Cowboys: Looking Back At Super Bowl XXVII

The Dallas Cowboys play the Buffalo Bills on Week 16, but there’s a much more memorable game between these two franchises to reflect on.

Unless you’re that infatuated with the development of Dallas Cowboys backup quarterback Kellen Moore, the former Boise State star making his first NFL start against the Buffalo Bills, there’s probably other things to do on your holiday weekend than throw a big party for this game, right?

Neither the Cowboys or Bills will be headed to the playoffs this season, thus rendering Sunday’s game pretty much only about positioning for the 2016 NFL Draft next April.

Having said that, there’s other games that have been played between these two franchises that will always outweigh anything that happens in Sunday at Ralph Wilson Stadium.

The first of two big ones took place almost 23 years ago in Pasadena, California at a historic venue still known as the Rose Bowl. The UCLA Bruins of the college football world call it home, but there was also five NFL Super Bowls played at the venue, the last being the very game we’re looking back on here.

More from Sports Dallas Fort-Worth

This homecoming for Dallas quarterback Troy Aikman would be the first step towards football greatness – there’s just no other way to put it.

The Cowboys were never a team that was supposed to be playing in a Super Bowl entering the 1992 regular season, a 13-3 campaign that placed America’s Team in a spotlight it hadn’t felt since 1979. This was the youngest team in the NFL and one that had just made the playoffs for the first time in six seasons the year before as a Wild Card behind NFC East champion Washington Redskins.

The Bills were a team loaded with veteran Pro Bowl talent that had appeared in the two previous Super Bowls, both losses to the New York Giants and the Redskins. It seemed logical that a team this good that kept reaching the big dance was eventually find a way to pick up at least one Lombardi Trophy for their trouble, right?

Wrong.

The Cowboys didn’t care who the Redskins were the year before while handing Washington its first loss of the season at RFK Stadium. The Redskins had entered that game 11-0 and would eventually win Super Bowl XXVI. Still, the Cowboys pulled off the upset and despite the loss of Aikman effectively for the season, Dallas would go on to win a playoff game.

The Cowboys didn’t care who the San Francisco 49ers were the next season, a franchise that just two years prior had been gunning for the same thing Dallas would be in just one more year – a three-peat in the Super Bowl. The 1992 NFC Championship Game at Candlestick Park might as well have been played in a Walmart parking lot somewhere in Missouri. The Cowboys dominated a game that really wasn’t as close as the final score of 30-20 might indicate.

The Buffalo Bills?

C’mon.

Yes, the match up looked great on paper.

Aikman vs. Jim Kelly. Emmitt Smith vs. Thurman Thomas. Michael Irvin vs. Andre Reed. Charles Haley vs. Bruce Smith.

It seemed that for every Pro Bowl – or future Hall of Fame – player that the Cowboys had, Buffalo also had one.

Even special teams offered the match up of Kenneth Gant vs. Steve Tasker.

In the end, the Cowboys won their most lopsided Super Bowl appearance by a score of 52-17. The Dallas defense forced nine turnovers, which translated to 35 points. The Cowboys could have scored even more points had Buffalo receiver Don Beebe not stripped a showboating Leon Lett at the goal line after yet another fumble recovery and near return for a touchdown.

The entire game is above in the event you’d rather watch that than what unfolds in Sunday’s second-to-last game of the year for the Cowboys. I don’t blame you one bit. Like the original Star Wars movie, it’s a classic that never gets old.

Next: Dallas Cowboys: What To Look For In Kellen Moore

If Buffalo’s Super Bowl trilogy was, in fact, just a three part saga, this collapse looked like the final chapter for sure.

Obviously, this was not the case however …

(To Be Continued)

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