Boys Will Be Boys by Jeff Pearlman Page B

disapproving silence, like grandparents at a Sex Pistols concert.” As spectators glumly filed out of the stadium, several found flyers beneath their windshield wipers that read: WOULD THE MOTHER WHO LEFT HER 11 KIDS AT TEXAS STADIUM PLEASE COME AND GET THEM!
     
    There were two patterns the Cowboys fell into throughout the 1989 season, both as predictable as the city’s 5 P.M. rush-hour gridlock:
A. Every Sunday, they would lose.
B. Every Monday there would be between five and twenty new faces auditioning for jobs.
    With each defeat, Johnson and his staffers grew increasingly aware of the gaping talent holes tearing the season apart. The Cowboys were thin at nearly all positions. They lacked depth across the offensive line, speed in the secondary, and power at linebacker. Their receivers were slow and unathletic, their tight ends barely relevant. Hence, the team was on the lookout for anyone with a modicum of gridiron experience and an ounce of talent to fly to Valley Ranch for an audition.
    “It was sick,” says Dave Wannstedt, the defensive coordinator. “We’d sign a half-dozen players on a Monday, give them a playbook on Tuesday and have them play the following Sunday. You couldn’t put in a junior high school playbook in three days, and we were asking these guys to execute an NFL offense and defense.”
    The Cowboys were last in the league in every measurable statistic, but first in Who-the-hell-is-that-guys. Among the men who suited up for Dallas in 1989 were immortals like:
Scott Ankrom, wide receiver, Tulsa. Ten games, no catches.
Onzy Elam, linebacker, Tennessee State. One game, no tackles.
Kevin Scott, running back, Stanford. Three games, two carries,-4 yards.
Curtis Stewart, running back, Auburn. Two games, zero carries.
    “Everybody—absolutely everybody—was worried they were going to be cut,” says Steve Henrickson, a linebacker who lasted one month. “It was uncomfortable, but I think Jimmy liked that. Even Troy Aikman seemed nervous. You just never knew when your time was up.”
    The most unusual sign-and-cut story of the season began on the Monday before the Redskins game, when the Cowboys agreed to terms with Kevin Lilly, an ornery defensive end who had recently been cut by San Francisco.
    Upon arriving in Dallas, Lilly checked into his hotel. The following morning he walked to the parking lot and found the windows of his Nissan 300Z shattered and his T-top stolen. During his first practice, he learned to despise Johnson. “He was in Too Tall Jones’s face, Tom Rafferty’s face—yelling at these guys who were the epitome of pro ball,” says Lilly. “He was running the show like a high school program.”
    Lilly signed his contract on a Tuesday.
    Lilly practiced on Wednesday and Thursday.
    Lilly posed for the team picture on Friday.
    Lilly played against the Redskins on Sunday.
    Lilly was released on Monday.
    Despite auditioning every humanoid this side of David Whitehurst, John Oates, and Kitty Dukakis, the Cowboys failed to improve. They fell hard to the Giants in Week 4, losing both the game (by a 30–13 score) and Aikman, who suffered a broken index finger in his non-passing hand and would miss five weeks.
    If Johnson had left camp believing his team might compete, he was now a realist. The Cowboys of Onzy Elam, Scott Ankrom, and an eclectic assortment of here-today-gone-tomorrow nobodies were not good enough for the NFL. They would win three games, perhaps four,and go down as the laughingstocks of an otherwise awesome NFC East.
    So, the head coach decided—What the hell? Why not try something crazy?
     
    In modern American history, few sports figures have possessed the mythological aura of young Herschel Walker. At Johnson County High School in Wrightsville, Georgia, in the late ’70s, he was a 6-foot-1, 215-pound halfback with 4.2 speed and thighs the size of fire hydrants. While most boys were busy chasing girls, Walker spent his free time tying one end of a 15-foot steel cable to a