Monday, November 25, 1996

Switzer makes it worse by benching Emmitt Smith

By IAN O'CONNOR / New York Daily News (Nov. 25, 1996)

His championship team making like the Jets, Barry Switzer tried to get smart. The Cowboys had not listened to him, had not taken this game with the Giants seriously after all. So the coach pulled out a ruler and searched for knuckles. He looked across the bench, up and down the salary chart, and picked his man. Emmitt Smith, Switzer decided, would pay with his job.

Switzer long ago proved he is short on ethics. Last night, he advanced the theory that he is short on brains. Switzer took the best player in football over the last five years and made him the class dunce. Smith spent most of the fourth quarter at the end of the Dallas bench. He was not hurt. He was not tired.

He was not happy, either.

"It was disappointing," Smith said later. "It's the first time that's ever happened to me."

Switzer was only doing what misguided coaches do. He took a humiliating loss to the Giants and made it worse. Smith's stall is the emotional epicenter of the Dallas dynasty. When that stall was empty three years ago, when Jerry Jones was trying to bluff at the bargaining table, the Cowboys didn't just lose two games.

They talked about racism. They drove Jimmy Johnson to tears.

So it was only natural that Switzer picked Smith as his fall guy. It was late in the third quarter, the Giants holding a 13-3 lead. Smith ran left with his second carry of the second half, losing one shoe and three yards. At that point, Smith had 18 yards on 11 attempts. This would be his final line.

"We wanted to play the other guy," Switzer said of Sherman Williams. "So we stuck him out there...I was trying to get something going. It's like changing pitchers in a ballgame."

Sherman Williams threw one pitch. Switzer could pay a heavy price for this trip to the mound.

"I'm quite disappointed. Very disappointed," Smith said. "Normally when I come out I'm tired or hurt. But in this case, my shoe came off and that was that."

Speaking calmly from a podium, Smith was asked if he felt a finger was being pointed his way.

"You have a tendency to think like that," he said. "I kind've asked myself the question, 'Did I play that poorly to deserve to be on the bench?'...My answer? I don't know until I look at the film."

This time, there is no need to rewind. Switzer's team surrendered any chance at homefield advantage in the playoffs by playing loose with the ball. Troy Aikman was intercepted twice. Michael Irvin was stripped by Corey Widmer, a fumble recovered by Tito Wooten and returned 54 yards for a touchdown. Deion Sanders was stripped by Phillippi Sparks, turning a near-touchdown into a near-disaster. Darryl Johnston fumbled away another series in the fourth quarter.

The result said more about the losers than the winners. The Giants cannot possibly claim this as a fresh start, not when it's too late to qualify for the playoffs, not when they will go from scratch again next year with a new coach.

But this could be the turning point for the Cowboys. Though they beat the 49ers and Packers, they haven't scored a touchdown in two weeks. At 7-5, Dallas is approaching dire straits.

"We've got to start playing better football on offense," Irvin said. "We have to put down the newspaper and turn off the TV and worry about what we're doing. We need to concentrate on what we're doing."

"We have to play a hell of a lot better than this," Switzer said, "or we won't be in it for long."

The Cowboys have to coach a hell of a lot better, too. If he doesn't win a second Super Bowl title, Switzer is going to sweat this winter. Jerry Jones is said to have a list. The Giants are said to have a list, too.

Dan Reeves, it turns out, is only on one of them. "I have a lot of respect for Dan Reeves," Jones said in the Dallas locker room. "He knows how to prepare a team well."

Switzer didn't have the Cowboys prepared at Giants Stadium. It wouldn't have been that big a deal had he not turned his most consequential player into a cheerleader.

Smith tried to play the part. After the Cowboys kicked a field goal on their first possession of the fourth, the benched star walked onto the field and delivered a series of high-fives.

Mostly, Smith isolated himself from the team. He sat in solitude, helmet in hand, singled out for all to see.

"They took me out," he said, "and I never got word to go back in...I'm not going to cause a commotion by saying I earned the right to play through my struggles."

We'll say it for him. You don't pull Greg Maddux. Don't sit Michael Jordan. Don't embarrass Emmitt Smith.

"I thought something was wrong with Emmitt," Aikman said. "I wasn't sure what exactly took place."

"I'm not concerned about this one bit," Jones said. "Emmitt Smith is a team guy. This will not be an issue."

A few minutes earlier, Smith wasn't quite as convincing. "I'm going to try," he said, "to put this one behind me."

SWITZER SHOULD pray his runner doesn't hold a grudge. The Cowboys have too many problems, too much ground to cover, to survive a tremor in the locker room.

"We stunk," Switzer said after losing to the Giants. "We didn't do anything efficient. We weren't smart."

The coach should know. Sitting Emmitt Smith was as dumb as it was dangerous.

(Ian O'Connor is a sports columnist for the New York Daily News. Write to him at: New York Daily News, 450 West 33rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10001.)

(c) 1996, New York Daily News. Distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services.