Former Dallas Cowboys star Emmitt Smith is ‘tired’ of the team. Is he justified?

As one of the greatest players in the franchise’s history, few are better positioned to give a take on the Dallas Cowboys and the struggles they have faced in recent years. Of course, what matters most now is not whether the team can move forward, but rather how.

Emmitt Smith is tired of the Dallas Cowboys

There are few players from the NFL’s modern era that are more respected than Emmitt Smith, such that when he speaks, folks tend to listen. Indeed, this is a player who was part of an unprecedented period of success for the Dallas Cowboys, as he helped to secure three Super Bowl titles during a career that lasted 15 years. To that end, you would likely believe that the former star running back would have nothing but love for the team that made him a household name. Yet, that’s not the case, not even close.

Speaking on Friday with “PFT Live”, Smith explained that he is “tired” of the team constantly falling short of expectations. Smith went a step further as he suggested that everyone from the players to franchise owner, Jerry Jones, has lost credibility and respect. “I’m tired of being sold on what the Cowboys could be,” Smith said, reflecting on Dallas going one-and-done in the playoffs despite a 12-5 record, failing to secure the club’s first conference championship appearance since 1995. “I’m tired. I’ve had enough of it because I’m more about what the Cowboys really are. And who we really are and who we were. That’s where I’m at. That’s where everyone else is at. How do you allow this to happen?”

Did Jerry Jones make a mistake with Mike McCarthy? Emmitt Smith thinks so.

In any top-tier sport, finding the right balance between pragmatism and long-term thinking is always a tricky thing to do. Yet, Smith made no qualms about the idea that he was “surprised” Jones didn’t replace head coach Mike McCarthy following the team’s most recent postseason failure. The Hall of Famer doubled down actually, implying that the team’s 2023 result “is not becoming of the Dallas Cowboys’ mystique, respect, the brand.” Further to that, Smith suggested that “respect” is something that has been absent for years when it comes to the Cowboys.

“Nobody wants to fight no more,” Smith said about the current crop of players. “No one wants to fight hard anymore. They wanna (say), ‘Oh, we are the Cowboys. Tell me how good I am. Check out my Instagram posts. See me on my podcast? I’m doing all this stuff. I’m everything.’ Without doing anything. And everybody’s patting them on the back. ...People wanna give them so much without doing nothing. And what they’re living off of is what happened in the past, not what’s going down right now. They’re not establishing their own legacy, let alone building off of the legacy that was established.”

Emmitt Smith thinks Jerry Jones is slipping

As the owner of ‘America’s Team’, the reality is that the buck stops with Jerry Jones. Smith, who played for 13 seasons under Jones with the Cowboys believes it may just be that the franchise’s top exec is not what he once was.

“And if you’re losing credibility, you’re losing respect,” he said. “You lose respect, you have no honor. ...Things have to change. ...I mean, it’s like we went out and played with our hands tied behind our backs or we left our minds up in Frisco and didn’t even take it over to AT&T (Stadium) in Arlington. It was such a disappointing thing. It was just bad. It’s bad all the way around. I even hate talking about it because I feel responsible. I feel like I could have helped, and I don’t know how. But, yeah, it was bad.” As things stand, the Cowboys like many other teams in the NFL will be nothing more than spectators this Sunday, when the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers go head-to-head in Super Bowl LVIII. Perhaps the only question that matters now is whether they can get back on the horse when next season rolls around. Stay tuned.