Forever feuding Jerry Jones, Jimmy Johnson still arguing over Herschel Walker
It’s been 20 years since Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and former Dallas coach Jimmy Johnson dramatically parted ways after two straight Super Bowl victories, and the two former college roommates are still publicly arguing about who deserves more praise for the NFL’s early 1990s dynasty.
In ESPN’s latest “30 for 30” short, “The Great Trade Robbery,” Johnson took credit for the legendary Herschel Walker trade that laid the foundation for three Super Bowl trophies in four seasons, bringing Emmitt Smith, Alvin Harper, Dixon Edwards and Darren Woodson, among others, to Dallas.
“When I told Jerry that we were going to trade Herschel Walker, he was kind of astonished,” said Johnson. “He said, ‘Really? You can’t get rid of Herschel Walker. We won’t score a point if we don’t have Herschel Walker.’ And that’s what Minnesota thought. Minnesota thought, ‘This college guy, we’ll pull one over on him. We’re going to give him these five guys, and they’ll fall in love with them, and we won’t have to give up anything until the No. 1 pick a couple years down the line.’ That’s what they thought.”
Johnson, never short on ego, went on to rip Tom Landry’s “slow and old” Cowboys roster before his arrival in 1989, declaring the national championship team he coached at University of Miami could’ve given them a run. “I had to do something to improve the talent level of the Cowboys in a hurry,” he added. “I knew that the only way we were going to turn the Cowboys around was with draft picks.”
However, Jones — himself no stranger to the spotlight — remembers the Walker deal differently. Here’s what the Cowboys owner said during his weekly KRLD-FM radio show, per the Star-Telegram.
“I was visiting about trading Herschel Walker weeks before we ever started directly talking about it. So anybody that has any thinking that it was their unique idea. … There were a lot of different ways, a lot of ways of thinking coming up with, ‘Was Herschel the future? What direction were we going to go?’ Those kinds of things. The reason I’m saying this is you mentioned Jimmy. We didn’t have any of this B.S. at that time. Both of us felt so lucky to get up in the morning and be here. We were hemming and hawing and working together, not worrying about who was doing what. I’ll tell you this: We had our sleeves rolled up, and we were working, doing everything we could to help build this team.”
It didn’t take long before Johnson began “backbiting, undermining and whispering” about the owner’s early ’90s ineptitude, Jones told “ESPN The Magazine” over the summer. According to that same piece, Johnson told the media in those days, “My girlfriend knows more about football,” and Jones countered publicly, “Any one of 500 coaches could have won those Super Bowls.”
Jones, of course, bid adieu to his former University of Arkansas teammate in the form of a $2 million severance check, and two years later Dallas won a third Super Bowl in four years under Barry Switzer.
Something tells me this isn’t the last we’re going to hear from Jones or Johnson. Just a hunch.
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Ben Rohrbach is a contributor for Ball Don’t Lie and Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach