Cowboys Rewind- Xs & Os With Troy Aikman
Super Bowls and Championship Games: Aikman Walks Us Through Huge Moments
I am quite taken with America's Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys – even if it is a Jones Family Production and should be taken with a grain of salt in certain “he said, he said” situations.
Still, it is fun as heck. So, in watching it, I reprinted my Michael Irvin piece from 2019. That was fun to relive, but then, someone in the comments said that it made him think of a Troy Aikman piece from 2011 that was read by almost nobody back at my Blogspot days. So, because I can and because it was also enjoyable to revisit (and also because I am taking my youngest son to college today), please enjoy this piece from 14 years ago that 99% of you probably have never seen. It fits well as a companion piece with the Irvin interview, or taken individually as we stroll down memory lane with the Triplets. I have done a number of these “Cowboys History” pieces over the years and I need to start rebuilding them all here in their own sub-section as we go. I hope you enjoy!
From Wednesday, January 19, 2011
I am currently reading a book that I am really enjoying by Sports Illustrated's Tim Layden. The book is called, "Blood, Sweat, and Chalk: The Ultimate Football Playbook: How the Great Coaches Built Today's Game".
It really breaks down the evolution of football in so many ways. It explains how different offensive and defensive system came to pass, and how in the way football works, it was then "stolen" and changed and tinkered with to then generate the next stage of the evolution. To credit Bill Walsh for the "West Coast Offense" is to ignore Paul Brown. To credit Norv Turner for what the Cowboys did in their dynasty years is to not understand Ernie Zampese and Don Coryell before him. To credit Barry Switzer for the wishbone is to not understand he asked Darrell Royal in Austin for assistance in developing how Oklahoma was going to run the wishbone themselves.
Football is always changing. And this book scratches my itch to understand how things have developed over the years. I highly recommend it.
Anyway, I bring all of that up because I have just finished a chapter called, "Bang 8". It is basically the play, according to the author, that was most unstoppable and most associated with the Cowboys of the early to mid-1990's. If you were to close your eyes and think of one particular thing that those Cowboys did best, the author argues that it was the Bang 8 or the Skinny Post.
The best example of the Bang 8 was this play from Super Bowl 27.
And then, because he is kind enough to respond to my inquiry, I visited about this play with Troy Aikman on Monday. I wanted to ask him a few questions about the play and the concept, but instead he gave me a clinic on how it works. I want you to see what he had to say over the next few days. I found it absolutely riveting. He obviously knows more as much about this play and this football concept as anyone.
Aikman: I’m glad you sent a link because I’ve seen the throw a million times, but I’ve not seen the whole play as far as which play it was. Because when you asked about it, we ran the Bang 8 off of a lot of different plays.
When I travel around the country talking doing games, you’d be shocked how many times coaches want to come up to me and have me walk them through the Bang 8 and what our thinking was on it all.
Sturm: When you talk about ‘different,’ like different personnel groupings? Or different formations? Or what?