Dallas Cowboys dynasty: Close calls cost them a place in history

There’s a case to be made that the Dallas Cowboys are the most compelling story in NFL history.

Not just for what they won but for what they didn’t.

CBS Sports’ Bryan DeArdo put together a definitive ranking of the greatest NFL teams by decade, and the Cowboys pop up across three different eras.

That kind of sustained relevance is rare. What’s even rarer and probably tells the real Dallas story is the way the Cowboys kept running into history’s best teams at the worst possible moments.

The decades Dallas almost owned

In the 1960s, Tom Landry’s Cowboys earned honorable mention status while Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers ran the decade.

With both of them being the coordinators for the New York Giants’ championship teams in the 1950’s just added a ton of drama to the rivalry.

The gap between those two franchises came down to some of the most famous games ever played.

Green Bay’s two Super Bowl wins came after close, hard-fought wins over Landry’s Cowboys in NFL championship games, with the second coming in the legendary Ice Bowl, a game played at minus-15 degrees with a wind chill of minus-48.

Dallas lost by just three points.

The 1970s told a similar story. Pittsburgh’s Steelers won a record four Super Bowls in six years, and the Cowboys served as runner-up for the decade.

Dallas won two Super Bowls during the decade but also lost two to Pittsburgh, including Super Bowl XIII, the first Super Bowl ever played between two franchises that had already won multiple titles.

Both losses were by a combined 11 points.

In the 1980s, Dallas didn’t even crack the honorable mention list as San Francisco’s dynasty, built around Joe Montana and Bill Walsh’s West Coast offense, took over the NFL.

The decade Dallas did own

The Cowboys finally got their decade in the 1990s, and they earned it.

The architect of Dallas’ dynasty was coach Jimmy Johnson, who made 51 trades from 1989-92.

The most famous move sent Herschel Walker to Minnesota, and the draft capital that came back helped build a roster around “The Triplets” of Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith.

Smith won both league and Super Bowl MVP honors in 1993 and went on to become the NFL’s all-time leading rusher.

Dallas won three Super Bowls in four years, beating the Bills twice and knocking San Francisco out of the NFC title game in back-to-back seasons.

The Cowboys were that good.

But Johnson shockingly left Dallas after the 1993 season, opening the door for the 49ers to briefly reclaim the NFC.

Dallas did return for one more title in the 1995 season, topping Pittsburgh in Super Bowl XXX.

The Cowboys haven’t returned to an NFC title game — let alone a Super Bowl — since. That’s more than 30 years of drought from a franchise that once had a legitimate claim to be the NFL’s premier team across three different decades.

The history Dallas built from the 1960s through the 1990s hasn’t been matched in 40 years. At least not by this franchise, anyway.

Other decades’ greatest teams per CBS Sports:

• 1920s: Canton/Cleveland Bulldogs
• 1930s: Green Bay Packers
• 1940s: Chicago Bears
• 1950s: Cleveland Browns
• 1960s: Green Bay Packers (Cowboys: honorable mention)
• 1970s: Pittsburgh Steelers (Cowboys: runner-up)
• 1980s: San Francisco 49ers
• 1990s: Dallas Cowboys
• 2000s: New England Patriots
• 2010s: New England Patriots
• 2020s: Kansas City Chiefs