With the Philadelphia Eagles winning the Super Bowl and the Washington Commanders advancing to the NFC championship game this past season, the Dallas Cowboys were full of reminders that they are far from a top franchise they were once revered as. Instead, the Cowboys have the longest active NFC championship game drought, while their rival Eagles have won two Super Bowls over the last seven years.
Legendary Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith is tired of watching his Cowboys fall short of reaching NFC title games and Super Bowls, as well as seeing the Eagles succeed. In particular, Smith can’t stand hearing fans saying “Go Birds.”
“I’m sick of it,” Smith said on 96.7 FM The Ticket. “We have allowed others to nitpick at the star and make fun of the star and make fun of the star and that’s what happens—now all of a sudden over the last 20 years, they win two Super Bowls and they think they’re the best thing on the planet, and everywhere I go I hear, ‘Go Birds.’ I’m sick of hearing, ‘Go Birds.’ I’m always asking where are you going? You still got a long way to go to get to us.”
Perhaps more than the Eagles’ success, Smith is bothered that the Cowboys aren’t excelling the way they should be.
“That part bugs me, it bugs me because in my heart I truly believe our organization should be contending for an NFC championship and even a Super Bowl at least once or twice every decade because every team recycles every decade,” Smith said. “For us not to be there over the last 30 years is a crying shame.”
For much of their history, the Cowboys have been one of the NFL’s great teams. They were top contenders in the 1960s, won two Super Bowls in the 1970s, and then three more in the 1990s with Smith on board. Since the Cowboys last made the NFC championship game and won the Super Bowl when Smith played for them, Dallas has fielded multiple talented teams with star players, but they simply haven’t been able to win titles like they did before.