The Dallas Cowboys are the only NFL team to have won 20 seasons straight from 1966 to 1985, albeit the team with five Super Bowl titles out of eight appearances is now struggling to continue their legacy in recent years as they could not make a Super Bowl appearance for more than two decades now.
The former Cowboys quarterback and part of the Cowboys’ last Super Bowl-winning team Tony Aikman has delivered a scathing assessment of his former team’s inability to secure a championship, expressing disappointment in the team’s underwhelming performance and pointing out that they have failed to reach their potential by not playing their best football.
Tony Aikman’s take on the Cowboys
Aikman was Dallas’ QB1 for over a decade and helped the franchise to win three Super Bowls titles in four years before retiring and starting his next career as a commentator.
The now ESPN analyst believes his former team has all the things needed: good players, coaches, and front office members, however, they failed to put in their best efforts when it was needed the most,
“They are really good, and they’ve got really good players. The organization has done a fantastic job. I think the coaches have done a great job. The players. All of it. They have won a lot of games. The problem for them, and they don’t need me to tell them this, they just have not played their best football when the games have mattered the most.”
Despite being one of the best teams in the league, the Cowboys went 5-13 in the playoffs along with only one road postseason victory and the NFL Hall of Famer said success had not followed in the playoffs as the players couldn’t prove their worth in big games,
“You say, ‘How do you change that?’ No one has the answer to that. I don’t have the answer to that. For our teams [in the ’90s], the reason we succeeded and did what we were able to do, the reason teams all win Super Bowls, is they play their best football in the biggest games.”
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However, the football prodigy holds high hopes for his former Super Bowl-winning team and believes they can call for a renewed commitment to excellence on the field, keeping quarterback Dak Prescott in charge,
“Hopefully this will be the year they get over the hump. I’m pulling for them. I’ve said it many times, I’m a big fan of Dak and I’d like to see him bring a world championship back to Dallas. It’s been a long time.”
When did the Cowboys last win the NFL Championship?
The last time the Cowboys won their victory in the national football league was Super Bowl XXX almost three decades ago on January 28, 1996, and it also marks the last Super Bowl appearance by the franchise. They won the 1995 season by defeating the Pittsburgh Steelers 27-17 at the Sun Devil Stadium in Arizona, marking their third Lombardi trophy in four years.
The intense clash of titans was the third time the two organizations faced off each other in the championship game. Pittsburgh came victorious in the first two encounters- Super Bowls X, as well as XIII, and Aikman led the Dallas team to take revenge in that season with a whopping victory, recording a 15/23, 1 TD stat line.
Prior to this, the Cowboys won four Lombardi trophies- Super Bowl VI against the Miami Dolphins (1972), Super Bowl XII against the Denver Broncos (1978), Super Bowl XXVII and XXVIII against the Buffalo Bills (1993, 1994).
Heading into the upcoming season, the former NFL legend Aikman’s truth bomb could serve as a wake-up call as well as a reminder of the standards set by the Cowboys in their glory days.
