One of the most popular memes in sports culture is making fun of the Dallas Cowboys for constantly predicting "it's our year" and always seemingly falling flat on their faces perennially. The franchise hasn't seen the NFC Championship Game since 1996.
NFL fans like to lay the blame at the feet of team owner Jerry Jones since he's been the constant presence throughout the 30-year drought. However, one team legend thinks that the blame is misplaced.
Pro Football Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith spoke to The Athletic's Jon Machota outside the premier of Netflix's documentary series America's Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys. He defended Jones' stewardship of the team and instead believes the throngs of players who have donned the star since 1996 should accept more responsibility for not living up to the previous winning legacy.
Emmitt Smith when asked about Jerry Jones’ role in the Cowboys’ Super Bowl drought pic.twitter.com/e1CmR6AKSW
— Jon Machota (@jonmachota) August 12, 2025
"Well, Jerry never caught a pass. He never ran the ball and he damn sure didn't throw it," Smith said. "At some point players have got to take on ownership of what they've been trained and what they've been taught to do. We had to do it. We won back-to-back Super Bowls, and then we lost our leader and we were in disarray for a year."
Then-head coach Jimmy Johnson resigned in 1994, preventing the team from completing a historic Super Bowl three-peat. The Cowboys would return to the big game the following season and re-summit the league's mountain top.
Emmitt Smith believes Cowboys players, not ownership, are to blame for championship drought
Smith refused to accept that ownership decisions are the sole fault of Dallas' recent failures. He pointed to the 1995-96 rebound within the locker room as a prime example.
"As a player and as the leadership of that ball club, we took it upon ourselves to say, 'This is what we're gonna do. We don't care who's at the helm.' My systems are still the same, my processes are still the same. We know how to work, we've been trained how to work. We were built from the ground up. That foundation never left, so therefore we were able to go back and win our third."
He does have a point. At the end of the day, the players on the field have to demonstrate that they've truly learned from their coaching and are just as talented as their multi-million dollar contracts say they are. If they can't yield results, then the team has to find someone who can.
That being said, Jones is one of the unique situations in which he not only owns the team but acts as the de factor general manager as well. He chooses which players to bring in for coaches to put on the field.
Clearly his decisions over the last 30 years have not yielded results. At some point, there has to be an internal reflection and a decision to make a change rather continue on this path.