Love them or hate them, there is no team more synonymous with professional football than the Dallas Cowboys.
They are “America’s Team,” the team with the star at midfield, and the one with the hole in the roof so that God can watch his favorite football team, at least according to the owner for that last one. And what created all this notoriety was all the winning back in the day, and that winning was thanks to a lot of great Cowboys players.
The Cowboys’ storied history began in 1960 with an ignominious 0-11 campaign under head coach Tom Landry. However, over the next 28 seasons, Landry went 250-151-6, making the playoffs 18 times and winning two Super Bowl titles.
Jimmy Johnson followed Landry and won two more Super Bowls and Barry Switzer followed Johnson and won another. Five Lombardi Trophies between 1971 and 1995 are pretty special, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that all five of the best Cowboys players of all time come from this time period.
So, without further ado, to paraphrase Johnson, “How ‘bout them [top five best] Cowboys?!”
1. Emmitt Smith
Between his incredible longevity and how good he was at his peak, the NFL’s all-time leading rusher comes in as the best player in Cowboys history
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When you run for more yards than anyone in NFL history, there’s a good chance you end up at the top of your team’s best players list, and that’s exactly what Emmitt Smith did during his 13 seasons with the Cowboys. He added to his total during his two seasons with the Arizona Cardinals but still set the record with Dallas.
Smith, the 17th overall pick of the 1990 NFL Draft out of Florida, won Offensive Rookie of the Year in his first season and NFL MVP in his fourth. He finished in the top three in Offensive Player of the Year voting three times and made eight Pro Bowls and four First-Team All-Pro squads.
He also ran for 132 yards and scored two touchdowns to take home his Super Bowl 27 MVP trophy in a Cowboys 30-13 victory over the Buffalo Bills.
Smith’s 1993 season, during which he won NFL and Super Bowl MVP, is incredibly telling as to just how valuable he was to the Cowboys at his peak. That year, he held out training camp and missed the first two games of the season.
Dallas lost those two games by a combined score of 48-26. Jerry Jones caved to his RB’s contract demands, and Smith went on to lead the league in rushing yards (1,486) and yards from scrimmage (1,900) before picking up his pair of MVPs.
Smith’s NFL-leading 18,355 career rushing yards is a record that may never be broken.
2 Bob Lilly
It’s fitting that a big Texas farm boy is No. 2 on the list of the best Dallas Cowboys of all time
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The next Cowboys player on this list may be a bit of a surprise, but the Dallas “Doomsday Defense” of the 1970s was one of the best units in the history of the league, and Bob Lilly was the man in the middle who made it all work.
This defensive unit dominated the NFL on its way to winning Super Bowl 6 in 1971. Along with Lilly, it included Hall of Fame linebacker Chuck Howley and HOF defensive backs Mel Renfro, Herb Adderley, and Cliff Harris.
It was Lilly’s unblockable combination of strength and speed that made the original “Doomsday Defense” work. The TCU product was a big farm boy from Texas who threw around offensive linemen even though he famously didn’t start lifting weights until well into his NFL career.
Lilly played 14 seasons for the Cowboys, recording 95.5 sacks in his career on his way to 11 Pro Bowls and seven First-Team All-Pro selections. That led to his entry into the Hall of Fame and the Cowboys Ring of Honor.
And one more small note is that, although the Cowboys don’t retire jersey numbers, no player has worn No. 74 in the regular season since Bob Lilly retired.
3 Troy Aikman
Troy Aikman got off to a horrible start in the NFL, but he turned it around pretty well, leading his team to three Super Bowl trophies
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The next two players on this list are both quarterbacks and deciding which is third and which is fourth is a difficult task. But with his three Super Bowl rings to Roger Staubach’s two and a Super Bowl MVP trophy to boot, Troy Aikman gets the slight nod here.
Aikman had a rough start to his NFL career, going 0-11 as a starter with nine touchdowns and 18 interceptions as a rookie in 1989. Things got better quickly, though, as he went 7-8 the next season, made the Pro Bowl the season after that, and won his first Lombardi Trophy the season after that.
Playing with Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin, and a stellar offensive line helped, but Aikman’s California cool picked up at UCLA, and his Texas (by way of Oklahoma) toughness made him the captain of the ‘90s Cowboys’ wild and talented ship.
Ultimately, Aikman only played 12 seasons before concussions ended his career. He made six Pro Bowls in that time and threw for 32,942 yards with 165 touchdowns and 141 interceptions.
The early ‘90s were the most successful period in Cowboys history, and as the leader of those teams, Aikman edges out the man who ran the show for the second-most successful Dallas run.
4 Roger Staubach
Roger Staubach embodied everything that made the Cowboys “America’s Team” in the 1970s
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The tale of the tape between Roger Staubach and Troy Aikman is remarkably similar, despite Aikman’s No. 1 overall pick status and Staubach going in the 10th round of the 1964 Draft out of Navy.
Staubach, whose career didn’t start until 1969 due to his military service in the Navy, has six Pro Bowls, two Super Bowl wins, and a Super Bowl MVP on his resume. His regular-season winning percentage (74.5%) is better than Aikman’s 56.9%. And he threw for 22,700 yards with 153 touchdowns and 109 interceptions.
Aikman comparisons aside, Staubach was absolutely incredible in his own right, helping the Cowboys win championships and make Hall of Famers out of players like Tony Dorsett and Drew Pearson.
Staubach was every bit the great man off the field as he was on it. In addition to all the football accolades, he also won the NFL Man of the Year Award in 1978. He was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018.
5 Michael Irvin
You can’t have the other two 1990s ‘Triplets’ on the list without including the first to get to Dallas
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There were a ton of candidates for the fifth and final spot on this ranked list of the best Cowboys players of all time. Randy White, Tony Romo, Pearson, Tony Dorsett, Jason Witten, and several others could have easily made the cut.
That said, if his fellow triplets Emmitt Smith and Troy Aikman are on the list, Michael Irvin has to be there, too.
The Jimmy Johnson (and Barry Switzer) Cowboys of the 1990s would not have been as good as they were without the team selecting Irvin, Aikman, and Smith in the first rounds of the 1988, 1989, and 1990 drafts, respectively.
Irvin was a brash pass-catcher from Miami who hailed from South Florida and was a big part of giving “The U” its brash swagger of the late ‘80s. Irvin then brought that swagger to Texas, helping give the Cowboys an edge the franchise didn’t have following its clean-cut Navy QB-led “America’s Team” run in the 1970s.
The talented wide receiver wasn’t all talk, though. Irvin backed it up with 11,904 receiving yards and 65 touchdowns during his 12 years in Big D. His five Pro Bowls and one All-Pro nod confirm that while the Cowboys were winning rings, “The Playmaker” was one of the best in the game.