Coaching Confidential: Inside the Fraternity of NFL Coaches (21 page)

Two decades later, Johnson says he was going to leave the Cowboys before the 1994 draft even before the blowup with Jones. Is that revisionist history? Johnson saving face? There was never any indication he was going to leave until Jones insulted him that night in Orlando.

“I’ve always been kind of a gypsy. I never stayed anywhere longer than five years. I was ready to move to south Florida,” Johnson said. “I’d already bought a place in the Florida Keys.”

He said he had his Corvette driven from Dallas to Atlanta for the Super Bowl so that it was closer to its final destination in the Keys. The driver was William Wesley, who years later became known as World Wide Wes. He became close to many NBA stars, including LeBron James. “I put him on our sideline. Look at the picture when they are throwing the Gatorade on me in the Super Bowl in Atlanta,” Johnson said. “He’s got a coat and tie on. He’s right there next to me on the sideline.”

That was Johnson’s way of saying he was gone from the Cowboys. If the Corvette was headed to his home in Tavernier, so was he. At the time, the thought was that Johnson would get antsy after making a run at a third consecutive title. But now he says he was planning to leave even before that night in Orlando. What would have happened if Jones hadn’t said some silly stuff in the bar at 3 a.m.?

“I’d have left,” Johnson said. “I already had it marked on the calendar when I was leaving before that even happened. I was going to give them time to prepare before the draft. And I think
that probably had a little bit to do with Jerry’s attitude. Kind of like a jilted lover. I don’t think he knew it. He might have sensed it.”

The Cowboys’ headquarters is a sprawling one-level building. Jones occupied Tex Schramm’s old office on the management side of the building. Johnson had Landry’s old office in the football operations side of the building. The place was not big enough for the two of them to coexist.

If Johnson was indeed not planning to come back in 1994, it would have made more sense for him to walk away right after the Super Bowl the way Bill Walsh did with the 49ers after beating the Bengals in January 1989. “The only thing I hate about it is I think it really put a bad taste in the mouths of all the players,” Johnson said. “Troy and I have talked about it. Michael and all of them. They felt not only did I leave Jerry, I left them. So with the players, I think it really strained the relationship. Troy comes down here to the house on occasion. We spend a lot of time together. One night he even got almost angry talking about it. That’s the only thing that I regret.”

Ultimately, the egos of Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson tore the Cowboys apart. Switzer won a Super Bowl, but Dallas won despite the coach, who was just a caretaker. Jones and Johnson had a great thing going. The Cowboys of the ’90s might have been remembered as the best team of all time if they had been able to keep the management infrastructure in place.

“I was ready to leave,” Johnson said. “I had done my deal. I was ready for something else.”

He had done his deal. The Herschel Walker deal. The greatest trade in NFL history. The deal of the century.

Sean Payton, Roger Goodell, and Drew Brees were all smiles the morning after the Saints defeated the Colts in Super Bowl XLIV in Miami following the 2009 season. Just two years later, Goodell suspended Payton for the entire 2012 season after a league investigation determined the Saints had been setting bounties on opposing players for three seasons and Payton didn’t stop it.
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Joe Gibbs might have done the best coaching job of his Hall of Fame career late in the 2007 season after Sean Taylor, his best defensive player, was murdered in a home invasion. Gibbs prevented his players from emotionally falling apart, and they honored the memory of their teammate by making a run that earned them a playoff spot.
Courtesy of the Washington Redskins

Robert Kraft thought he hit the lottery when he bought his hometown Patriots in 1994 and inherited iconic coach Bill Parcells. He soon found out the view of Parcells up close was much different from what he saw from a distance as a Patriots fan.
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Kraft really wanted to promote Bill Belichick when Parcells left for the Jets in 1997, but felt he needed a clean break from the Parcells regime, so he hired former Jets coach Pete Carroll, at the time the defensive coordinator of the 49ers. Kraft was very fond of Carroll, but the team regressed in each of his three seasons and Kraft fired him and finally hired Belichick.
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Kraft and Belichick lifted three Super Bowl trophies together as New England dominated the early part of the new millennium. But the Spygate scandal in 2007 rocked the Patriots and led to Kraft calling Belichick a “real schmuck,” when Belichick told Kraft the surveillance was not much help to New England.
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Lawrence Taylor tested the patience of Bill Parcells with his drug issues, but the greatest defensive player in NFL history and one of the best coaches of his era were quite a team. Parcells would not have won two Super Bowls without LT, and Taylor might have only been great instead of incredible if he didn’t have the Tuna pushing him.
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It was a proud day for Tampa coach Tony Dungy when President Bill Clinton visited the Bucs in 2000. Dungy and his thirteen-year-old son, James, presented Clinton with a Bucs T-shirt when he stopped by training camp for a surprise visit. Five years later, not far from where he met the president, James Dungy committed suicide by hanging himself in his apartment.
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Eagles coach Andy Reid and former Bucs and Colts coach Tony Dungy shared an interest in Michael Vick after he was released from prison on 2009. The problems Reid and Dungy had with their own sons helped lead them to Vick. They knew Vick needed a second chance. And Vick eventually led Dungy and Reid to each other.
Courtesy of the Philadelphia Eagles