January 16, 1972: The Dallas Cowboys Win the Big One

Duane Thomas

January 16, 1972: The Dallas Cowboys, after some rough near-misses, finally win the big one.

An expansion team in 1960, they won the NFL Western Division title in 1966 and 1967, but lost the NFL Championship Game to the Green Bay Packers both times. They lost in the Divisional round in 1968 and 1969, both times to the Cleveland Browns.

In 1970, the 1st season after the full NFL-AFL merger, coach Tom Landry's Cowboys went 10-4, beat the Detroit Lions in the Divisional round, and beat the San Francisco 49ers in the 1st-ever NFC Championship Game. Quarterback Craig Morton, defensive tackle Bob Lilly, and the team that had lost a thriller at home on New Year's Day in 1967 and the Ice Bowl in Green Bay on New Year's Eve that same year was ready to take the final step.

They had advanced to Super Bowl V, against the Baltimore Colts, who were also seeking redemption, having lost Super Bowl III to the New York Jets, when they were favored by 18 points. It was a sloppy game, and the Colts won it, 16-13, on a field goal by Jim O'Brien with 5 seconds left.

The Cowboys had gained a reputation as "the team that couldn't win the big one." The idea that they would ever become what they would call themselves by the end of the decade, "America's Team," was ludicrous.

Landry decided he'd had enough: As the Cowboys were moving into a new home, leaving the Cotton Bowl for Texas Stadium in suburban Irving, he got a new quarterback, benching Morton for Roger Staubach. His running backs included Dan Reeves, Calvin Hill (an All-Pro whose son Grant would make the Basketball Hall of Fame), Walt Garrison, and Duane Thomas, a Dallas native long on both talent and complications.

Staubach's receivers included Bob Hayes, the Olympic sprinting Gold Medalist; and 2 men who would make the Pro Football Hall of Fame mainly for their achievements elsewhere, former San Diego Charger Lance Alworth and former Chicago Bear tight end Mike Ditka. They offensive line including 2 Hall of Fame offensive tackles, Rayfield Wright and former Packer Forrest Gregg. Between them, Reeves, Ditka and Gregg would be the head coaches of teams that reached 6 Super Bowls, although only Ditka would win one.

Landry had built what became known as the Doomsday Defense. Bob Lilly was a Hall of Fame tackle. The linebacking corps of Lee Roy Jordan, Chuck Howley, D.D. Lewis and former Packer Lee Roy Caffey was as good as any ever assembled. The backfield included another Packer, Hall-of-Famer Herb Adderley, plus Mel Renfro, Cornell Green, Cliff Harris and Charlie Waters.

They went 11-3 in the regular season. Their only losses were by 4 at home to the Washington Redskins, by 10 away to the New Orleans Saints, and by 4 away to the Chicago Bears. On Christmas Day, they beat the Minnesota Vikings in the Divisional Playoff, 20-12 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. On January 2, 1972, in the 1st of 24 Playoff games that Texas Stadium would host, they won the NFC Championship by beating the San Francisco 49ers, 14-3.

They had advanced to Super Bowl VI, set for Tulane Stadium in New Orleans, home of Tulane University and the annual Sugar Bowl. Their opponents would be the Miami Dolphins. An even newer team, they had been founded in 1966, and had made the Playoffs the last 2 seasons. Their head coach was Don Shula, who had coached the Colts in their Super Bowl III loss. His team might not (yet) have needed redemption, but he sure did.

And so it was Landry and Shula, possibly the 1st 2 good defensive backs after the NFL went to two-platoon football, and of the 2 earliest great defensive coordinators, who both needed to cap their legacies with a championship, and needed it badly. But only one could get it on this occasion.

Also needing some kind of redemption was Duane Thomas. Based on the shenanigans of later players like Terrell Owens, Chad "Ochocinco" Johnson and Antonio Brown, the things Thomas did and said now seem rather tame. But football observers had never seen anyone like him before.

Before the season, he wanted his 3-year contract rewritten. Cowboy management refused. He called team president Tex Schramm "deceitful," player personnel director Gil Brandt "a liar," and Landry himself "a plastic man" and "no man at all." And he refused to report to training camp.

So the Cowboys traded him to the New England Patriots. But he wouldn't report to them, either. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle actually voided the trade, something sports league commissioners rarely do. Thomas reported to Dallas, but announced that he wouldn't talk to his teammates, or to team management, or to the media.

It worked. He scored the 1st touchdown at Texas Stadium -- with some irony, against the Patriots. He led the NFL in touchdowns with 13, and in rushing touchdowns with 11. A reporter tried to get him to break his silence in the leadup to the Super Bowl, and succeeded: He asked Thomas about playing in "the ultimate game," and Thomas said, "If it's the ultimate, how come they're playing it again the next year?"

Dallas and Miami. Texas and Florida. It was the 1st time any sport's championship game down to 2 teams whose home States had both been on the Confederate side in the American Civil War. And it was being played in a former Confederate State, Louisiana. If there were any racial issues arising from the game and its preparations, they were not made public.

Despite the American Southeast's reputation for heat, this was January, and the game was played outdoors, and the temperature at kickoff was 39 degrees. It remains the coldest Super Bowl ever, and the coldest NFL Championship Game under any name since the Ice Bowl in Green Bay in 1967.

Dolphin running back Larry Csonka had not fumbled all season long. But he fumbled in the 1st quarter, and the Cowboys recovered, eventually getting a field goal out of it. Later in the quarter, Lilly chased Dolphin quarterback Bob Griese back so far, he was sacked for a 29-yard loss, the longest loss of yardage from scrimmage, not counting turnovers, in the history of NFL championship games, under any name.

Despite this, the Dolphins were not yet out of the game. They got into Cowboy territory, and set up a 49-yard field goal attempt by Garo Yepremian. But it proved to be too long for him, and the Cowboys capitalized, with Staubach throwing a touchdown pass to Alworth to make it 10-0. Yepremian kicked a field goal late in the half, to give the Dolphins some hope.

The Cowboys' inside running game had worked very well in the 1st half. Shula decided to concentrate on that. But Landry guessed that Shula would do that, so he set up an outside running game for the 2nd half, and it worked: On their next drive, Thomas had 4 runs for 37 yards, capped by a 3-yard run for a touchdown. The Cowboys added a touchdown in the 4th quarter, Staubach passing to Ditka.

The final score was 24-3. Shula said the Doomsday Defense "destroyed" his offense. Not until Super Bowl XXXV, when the New York Giants got only a kickoff return touchdown against the Baltimore Ravens, would another team play an entire Super Bowl without an offensive touchdown. And not until Super Bowl LIII, when the Los Angeles Rams lost to the New England Patriots 13-3, would a team score so few points in a Super Bowl. Those 3 points remain the fewest scored in an NFL championship game, under any name, since 1964, when the Browns beat the Colts, 27-0.

The writers overcame their feelings about Thomas, and named him the game's Most Valuable Player. At the time, the Super Bowl MVP was announced by Sport magazine, and came with a new car, whose keys would be presented at a banquet in New York.

But Larry Klein, the magazine's editor, in attendance, didn't know how Thomas, black and with a record of insubordination, would act at the banquet. So he personally overrode the vote, and named Staubach, a white Naval Academy graduate and Vietnam War veteran with a reputation for doing as he was told, as the MVP. Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback Terry Bradshaw, in his later media career, was fond of pointing out his head coach, Chuck Noll, let him call his own plays, while Staubach didn't, always taking orders from Landry.

After the game, Tom Brookshier, the former Philadelphia Eagle defensive back working for CBS, tried to interview Thomas. Pointing out his speed, Brookshier, asked, "Are you that fast?" Thomas looked at him as if it was the dumbest question he'd ever heard, and said one word: "Evidently."

Thomas did not handle his fame to his team's satisfaction. So, in the next season's training camp, he was traded to the San Diego Chargers. He refused to report. He was suspended. He was played on the reserve list. He didn't play a down in the entire 1972 season. (He was lucky there was no ESPN, and no social media, at the time.)

The Chargers traded his rights to the Redskins -- the Cowboys' arch-rivals. For 2 years, he seemed to do all right there, even scoring a go-ahead 4th quarter touchdown against the Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day 1974, a game the Cowboys won anyway, in what became known as The Clint Longley Game. But he refused to report to training camp in 1975, and was waived.

Desperate for fans as their rebel league was floundering, the World Football League offered Thomas a new chance. He was signed by the Honolulu Hawaiians -- with some irony, to replace his former Cowboy teammate, the injured Calvin Hill. But he was released right before the league folded. The Cowboys brought him back in 1976, but waived him before the season.

He briefly played for the Vancouver-based BC Lions of the Canadian Football League, and was briefly at training camp with the 1979 Packers. Despite having the kind of talent that later led Houston Chronicle writer David Barron to say, "Some running backs looked for the hole. To Thomas, the whole field was the hole," his career ended with 2,038 rushing yards and 21 touchdowns.

He later hosted a radio talk show, telling an interviewer, "A lot of people get a kick out of that." He has said, "The Super Bowl wasn't the ultimate to me. I was just getting started. I was having fun, and I thought management was trying to take the fun out of it." He also says he made peace with Landry before his death.

He collaborated with Sports Illustrated writer Paul Zimmerman on a book titled Duane Thomas and the Fall of America's Team. The Cowboys did not "fall" after Super Bowl VI. It is true that they needed 3 years to get back to the Super Bowl, and 2 more after that to win one. But that's because their team that had reached 4 NFL Championship Games was getting old, and they were in transition, and still made the Playoffs in 2 of those 3 seasons out of the Super Bowl.

Once that transition was completed, Landry, Brandt and Schramm had built a team that dominated the NFC East for another decade, winning Super Bowl XII, but losing Super Bowls X and XIII.

As of January 16, 2022, Duane Thomas is still alive, age 74. (UPDATE: He died on August 4, 2024, at 77.)

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January 16, 1972 was a Sunday. Obviously, this was the only football game played on the day. Baseball was out of season. There were 5 games played in the NBA that day:

* The New York Knicks beat the Houston Rockets, 109-108 at the Hofheinz Pavilion in Houston.

* The Atlanta Hawks beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 124-116 at the Alexander Memorial Coliseum in Atlanta. Pete Maravich scored 50 points.

* The Cincinnati Royals beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 128-108 at the Cincinnati Gardens. Nate "Tiny" Archibald scored 41 points. But Cincinnati vs. Cleveland would not become a great NBA rivalry: The next season, the Royals moved to Kansas City. Since there was already a baseball team named the Kansas City Royals, they became the Kansas City Kings. In 1985, they moved again, becoming the Sacramento Kings.

* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 126-97 at the Milwaukee Arena. In 1974, it was renamed the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena.

* And the Baltimore Bullets beat the Phoenix Suns, 107-104 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

There were 2 games played in the American Basketball Association. The New York Nets lost to the Memphis Pros, 129-123 at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis. This was despite Rick Barry scoring 36 points for the Nets. And the Denver Rockets beat the Utah Stars, 110-102 at the Denver Auditorium Arena. The Rockets became the Denver Nuggets in 1974.

There were 5 NHL games played that day: 

* The Boston Bruins beat the Detroit Red Wings, 9-2 at the Boston Garden.

* The Philadelphia Flyers and the Los Angeles Kings played to a tie, 3-3 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.

* The St. Louis Blues beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 4-3 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* The Buffalo Sabres beat the Montreal Canadiens, 4-2 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.

* The Chicago Black Hawks beat the Minnesota North Stars, 3-2 at the Chicago Stadium.

* And the New York Rangers, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the California Golden Seals and the Vancouver Canucks were not scheduled.