Scot McCloughan was born March 1, 1971, a little more than a month after the Redskins hired George Allen as head coach and general manager. Edward Bennett Williams held the title of team president, but functioned more like an owner. It was Allen’s team to run, soup to nuts. Meantime the hated Dallas Cowboys had three men doing Allen’s jobs and had been working together like a well oiled machine for more than a decade by the time Allen arrived in Washington. Now 45 years later, thanks in large part to McCloughan, who’s now 45, the Redskins and Cowboys have reversed their ways of doing business.
Dallas entered the NFL as an expansion team in 1960, mainly to make sure Lamar Hunt, who owned the AFL’s Dallas Texans didn’t take over that valuable market. New owner Clint Murchison was smart enough to hire Tex Schramm, who had worked with new commissioner Pete Rozelle in the front office of the Los Angeles Rams. Schramm was given the title of president and made two huge hires – Tom Landry as head coach and Gil Brandt as general manager. The three of them would work together an astounding 29 seasons, playing in five Super Bowls, winning two. Murchison stayed out of the way as they reshaped professional football in the second half of the 20th century.
Free agency was decades away when the Cowboys launched. The choices were build through the draft or trade draft picks for veterans. While Allen chose to do the later, the Cowboys believed in the draft and committed to it. Brandt was light years ahead of everybody else, thanks to a computer program he developed with IBM and his willingness to think outside the box. He drafted track star Bob Hayes, who would go on to the Hall of Fame. He took basketball players like Cornell Green and Pete Gent and turned them into football players. Undrafted free agents like Drew Pearson, Cliff Harris and Everson Walls became stars. When teams passed on Heisman trophy winner Roger Staubach because he had a five year military commitment, Brandt used a 10th round pick on the midshipman in 1964. Staubach would win two Super Bowls and is regarded as one of the greatest of all time. And even though Herschel Walker was under contract to Donald Trump in the USFL, Brandt spent a fifth rounder on the former Georgia star in case the league folded. The league folded and Walker eventually became the trade bait the Cowboys needed to rebuild the team with a boatload of draft picks they got from Minnesota.
Landry, with an brilliant mind and an engineering degree from the University of Texas, engineered one of the great rags to riches story in the history of sports. In his first four years, the Cowboys went 0-11-1, 4-9-1, 5-8-1 and 4-10. With the 1964 season approaching with just a year left on Landry’s contract, there was speculation he was on his way out. Murchison heard those rumors and responded by giving Landry a 10 year contract extension. Dallas went 5-8-1 in ’64, but didn’t have another losing season until 1986. And while Schramm stayed out of the player selection and coaching business, he understood that marketing was becoming a big part of the game. He strung together the largest radio network in the country and even did a show on it himself. Schramm green lighted the famed “Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders” and gave his thumbs up when NFL Films labeled the Cowboys, “America’s Team.”
Schramm, Brandt and Landry with the support they got from Murchison until he sold the team to Bum Bright in 1984, were an incredible trio running the best organization in sports. So strong was the bond, that even an uncomfortable marital situation couldn’t break it. Brandt’s wife Anne, divorced him in 1975 to become….Mrs. Clint Murchison. Brandt continued to be employed by Murchison for another decade. Business before pleasure, as the saying goes.
A 3-13 season in 1988 ended it all. Bright, thanks to some business reversals, was forced to sell the team in 1989 to Jerry Jones. Brandt and Landry were quickly fired and Schramm was held over a few months to consult. Jones hired his old college teammate from Arkansas, where they’d played on an undefeated team. Jimmy Johnson, who’d won a national title at Miami, was the new head coach and general manager. The Jerry and Jimmy show was off and running.
After a rough start – 1-15 in ’89 – the Cowboys went the playoffs two years later and won the next two Super Bowls in the years that followed. And just like that it was over.
Despite the back to back titles, Jerry wasn’t happy that Jimmy was getting all the credit. Early in 1994, during a night of a few too many, Jones told a bunch of sportswriters that 500 other coaches could have won those Super Bowls. He even confirmed making that statement after he’d sobered up the next morning. As big as Dallas is, it wasn’t big enough for Jerry and Jimmy. Out went Jimmy, in came Barry Switzer, who’d been one of their assistant coaches at Arkansas. Switzer took the Cowboys to the NFC Championship Game in 1994 and a Super Bowl title in 1995. But since then, Jones has hired five coaches who have delivered just two playoff wins. And in those post-Johnson years, Jones has been his own general manager with only himself to be accountable to. He continues to shun suggestions that owner Jones should fire GM Jones. He has, however, finally started to admit dumping Jimmy was a mistake. He recently told KTCK-1310 in Dallas, “I lost my tolerance for a lot of things. I probably should have had a little more tolerance with Jimmy Johnson. Seriously.”
The Redskins, meantime have produced only two playoff wins themselves in that same timeframe with not five, but six different coaches. And owner Dan Snyder has taken his unsuccessful swings as a general manager – sometimes through puppet front office guy Vinny Cerrato. But now as year two of McCloughan’s tenure begins, the Skins may finally have the model that made Dallas so successful all those years.
McCloughan, Coach Jay Gruden and team president Bruce Allen have a long way go to match what Schramm, Brandt and Landry accomplished, but the structure is correct, as it was 45 years ago. That’s to take nothing away from Allen’s dad, George Allen, who laid the foundation for the rabid fan base that has supported the Redskins all these years. In an era where there was no salary cap, his dealing of draft picks for veterans produced a Super Bowl appearance and five playoff trips in seven years. It wouldn’t work today, but it was fun when it happened from 1971-77.
After just one division title in what was a down year in the NFC East, nobody is suggesting we crown these Redskins the new “America’s Team.” But with the Cowboys abandoning what made them what they were when they became “America’s Team”, you have to smile when you finally see the Redskins doing what was so right then and so right now.
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