We will move on very shortly to #56 in our Greatest Cowboys by Their Jersey Numbers series, but since we’ve been on the subject of Chuck Howley and Lee Roy Jordan in the past few days, I thought now would be a good time to present this excerpt from a great piece in Sports Illustrated from its issue on December 18, 1972.

(Incidentally, if you haven’t seen the SI Vault, check it out).

Some background: The Cowboys entered into the 1972 season as defending Super Bowl Champions, but they lost Roger Staubach to a shoulder injury early in the season. This meant that Craig Morton returned to the starting lineup. Moreover, Dallas had been forced to trade running back Duane Thomas, and though the team still had Calvin Hill and Walt Garrison, neither quite brought to the table what Thomas had. A 24-20 loss at Washington in week 6 dropped the Cowboys to 4-2. Four straight wins improved their record to 8-2, but a loss to San Francisco dropped the team two games behind the NFC East leading Washington Redskins. Two weeks after the loss to the 49ers, the 9-3 Cowboys faced the 11-1 Redskins, and while the Cowboys came away with a 34-24 win to secure a playoff berth, there were plenty of questions about whether Dallas could repeat. That was the subject of the article below.

Lee Roy Jordan

Halfheartedly, the Dallas Cowboys have moved into the playoffs again, their invitation engraved on a wild card. This means that they have qualified for postseason play for each of the last seven years, or ever since there has been a Super Bowl. In addition, they have made the Super Bowl the last two, and finally, last January, they demolished the Miami Dolphins to win their first world championship. But unless the Cowboys can cure an extreme case of split personality, it does not seem at all likely that they will be in Los Angeles on Jan. 14 when the NFL title is settled this season.

The best tip-off on how this very good football team has played all year came early in the second quarter of the game against Washington last Saturday. Moving with the crisp urgency that marked their drive to the championship in 1971, the Cowboys had just scored to go ahead of the Redskins 21-0. They had dominated the game easily, displaying almost flawless football both on offense and defense. You had the feeling, watching them inscribe their plays on the green artificial turf of Texas Stadium as meticulously as their coaches had drawn them on blackboards during the week, that they would dismantle the Redskins .

But Tex Schramm , the president of the club, sat in the press box staring glumly at the field, his mouth drawn down, the picture of a man watching his team take a horrible beating.

“Hey,” a friend said. “Cheer up. You’ve got the game won.”

“No, we haven’t,” Schramm said forlornly. “We don’t have a big enough cushion yet.”

The Cowboys built the cushion to 28-3 before the half, but then their personality split. All season long the Cowboys have played excellent football during the first two quarters of a game, then imitated somnambulists during the final two. Last week offered a classic example. In their scintillating first half the Cowboys out-gained the Redskins 210 yards to 84. They scored four touchdowns and shut off everything the Redskins tried to do, on the ground and in the air. But when they kicked off to Washington to start the second half, the picture changed completely. Washington , without Larry Brown , who was resting an injured knee, promptly marched 66 yards in 13 plays to score its first touchdown against a Dallas defense operating with what might best be described as languid determination.

Before it was over, the Redskins had two more touchdowns—and a 21-6 rout in the second half, which meant that Dallas just held on to win both halves by 34-24. “We were so far ahead, the defense began to try to contain them, instead of forcing the play,” Coach Tom Landry said after the game. “We were cutting off the long gainers, but they were taking the short stuff, and the first thing we knew, there they were crossing the goal line.”

It was all painfully reminiscent of the three games the Cowboys have lost this year, as well as of the 10 they have won. Overall, in the 13 first halves, they have outscored the opposition by 181 points to 91, but in the second halves their margin has been only 135-126. At least Saturday’s turnabout was less complete than their first game with the Redskins , when the Cowboys led 20-7 at halftime but managed to lose 24-20. That particular second-half swoon kept Dallas from winning a divisional championship for the first time since 1965, which means that the Cowboys will be on the road for any and all playoff games.

Chuck Howley , the six-time All-Pro outside linebacker who tore ligaments in his left knee in the third quarter last Saturday and is now lost for the season, spoke before the game about the weekly Cowboy second-half collapse. “Our problem could be overcaution,” he said. “In the first half we’re fresh and we are not afraid to take chances. Then we lay back, trying to avoid looking bad in the game films. You know, the Cowboys have always been real big on statistics, so we’re always conscious out there of how we’ll grade out in the films on Tuesday morning. The irony is that when I look back on the big plays I’ve made in my career, I realize I’ve always been out of position when I made them.”

A few more comments from Tom Landry later in the article:

Landry still has reservations about his defense, though he said after the game that he believed his offense—even without Roger Staubach—is superior to last season’s. The Cowboys do have the same record they had after 13 games last year, but without being nearly as impressive. When they began their drive to the Super Bowl last season they won their last seven regular-season games in a row—and a couple of them by overwhelming scores against respectable opponents. By contrast, so far this season the Cowboys have beaten only the inept Eagles and Cardinals and the confused Colts by comfortable margins.

Landry is inclined to cite psychological reasons for the team’s regular letdowns. “We haven’t been playing with the same intensity we did last season when we began our move,” he says. “We had been so hungry for so long last year; always coming close, but never winning the Super Bowl. Then we won the Super Bowl, and the big goal vanished. Our older players know how good they are and they enter so many games confidently, aware of their ability. We take a comfortable lead by halftime, then we have a tendency to lose our concentration and coast. The reaction of the other team, naturally enough, is the opposite. It comes out for the second half determined to turn the game around. Too often, that is exactly what it does.”

Click here to read the article in its entirety.

The aftermath: Dallas was trounced by the Giants in the final game of the season. The 10-4 Cowboys then looked as if they would lose to San Francisco in the divisional round of the playoffs, but Roger Staubach pulled out the first miracle win of his career, giving Dallas a 30-28 win. A week later, however, the Dallas offense was unable to mount an attack against the Redskins in the NFC Championship Game, and thanks largely to Charley Taylor, Washington came away with a 26-3 win.