ANALYSIS/OPINION
Diron Talbert knows who Dak Prescott is. By now, everyone knows about the Dallas Cowboys rookie quarterback sensation who will face the Washington Redskins on Thanksgiving Day at Jerry World.
But 42 years ago, the former Redskins defensive tackle had no clue about another Cowboys rookie quarterback who would become well known for a brief but memorable game on Turkey Day that became part of the legend and lore of the Redskins-Cowboys rivalry.
Talbert and Clint Longley would become forever linked together on Nov. 28, 1974, when the unknown Dallas rookie quarterback led his team back from a 16-3 deficit, throwing for more than 200 yards and two touchdowns, including the game-winning 50-yard bomb to Drew Pearson with just 28 seconds left in the game, to win 24-23 in Dallas.
Following the game, when asked what he thought of Longley’s performance, Talbert replied, “Who the hell is Clint Longley?”
Talbert, 72 and living in Texas, recalled that game this week and the Cowboys-Redskins rivalry in a conversation on my podcast “Cigars & Curveballs” (hosted here on the Times web site and available for download free on iTunes and Google Play). “That was the truth,” Talbert said. “I didn’t know who Clint Longley was. But he beat us.
AUDIO: Redskins defensive tackle Diron Talbert with Thom Loverro
“That was my big mouth that got me.”
Talbert was referring his comments before the game, when he said the way to beat the Cowboys on Thanksgiving (Washington had already won the first meeting between the two teams two weeks before, 28-21, at RFK Stadium) was to get Dallas starting quarterback Roger Staubach out of the game.
“If Staubach runs, you like to get a good shot at him and knock him out of the game,” Talbert told reporters earlier that week. “You try to get a scrambling quarterback to scramble into the arms of somebody who’s going to hurt him. If you knock him out, you got that rookie facing you. That’s one of our goals. If we do that, it’s great. He’s all they have. They have no experienced quarterback.”
That certainly was a different NFL, wasn’t it?
Washington got Staubach out of the game when Redskins linebacker Dave Robinson nailed the starting Dallas quarterback. Enter Longley, a walk-on from Abilene Christian University who left college before his final year of eligibility, was selected as a free agent by the Cincinnati Bengals and then traded to the Cowboys for a fifth round draft choice, winning the backup job to Staubach in training camp in 1974 (Longley was gone two years later after punching Staubach in the team’s training room and would be out of the league soon after)
That Thanksgiving Day game has since become a story now to tell your children about the Redskins-Cowboys rivalry, but when it happened, it was devastating. Redskins defensive end Ron McDole told me in an interview for my book, “Hail Victory: An Oral History of the Washington Redskins,” that he thought it was the worst loss Washington coach George Allen ever suffered. “I don’t think he ever recovered from that loss,” McDole said. “It was hard on him, because we had the game pretty well wrapped up, and it got away from us.”
Talbert, one of the group of “Ramskins” players that Allen brought with him to Washington in 1971 from his previous coaching stint with the Los Angeles Rams, agreed that it hit Allen hard. “It hurt,” he said.
Talbert would know. He was Allen’s minister of propaganda, particularly when it came to the Cowboys. No player fueled the rivalry more than Talbert, whose older brother Don played offensive tackle for Dallas from 1962 to 1965, and that agitation wasn’t by accident.
“George and I would have a meeting every Monday before the next week when we would play the Cowboys, and we would go over what we were going to say, what we were going to do and what kind of strategy we would have,” Talbert said. “A lot of that was serious, and a lot of that was fun. We hated the Cowboys, and sometimes that makes the game a lot more fun to play when you really dislike somebody.
“It was the way we felt,” Talbert said. “They talked about their team being America’s team, and it was kind of hard to listen to. Heck, we were America’s team. We were in Washington, D.C.”
Now, of course, that hate has turned into stories to share between rivals at banquets and other events. “We get together sometimes and tell stories,” Talbert said. “I’ve had some fun with Roger and had some good laughs with him. Roger is a good man. He’s on my friend list. He did a great job for the Cowboys, more than any of the rest of them.
“I told Roger, ’Everything I said to you when we had helmets on, I still believe,’” Talbot said, laughing.
There has been little talk from the Redskins this week about knocking someone of the game on Thanksgiving — this is a different era, after all. “That’s a pretty good team, and (we’ll) try and go in there with everything that we have,” Redskins running back Rob Kelley said after their 42-24 win Sunday night over the Green Bay Packers. “Go in there and try to get that win going. It’s going to be hard. That’s a pretty good team, but that’s our plan.”
Still, this rivalry has a way of reasserting itself. Just a couple of days later, the rookie seemed to have gotten more into the spirit of Dallas Week: “I know nobody here like the Dallas Cowgirls,” he told a local television reporter.
• Thom Loverro hosts his weekly podcast “Cigars & Curveballs” Wednesdays available on iTunes and Google Play.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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