Lessons Learned From an Old Cowboy

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A Rivalry: The Final Installment at Texas Stadium

Take a look back at the longtime and often bitter Redskins-Cowboys rivalry at Texas Stadium in Dallas. The Redskins will play their final regular season game at Texas Stadium on Sunday.

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The kid showed he had gumption, too, during a seminal moment when Zorn approached the legendary Landry, eyeing him beneath the coach's fedora, laying his cards on the table. He had not played in the NFL preseason, which then consisted of six games.

"After the second preseason game I saw this thing spiraling out of control," he said. "I wasn't going to get a chance. I went to Tom and said, 'Coach, listen. If I'm going to make this team, in my mind I'm going to have to play to see what I can do, because I know I'm not going to play in the regular season. So if you give me a chance, I'll show you what I can do."

Landry replied by saying he was once on a football team for three years before he took a snap, and that he had gone to his coach at the time and asked him the same question. "I'm going to tell you the same thing he told me," Landry began, "when you get your chance, be ready. That's all I'm gonna tell you. When you get your chance, be ready."

Near the end of the 1975 preseason, in a lost game against the Raiders at the same Texas Stadium where Zorn will march out tomorrow, Landry summoned the rookie left-handed quarterback who begged for his chance.

Zorn was uncanny. He got out of the way of defensive linemen, almost like Roger the Dodger. As many butterflies as the kid had, he reared back and fired, unfazed by the moment, moving the Cowboys downfield.

"I scrambled for a bunch of yards," Zorn recalled. "I threw a touchdown pass. I was nervous as all get-out, but I hung in there. We had a complete drive for a touchdown. That was one of my goals."

After that night, Zorn said he knew. "I said: 'Well, there it is. Now if they cut me, at least inside of myself I had everything that I needed to satisfy myself with the effort I gave.' "

There was no happy ending in Dallas, of course, no script to sell for at least another year or so.

The long shot who survived a gantlet of other free agent quarterbacks who wanted his job, whose desire and fitness had Ditka frothing for joy, could not escape the fate of most undrafted rookies.

Zorn had actually made the 43-man roster the week before the Cowboys opened their season against the Rams, but a knee injury to Dallas fullback Scott Laidlaw that week forced Landry to make a tough decision: cut a wide receiver, defensive back or Zorn to make room for running back Preston Pearson, whom the Cowboys had just picked up. During the pre-Upshaw union days, there were 43-man rosters, no injured reserve or practice squads. Laidlaw was supposed to return in a matter of weeks, so someone had to go before Sunday.

"I came into my locker and Tom said, 'I need to talk to you,' " Zorn said.

Asked if he grew emotional when Landry asked him to turn in his playbook, Zorn said: "Actually, he was tearing up. He didn't want to cut me."