That said, the knock on White was that he would implode at the worst times and make the game-killing mistake. Kind of hard to lose when all you have to do is score 6 points to win a game (or 5 in the case of the 1970 divisional playoff against Detroit). In the 5 NFC championship games the Cowboys won in the 70's, Doomsday gave up 26 total points. If you look at the points the Cowboys gave up in those early 80's conference championship games (20,28,31) and compare it to some of those 70's conference championship games (10,3, 7, 6, 0), then you see that White had more on his plate than Staubach. I loved Danny White when he played, and I thought the comparisons to Staubach were unfair because White never had a Doomsday Defense to help him.

You had Dorsett, Danny White, Tony Hill was a great WR, Doug Cosbie was a very good TE, Ron Springs was a nice HB/FB, Butch Johnson was a #3 WR. The continuation of the Cowboy dynasty in the 80's fell to the offensive skill positions, IMO. Even in 1981, the defense was extremely dependent on Randy White/Too Tall/Harvey Martin. It seemed like after 1975 the Cowboys stopped adding/drafting good defensive players to the roster. Just wanted to get your take on some prolific offenses that didn't quite have the starpower of, say, the Air Coryell Chargers but actually were more high-scoring. And might have had more TD's than his 24 in 1981, but he missed a game against the Colts and also Ron Springs got a lot of short yardage TD's).Īlso interesting is that in those years, despite the high point totals, they didn't have WR's putting up gaudy numbers (Only Tony Hill in 19 yards- and barely at 1,055- and didn't have a guy catch double-digit TD's).

On paper, the 70s Cowboys had arguably more starpower with Roger the Dodger, but these teams offenses were actually more prolific than those (only the '71 team scored 400 pts during the decade of Staubach.)ĭanny White seemed to be more prolific in these years than others (Also had 20 TD's in 1985, but by then the offense had slumped a bit.

The 1980 Cowboys- not Air Coryell, not the Kardiac Kads, not the Patriots, not Bartkowski's Falcons- led the NFL in points scored.Īnd the 1983 team- still the highest scoring team in franchise history at 479 pts- outscored everyone but that legendary 500 point Redskins team (the gap between Dallas and the #3 scoring offense- Raiders- was by 38 points). In the Danny White era of the 80s, there were a few years where they were truly among the NFL's top offenses.

1980 dallas cowboys roster