The Dallas Cowboys are nearly always competitive, but they haven’t been serious Super Bowl contenders in a few decades. In fact, they haven’t reached an NFC Championship Game since 1995, a 30-year stretch that stands as the longest active drought in the conference.
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That last NFC Championship Game appearance in 1995 wasn’t just the start of a drought. It marked the end of a dynasty. The Cowboys would go on to win that game, and the next one too, beating the Steelers 27-17 in Super Bowl XXX. It was Dallas’ third Super Bowl title in four years, and their fourth straight trip to the NFCCG.
This team had some characters. Starting from the top with owner Jerry Jones, on down to head coaches Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer, and iconic and wacky players like Emmitt Smith, Charles Haley, Michael Irvin, Troy Aikman, and Deion Sanders. Now, their wild ride is finally getting the full Netflix documentary treatment.
Cowboys superfan Skip Bayless weighed in on the recently revealed Netflix trailer for the doc, which is titled America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys, and releases on August 19. And let’s just say: he’s hyping it up like only Skip can. He even claims that the doc will surpass Michael Jordan’s The Last Dance, which averaged over 5.6 million viewers per episode.
“It is about Jerry Jones and the Cowboys’ four-year dynasty of 1992, 1993, 1994, and 1995. I believe this documentary will be even bigger than The Last Dance documentary about Michael Jordan and the 1998 Bulls,” Bayless said.
“It did have the advantage of dropping early in the pandemic. But I believe Jerry’s doc, America’s Team’s doc, will be bigger. I covered that Last Dance team as a columnist for the Chicago Tribune in 1998. But I also wrote three books about that Cowboys dynasty,” he added.
Bayless went on to reveal that the film crew interviewed him extensively for the documentary. He believes that his books about those Cowboys, one of which was called “
“I’m in the trailer. I assume I’ll play a fairly prominent role in the documentary. They did interview me for, I don’t know, I think it was six straight hours one Saturday out here in L.A. It started to feel as if my books were serving as a road map for this documentary, but I could be wrong. I can’t wait.”
Don’t hurt yourself patting your own back too hard there, Skip.
He could very well be right, however. He’s one of the most passionate and well-known Cowboys fans, and he also happens to be a journalist, so he knows how to tell stories. He told another one—this one more of a fantasy—to wrap up his speech about the doc.
“Wouldn’t it be something if this documentary, and what I believe will be its nuclear reaction, inspires the current Dallas Cowboys to break through against impossibly long odds and win their first Super Bowl in 30 years since 1995? Wouldn’t that be something? I’m just throwing that out there now.”
Those successful Cowboys teams of the early 1990s were arguably that good because it was Jimmy Johnson, not Jerry Jones, really pulling the strings when it came to constructing those rosters. Once Jimmy left following a dispute with Jerry in 1993, the team began to decline. Jones has never relinquished control of the general manager role since.
The Cowboys are in a tough spot in 2025, so Super Bowl aspirations seem unrealistic, hence “impossibly long odds.” If they make the playoffs this year, it will be considered a success. Hopefully, they play well enough so that the documentary doesn’t overshadow their campaign completely. Because we agree with Skip on that: it’s going to be good.
