Interesting blog entry about the Herschel Walker trade

[7DnBrnc53]

After reading, I think this makes a lot of sense: http://www.jeffpearlman.com/a-herschel-walker-conspiracy-theorist/

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I had to stop after a few minutes because of this part:

"The Cowboys gave the Vikings a running back named Herschel Walker and some low round draft picks while the Vikings gave the Cowboys five players off their roster plus their next three first round draft picks as well as their next three second round draft picks and another third round pick in the third year."

 

Here is truth of the initial trade

Players/Draft Picks Received by the Minnesota Vikings:

• RB Herschel Walker
• 3rd round pick – 1990 (54) (Mike Jones)
• 5th round pick – 1990 (116) (Reggie Thornton)
• 10th round pick – 1990 (249) (Pat Newman)
• 3rd round pick – 1991 (68) (Jake Reed)

*****3rd round picks aren't what most would consider "some low round draft picks", especially since Dallas was a crap team (3-13) and picking high. Also, this article leads in with really underselling how polarizing and dynamic Herschel Walker was seen as. He was seen as a 'game changer' (think of an Adrian Peterson-type runner with the bonus of receiver's hands).*****

 

Below is what the Cowboys initially received from the Vikings:

• 1st round pick in 1990 (21) (traded this pick along with pick (81) for pick (17) from Pittsburgh to draft Emmitt Smith)
• 2nd round pick in 1990 (47) (Alexander Wright)
• 6th round pick in 1990 (158) (traded to New Orleans, who drafted James Williams)
• LB Jesse Solomon
• LB David Howard
• CB Issiac Holt
• RB Darrin Nelson (traded to San Diego after he refused to report to Dallas)
• DE Alex Stewart

 

The crucial part of the story was that Jimmy Johnson pretended to desperately need depth (Cowboy's roster was very old and bad) and wanted a lot of players that the Vikings were willing to part with. The sneaky catch was that there were conditions in the trade that stated if the players didn't start enough games/or got cut,  Dallas would receive pre-determined draft picks from the Vikings.   Surely, Jimmy wasn't going to cut all of those players for draft picks when his roster was in shambles? "Hold my beer!"  He did just that and told everyone later that that was his intentions going into the deal. 

Dallas received these conditional picks for cutting players:

•  1st round pick in 1991 (conditional on cutting Solomon) – (12) (Alvin Harper)
•  2nd round pick in 1991 (conditional on cutting Howard) – (38) (Dixon Edwards)
•  2nd round pick in 1992 (conditional on cutting Holt) – (37) (Darren Woodson)
•  3rd round pick in 1992 (conditional on cutting Nelson) – (71) (traded to New England, who drafted Kevin Turner)
•  1st round pick in 1993 (conditional on cutting Stewart) – (13) (traded to Philadelphia Eagles, and then to the Houston Oilers, who drafted Brad Hopkins)^[1]

 

Besides ending up with a boatload of draft picks,  what really compounded the success of those draft years with Jimmy was that he had just came from coaching the University of Miami for years where he had known all of the talented players from that region (Some say that advantage is why Pete Carroll/Schneider did so well drafting in 2010-2012 when Pete just came back from the College circuit).

 

So no...the Vikings didn't initially give up all of those draft picks in the trade, they just got swindled/hornswaggled/boulder-dashed, etc.  It only looked like a bad trade later because Herschel Walker's performance could never live up to that insane 1988 season and because the Vikings ended up getting bilked for more draft capitol than initially expected.  I was about 13 years old when this trade went down, and although I wasn't as knowledgeable about trades and what-not, the buzz around DFW was that this wasn't a good deal for Dallas. A crappy team (3-13) that just traded away it's best player? I mean, we were already pissed that Landry got fired!! Jerry Jones was a dead man!

 

And the easiest reason to not believe this theory is this:

Jerry Jones represented a type of owner that the "Old-Money" owners didn't want in the league..why the heck would they help him out?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ILoveTheVikings]

We played a huge role in creating the Dallas dynasty

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59 minutes ago, ILoveTheVikings said:

We played a huge role in creating the Dallas dynasty

The largest role was Jimmy Johnson.  2nd would be whoever in the Vikings organization that accepted the risk that Dallas wouldn't cut all of those players for draft picks.  3rd would be the triplets.

 

BTW, there was a "30 for 30" episode on this called "The Great Trade Robbery".  You can probably find it on youtube/whatever. It was very entertaining and really spelled out what the trade was about. 

**Edit here's Jimmy Johnson's take on it:

 

[onejayhawk]

Jimmy Johnson tells the story that he later tried to trade a player for a six-pack of beer. The opposing GM refused, so the player was cut.

J

[tom cody]

I think that Walker trade really helped create the Dallas dynasty. Can't see the Cowboys ever having a dynasty in the 90's without Emmit Smith. 

[lancerman]

Johnson was good, but the Cowboys weren’t getting that stacked without the trade

[PurpleLion]

Johnson decided originally on Irvin and not doing that was definitely much greater than anything they got from trading Herschel anytime.