With one month to go before the 1994 NFL Draft got underway a mega-quake shook the league. Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson – despite winning back-to-back championships – had decided to part company.
The Cowboys would have a new coach in 1994.
More importantly, they’d have a new man running the draft.
Jones – who was not happy that Johnson was getting all of the credit – would finally get to show the world he knew how to build a championship-winning football team.
After 30 years we now know two things.
First, Johnson was the brains of the operation and Jones was the bank.
Second, Jones doesn’t know how to build championship-winning football teams.
Because no Cowboys’ team after Johnson’s players moved on or retired have even made it to a Conference championship game, much less a Super Bowl, since.
Jerry’s First Pick
The Cowboys attempted to move up to the fourth pick of the first round from their position at 28.
Jerry couldn’t complete the deal.
So he settled for moving up to 23rd in a trade with the 49ers.
They ended up taking fullback, William Floyd.
Dallas – looking for a successor to Charles Haley and Tony Tolbert – grabbed Shante Carver, a defensive end from Arizona State.
Carver started in half of the 52 games he played for Dallas from 1994-97.
During his four-year run, he had 75 tackles and 11.5 sacks.
He also added a forced fumble and recovered a fumble as well in separate seasons.
Carver was suspended for six games in 1996, after having filled in as a starter for Haley late in the 1995 Super Bowl season.
He had his best season in 1997 with 40 tackles and six sacks. But the Cowboys declined to resign him and he never played in the NFL again.
Even A Blind Squirrel Finds A Nut
The lone bright spot in the draft came with the 46th overall pick in the second round.
Either by pure dumb luck or someone in the draft room sold his soul to the Devil to get Jones to make the pick, Dallas landed a Hall of Famer.
Coming out of Sonoma State, Larry Allen had two things working against him.
He was forced to play at a small school after being academically ineligible to play DI football.
And he was coming off a torn rotator cuff – not a good issue for an offensive lineman.
But the Cowboys took him and he gave them a stellar 12-year career in return.
He started at right tackle in 10 games his rookie season, started 48 straight games at right guard, and then 16 in a row at left tackle in 1998.
From 1999-2005, Allen started at left guard in every game he played in for Dallas. He missed five games in 1999 and 11 in 2002 due to injury.
He was named to the Pro Bowl in 10 of his 12 seasons in Dallas, and once more during his two years in San Francisco where he closed out his career in 2006-07.
In 2011 he was named to the Cowboys’ Ring of Honor.
In 2013 he was enshrined in the Hall of Fame.
That’s All Folks
Unfortunately, Allen was the highlight of the draft. The Cowboys’ picks went downhill from there.
In the third round, they took tackle George Hegamin – who only managed 10 starts in 31 games over four seasons.
Receiver Willie Jackson was selected in the fourth round. He would play nine seasons in the NFL, amassing 3,641 yards and 24 touchdowns on 284 catches.
Not one single yard, nor one single catch was made in a Cowboys’ uniform.
After riding the bench all of 1994, Jackson, stuck behind Michael Irvin, asked to be left unprotected for the 1995 Expansion Draft.
The Jacksonville Jaguars were more than happy to obtain his services.
The Cowboys took linebacker DeWayne Dotson later in the fourth round.
They selected Darren Studstill in the sixth, and Toddrick McIntosh in the seventh.
Studstill played one game for Dallas in 1994 before joining Jackson in Jacksonville in 1995. Neither Dotson nor McIntosh played a single down for Dallas before joining other teams.