“500 coaches could have won the Super Bowl with our team.” When Jerry Jones dropped that line, he lit the fuse on an endless ego war with Jimmy Johnson. After firing Tom Landry, Jerry needed a winner to back his big mouth, so he hired his former Arkansas teammate. Johnson’s price tag? Absolute operational control. He got it in writing on a 10-year deal, but that lasted only five seasons. Thirty-two years on, Johnson reignited the feud by posting a photo of that exact contract on X, showing the type of control he had at Irving. After a move like that, we wouldn’t expect the Dallas Cowboys to be happy.

“The Cowboys are not happy with this post,” veteran Cowboys writer Clarence Hill Jr. wrote on X while sharing Johnson’s post that said, “Does this explain the Cowboys’ responsibilities?”

“Johnson shall have the following duties,” Johnson’s contract stated. “(1) No assistant football coach, trainer, equipment man, or strength coach shall be fired or employed by Employer without the prior approval of Johnson.

“(2) Johnson shall have the right of prior approval with respect to the acquisition, releasing, and trading of all football players of the Dallas Cowboys. (3) Johnson shall have complete control of all assistant coaches, players, trainers, and equipment men during training, practice, preparation for, and the actual playing of games. Notwithstanding the foregoing, neither the assistant coaches, players.”

While the Dallas front office hasn’t issued an official statement addressing the post, their silence speaks volumes. The contract clauses Jimmy posted were proof that his original deal explicitly granted him total “Emperor” status over all football operations. He also had the freedom to “become involved in virtually every detail of club business, from the draft to player contracts to overseeing the production of the team’s two television shows.” 

And to be fair, Jerry was happy to give him what he wanted. Additionally, the Cowboys owner even stated that getting Johnson is equivalent to getting “five No. 1 draft choices and five Heisman Trophy winners.” 

This makes sense, but the effect wasn’t quite seen during the first year of the Jerry-Jimmy era. The Cowboys finished with a 1-15 record, and you can only imagine the amount of backlash the new leadership must have received. The criticisms weren’t just about that devastating record. It was about the firing of Tom Landry (the Saturday Night Massacre). But amid all that, Jerry and Jimmy were orchestrating the “Great Train Robbery”, the Herschel Walker Trade. 

In October 1989, Jimmy Johnson executed the gamble that changed NFL history: trading superstar running back Herschel Walker to the Minnesota Vikings. On paper, Dallas received a bundle of players and draft picks. But Johnson hid a masterstroke in the fine print, attaching conditional draft picks to every player received if they were cut before February 1990. Johnson cut them, flipped the picks, and famously boasted to reporters that he’d just committed “The Great Train Robbery.”

That single moment marked the exact turning point where the spotlight subtly shifted from the billionaire owner to his mastermind head coach. Ironically, Jerry Jones was too busy celebrating to realize he was losing center stage. 

Johnson weaponized the picks he collected. “I was playing fantasy football before there was fantasy football,” Johnson said. He turned that single trade into the foundation of a modern dynasty. He snagged Hall of Fame back Emmitt Smith in 1990, defensive anchor Russell Maryland in ’91, and cornerstone defenders Kevin Smith, Darren Woodson, and Clayton Holmes in ’92. 

By 1992, that blueprint paid off in gold when Dallas won Super Bowl XXVII. Media, fans, and players all credited Jimmy Johnson as the mastermind who resurrected a 1-15 embarrassment into an unstoppable powerhouse. That’s when credit greed took over. 

Even as America’s Team rolled to back-to-back Super Bowl titles in ‘93 and ‘94, bitter internal warfare erupted behind closed doors. Jerry Jones felt reduced to a glorified ‘check writer’ by the media and wanted his pound of flesh. Meanwhile, Johnson refused to let Jones claim credit for work he didn’t do. 

The boiling point arrived in March 1994 at an NFL owners’ meeting bar in Orlando. Furious that Johnson sat with folded arms and refused to join a toast celebrating their second title, Jones snapped. Later that night, Jones pulled reporter Ed Werder aside and spat: 

“Don’t leave now,” Jones said. “You’ll miss the story of the year. I’m going to fire that mo**erfu**** Jimmy Johnson, that disloyal son of a b***h.”

That’s it…that was it. The next day, Johnson left the meeting and went back to his home in the Florida Keys. Their relationship had already suffered from disagreements over control and credit, and this incident made things worse. About a week later, Johnson and Jones agreed to end their working relationship, and Johnson left the Cowboys.

The bitterness ran so deep that within weeks, Jerry bought out the remaining years of Johnson’s contract, paying out an estimated $2 million, and installed college coach Barry Switzer. 

Switzer backed Jerry’s infamous “500 coaches” claim by guiding Dallas to a victory in Super Bowl XXX during the 1995 season. To this day, that remains the franchise’s last championship. Yet, despite Switzer holding the trophy, fans and the media overwhelmingly gave the credit to Johnson, viewing it as the legacy of the dominant roster he had meticulously built.

Even Hall of Famer Michael Irvin and other stars from that era kept wondering how many more big ones they could have won if they had Jimmy.

“No, no, no, not, ‘What could’ve been,’ [but] ‘What the f— could have been?'” Irvin said. “Don’t say it so easily. Not a day goes by that we don’t think about it.” 

And even a few years back, even Jerry Jones admitted that he could have handled this whole situation differently.