night, not complicate it.

Emmitt Smith is simplicity personified. He was coming off knee and ankle injuries already, and maybe the Cowboys were trying to lighten his load a bit. It's hard to say. But, to repeat: Emmitt Smith is simplicity. Emmitt Smith is why the Cowboys win.

Just give him the ball and let him get it done. It is their way. It has been their way throughout this decade, throughout a run of three Super Bowls in four years, throughout a run for the ages.

But that was then. This is now: Emmitt Smith, lying in a Chicago hospital, numbness and tingling in his arm and his leg. Suddenly, some problems don't seem so big anymore.
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(c) 1996, Philadelphia Daily News. Distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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