In 1995, the Dallas Cowboys won their third Super Bowl in four seasons. Since then, however, they have not returned to the Super Bowl – or even the NFC Championship Game.
Nevertheless, winning the Super Bowl is the franchise’s goal seemingly every season – and the Cowboys always fall short of expectations.
“First of all, they got to quit talking about winning championships,” Cowboys legend Drew Pearson said on The Zach Gelb Show. “That shouldn’t even be in their vocabulary. That shouldn’t be part of their discussion because they’re not good enough for that. To get to being a championship-caliber team, a contender every year, it’s a process. You got to work your way to that. We’ve been stumbling along in this process trying to get back on the winning side and get back to the playoffs and have success in the playoffs and maybe get back to a Super Bowl since it’s been so long. But it’s a process.”
Since winning the Super Bowl in January 1996, the Cowboys are 4-10 in the playoffs. All four wins came in the Wild Card round.
“These guys come in thinking every year they got the talent to do this and do that, but you still got to go out there and do it,” Pearson said. “They’re not building on anything. How many years [during] Jason Garrett’s tenure [did] they [finish] 8-8?”
Answer: four, including three years in a row from 2011 to 2013. The Cowboys also finished 8-8 last year – Garrett’s final season with the franchise – and are 3-8 in 2020.
“That mediocrity played out throughout most of his tenure while he was here, and now it’s continuing to go on,” Pearson said. “These guys shouldn’t even be talking about championships. They should be talking about getting through a season, trying to get to the playoffs and having success once they get there.”
Pearson, 69, played for the Cowboys from 1973 to 1983. He was a three-time first-team All-Pro and helped the Cowboys to a 27-10 win over the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XII.
“Back in the day, Coach [Tom] Landry used to set the goals that were attainable – he knew would be attainable – for his football team, and that would be based on the type of talent that he had with the football team,” Pearson said. “He would always set that reasonable goal of [winning] the NFC East or [getting] to the playoffs, and the outstanding goal, once we get there, is to get to the Super Bowl and win it. But this team shouldn’t have those types of goals. They should just have goals of just being [successful] and trying to win one game at a time and see where that gets them when the season ends.”