Jimmy Johnson disagrees with all the tanking talk.....
“People are wanting to compare them and tanking to what we did the first year in Dallas,’’ said Johnson, who went on to coach the Dolphins after winning two Super Bowls coaching the Cowboys. “That’s completely wrong.”
“First of all, Tom Landry was a great coach who had three losing seasons before I got there,’’ Johnson said of his 1989 entrance to Dallas. "They were 3-13 the year before I got here. We weren’t tanking my first year. We were just bad. We were old and slow.
“There wasn’t a lot of talent there. I made a ton of trades — 51 in five years. But the only player I traded that first year of any value was Herschel [Walker]. I kept Ken Norton, a rookie. I kept a young Michael Irvin. I traded our starting quarterback, Steve Pelluer, to Kansas City [for third- and fourth-round picks].
“The key is not getting draft picks,’’ Johnson said. “The key is picking the right players. There’s been plenty of teams with a bunch of draft picks. The Rams, when they traded Eric Dickerson, made a similar trade to what I had with Herschel. Didn’t do a thing with it. I hate to say this but two of their first-round picks were [former University of Miami players] Bill Hawkins and Cleveland Gary.”
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports...0190919-dop6objxpncfrdlvizz2ucqwky-story.html