Worry Over Dallas Cowboys Running Back Depth Uncalled For

by Ryan Bush

Demarco Murray

Eleven days in between games is just too much time.  Not for the Dallas Cowboys, but for the whole circus around them.  Especially after a victory, when magicians start chanting and dreamers start dreaming, and a token sample of reality is tossed into the fray as a comical source of combustion.  And what a combustible moment it was this time around, when fans peered into the backfield behind local hero 1A, Demarco Murray, and saw….........

Yeah, that’s what they saw.  Ghosts of emptiness.  No sight sets more teeth on edge nor as many brains on a hysterical path of concern that spills its way onto Internet webpages.

It was a frightening moment for some careworn fans when they realized the ramifications for America’s Team should Demarco Murray happen to go down with an injury during the course of this season.  Uh, yes, it wouldn’t be good, that much is known, and has been known since Murray’s last ailment cropped up last December.

So will Murray last?

He’d better, so the operative reply has been going.  For Jason Garrett’s longevity.

Come to find out, it’s Garrett that everybody’s busy pointing fingers at right now.  A shared backfield is the chic thing in the NFL nowadays, and it’s Garrett’s fault for not providing the Cowboys with one.

 So everyone wants two running backs.  As if that’s the way it’s always been.

When Bill Parcells drafted Marion Barber III in the 2005 draft, only twelve months after selecting Notre Dame’s Julius Jones, it was considered a stroke of innovational genius.  A two-back system!  What a thought!

Nobody around the Ranch had even considered such a formula before, chiefly, because there was no reason to.  Besides the fact that Jerry Jones never took the responsibility of filling the position very seriously, the reason Emmitt Smith never enjoyed the benefits of a capable backup in his thirteen years on the beat, excepting, maybe, Chris Warren, was that he didn’t need one.  It wasn’t the star-like qualities of Sherman Williams that convinced the Cowboys to give the Alabama running back a shot in the second round of the 1995 draft.  It was his lack thereof.  Williams wasn’t good enough to be a starter.  That’s why Dallas drafted him, as sad as it sounds.

 

To Jones, Emmitt was too good to have somebody nipping at his heels begging for playing time.

Nobody seemed concerned about his health, or the consequences of a fly-by-night injury.

But, you say, Emmitt never got hurt!

That’s exactly the point, and one small coincidence that makes the Cowboys’ success in the ‘90’s so amazing, and this rant about Garrett’s supposed slipshod methods to piecing together a roster so ridiculous.

Murray has no one reliable behind him because the head coach hasn’t had enough time to find someone to put there.  

 

Has one victory blinded so many to the fact that, yes, Garrett, in year two, is still cleaning this roster out from the Wade Phillips era?