Saturday’s NFC Divisional playoff against the Rams will mark the Cowboys’ first playoff game in 40 years at the historic Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which, of course, has seen it all in 95 years as the neighborhood landmark in Exposition Park.
The last time – Jan. 7, 1979 — turned out to be more than memorable for the Cowboys, who throttled the Rams 28-0 in the NFC Championship Game.
For the exultant Cowboys, wearing their jinxed blue jerseys, it was off to Miami for Super Bowl XIII and a rematch with those despised jackals of the AFC, the Pittsburgh Steelers, in the most anticipated championship game of the Super Bowl era at the time.
That turned out to be one Dallas and Jackie Smith wanted back, but the game two weeks before was all Cowboys, Cowboys, Cowboys, who won with a dominant defense that covered for an offense that took the week off.
That type of defense will be something this year’s Cowboys will again need to slow this version of the Rams.
However, as Tom Landry reminded, “When you get to this level, it is the defense that wins.”
This year’s game kicks off at 7:15 p.m. on Saturday.
The game of yesteryear was on a late Sunday afternoon.
It was preceded all week by back-and-forth trash talk between two seemingly angry teams, who had played earlier in the season. In Week 3, the Rams bounced the Cowboys 27-14 in LA. There was history between the two, too. In the 1975 NFC title game, the Cowboys beat the Rams like a pinata, 37-7.
Plus, Los Angeles had grown increasingly frustrated in general. The Rams had won six consecutive division championships, and the 1979 conference championship game was their fourth in the 1970s.
All of them were losses.
“If you are denied enough, you will be determined,” Landry said. “Whether they have reached that point of emotion has yet to be seen. But their frustration must concern you.”
“We want the Cowboys,” said Rams wide receiver Ron Jessie. “They think it was lucky the first time we beat them. We want to show them it wasn’t.”
Said Rams safety Bill Simpson: “No way we’re going to lose this game.”
Before the first game that season between the two, Rams coach Ray Malavasi, in his first season after taking over for Chuck Knox, who left for Buffalo, said his team was going “to kick bleep.” And before this one: “We’re ready to do the same.”
The Cowboys had their own prolific set of jaws.
Perhaps no one of that day could express himself through the majesty of insults and boasts like the Marquis de Thomas Henderson, aka, “Hollywood.”
“Ask their coach where he is going to be when the butt-kicking starts,” No. 56 said. “What position does he play?”
Then …
“Los Angeles doesn’t have enough class to play in the Super Bowl. Any time you give us the big money and the big game, the Cowboys will win. The first game doesn’t count. If they don’t choke, I will choke them.”
In the first game, there also was the Isaiah Robertson incident. Robertson, a linebacker who was killed only last month in a car accident near Mabank, Texas, had stood accused of committing the indignity of spitting on two Cowboys players.
“You tell Isaiah Robertson that I’ll give him my game check if he’ll spit in my face just once. That way I’ll be able to take care of him,” Hollywood declared. “That is the lowest that you can do to a person. Nobody is going to spit in our face this time.”
Even Captain America didn’t like what had happened in the first game.
“I still think about the last few minutes of the game,” Roger Staubach said at the time. “They had us down, and they wanted to kick us. There were a number of particulars that I remember the most.”
With less than two minutes left in the game, Staubach was knocked out of bounds near the Rams’ bench. Several Rams players converged on him.
“I remember there was this coach with a clipboard that kept [cursing at him]. Here we were with two minutes left in the game and all they wanted to do was kick us. If I had been one of their players I would have been embarrassed. I remember that Ron Jessie apologized after the game.”
Sam Rayburn comes to mind: “Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one.”
The Rams weren’t yet ready to build that Super Bowl team. That would be the next season. The Rams also got revenge on the Cowboys the next year, beating Dallas at Texas Stadium in the divisional round in Staubach’s last game.
The Cowboys were a much different team than in Week 3.
At the time of that game, Dallas, which had allowed Jessie seven catches for 144 yards, was ranked dead last against the pass in the NFC. By the time of the Jan. 7 game, the Cowboys had allowed the fewest yards per attempt in the NFL.
“We are a much better team than the first game,” Landry said. “We did not have that type of confidence you need to play Los Angeles.”
The teams went into halftime scoreless, but the Cowboys struck.
Charlie Waters had two interceptions, leading to Tony Dorsett’s 5-yard scoring run and Staubach’s 4-yard TD pass to Scott Laidlaw. Billy Joe Dupree hauled in an 11-yard TD pass from Staubach, and Henderson capped the 21-point fourth quarter with a 68-yard interception return of Vince Ferragamo’s pass.
Henderson stepped in front of the pass intended for Jim Jodat and raced down the sideline and across the field and into the end zone.
In jubilation, Henderson dropped the ball over the crossbar as if shooting a basketball layup.
In toto, the Cowboys, who won for a ninth consecutive time, picked off Pat Haden and Ferragamo five times.
A repeat of that on Sunday would in all likelihood mean the Cowboys will be playing in a 17th NFC Championship Game the following week.
