Football 30 for 30 Short: The Herschel Walker Trade - Page 2

'Hamas' Jenkins · 10-08-2014, 09:45 PM

Everyone knows the outcome, but the backstory is great, too:

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=espn:11619469

After his rookie year, Johnson considering trading Irvin just to acquire draft picks, he felt the team was so bad.

scho63 · 10-12-2014, 07:15 AM

I hate the Cowboys but that was an awesome story and Jimmy Johnson really pulled a good one there!

I never knew that Jimmy Johnson and Jerry Jones were classmates......

Sweet Daddy Hate · 10-12-2014, 08:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by scho63

I hate the Cowboys but that was an awesome story and Jimmy Johnson really pulled a good one there!

I never knew that Jimmy Johnson and Jerry Jones were classmates......

I wish KC would have the balls to pull the next JJ from somewhere off the good ol' boy grid.

Al Bundy · 10-12-2014, 08:29 AM

JJ was a failure in Miami with the Dolphins.

beach tribe · 10-12-2014, 08:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ram29jackson

its not my fault you believe anything your told. Theres no way in hell he came up with that idea even as a starting point. Its a lie plain and simple.

the NFL created the entire thing. This all happened to reward a new owner for buying a team and keep the cash cow of the mighty Star logo alive for the drooling football fans.

Yup. I'm sure the Vikings GM loves being called a ****ing moron for the rest of his life so that JJ could get him some super bowls.

What an idiot.

Al Bundy · 10-12-2014, 08:37 AM

http://www.twincities.com/sports/ci_...ill-owns-edina

After all these years, Herschel Walker still owns a home in Edina.

The former star running back has four houses around the country, and he occasionally stops by the one in Minnesota. What's unusual about this one is it was part of the Walker trade made 25 years ago Sunday.

On Oct. 12, 1989, the Vikings and Dallas Cowboys completed perhaps the most famous trade in NFL history. Some might also call it the most famous swindle in league history.

In a deal involving a record 18 players and draft picks, the Cowboys traded Walker for a bevy of selections, including three in the first round and three in the second. Although Walker never panned out in Minnesota, the Cowboys used the assets they received to help win three Super Bowls in the first half of the 1990s.

But the deal never would have happened had Walker not agreed to waive his no-trade clause. To do that, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones had to appease him with an exit bonus of $1.25 million, two cars and the house in Edina.

Walker heard about the impending deal the week before it became official. But the 27-year-old wanted to stay in Dallas, where he rushed for 1,514 yards in 1988 while making his second straight Pro Bowl.

"I was comfortable in Dallas, and I didn't want to leave my teammates," said Walker, who joined the Cowboys in 1986 after starring for three years with the New Jersey Generals in the USFL. "I didn't want to desert them. That's not the type of person I am. I wanted to be in a foxhole with them."

It was up to Jones and first-year NFL coach Jimmy Johnson to persuade Walker to accept the trade. Meanwhile, Dallas, which was 0-4 at the time and bound for a 1-15 season, still had games to play.

Walker suited up for Dallas for an Oct. 8, 1989, game in Green Bay knowing the trade with the Vikings was missing one thing to be complete -- him signing off on it. He carried just 12 times that day but thought that was too much.

"They didn't give me the ball much because they didn't want me to get hurt and mess up the deal," Walker said. "I probably shouldn't have played at all."

Finally, the next week, Walker said he would go to the Vikings under certain conditions. He was stunned when Jones accepted his demands.

"I didn't want to go, so me and my agent at the time, Peter Johnson, threw out a bunch of ridiculous stuff," Walker said. "We figured if we asked for a rocket ship, they weren't going to give us that. So we asked for houses and cars and all sorts of junk. We really didn't want the stuff. I didn't care about the money. We just threw it out because we thought they'd say no. And then Jerry agreed to it. He called our bluff."

So Walker, who signed a five-year, $5 million contract with Dallas in 1986, was bound for Minnesota. He said the house in Edina, the two cars he received (one a sport-utility vehicle and the other a luxury vehicle for his then-wife Cindy) and some other non-cash items were worth more than $1.25 million.

Throw in the $1.25 million Walker got in cash, and he received goods totaling more than $2.5 million. That was more than 2-1/2 times his 1989 salary.

"I'm sure it was worth it for (the Cowboys)," Walker said. "They got three Super Bowls."

Meanwhile, the Vikings soon floundered. After going 11-5 in 1988 and 10-6 in 1989, they fell to 6-10 in 1990 and 8-8 in 1991 -- and Walker was released.

It's no wonder the deal eventually was dubbed "The Great Trade Robbery."

"It's the 25th anniversary of the debacle," said Tommy Kramer, Minnesota's starting quarterback when Walker showed up in 1989. "It sticks out as the worst trade in the history of the NFL. Herschel came to Minnesota, and he started tiptoeing through holes. I don't know why."

Walker, who had won the Heisman Trophy at Georgia in 1982 and then rushed for a pro-record 2,411 yards in 18 USFL games for the Generals in 1985, did at least get off to a good start for the Vikings.

On Oct. 15, 1989, against the same Packers he had seen the week before, he lost his shoe on his first carry but still gained 47 yards. He finished the game at the Metrodome with 148 yards on 18 carries in a 26-14 victory and ended up on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

But Walker didn't do much after that. He finished 1989 with 669 yards rushing in 11 games and a 4.0-yard average. He had 770 yards in 1990 and 825 in 1991, with a 4.2 average in each season.

"I loved Minnesota," Walker said. "I loved the people there. I always felt that I owed them more. But I didn't get the opportunities to carry the ball or catch the ball. They never gave me a chance to fit in."

Then-Vikings coach Jerry Burns said Walker didn't fit into his offense well and he couldn't change it for one player. Walker, who averaged 12.8 carries in 43 games with the Vikings, disputes that, saying he could have been effective in any offense if given more chances.

The bottom line, though, is the Vikings mortgaged their future for a player they thought could be the final piece to a championship. The deal was put together by then-general manager Mike Lynn, who died in 2012.

Lynn said when the trade was announced and the Vikings were 3-2 that they badly needed a "marquee" running back. He said if they didn't "get to the Super Bowl while Herschel Walker is a member of the Minnesota Vikings, then we have not made a good trade."

One thing is for sure. The Vikings did not make a good trade.

Much of the problem was what Lynn did to outbid Cleveland for Walker. He initially sent Dallas five players and a 1992 first-round pick.

But Lynn agreed to give the Cowboys additional draft picks if they ended up cutting the players received by a certain period. Johnson later said it was his intention all along to eventually dump the majority of the players he acquired.

The Cowboys got running back Darrin Nelson, linebackers Jesse Solomon and David Howard, cornerback Issiac Holt and defensive end Alex Stewart, none of them stars. Nelson refused to report and was traded to San Diego. The other players had short Dallas tenures except for Holt, who stuck around long enough to win a Super Bowl ring after the 1992 season.

So the Cowboys ended up with eight picks: three in the first round, three in the second, one in the third and one in the sixth. In addition to Walker, Minnesota also got from Dallas two third-round selections and one in the 10th as well as a fifth-rounder from the Chargers for Nelson.

The key to their future success was what the Cowboys did with all those draft choices. They used several in other trades, and players they landed included future hall of fame running back Emmitt Smith and eventual stars Russell Maryland at defensive tackle and Darren Woodson at safety.

"I think it accelerated the building process for them dramatically," said NFL Network analyst Charley Casserly, then general manager of the Washington Redskins, Dallas' primary NFC East rival. "We thought that Herschel Walker was a good player, but we didn't think he was quite as good as maybe he was billed up to be."

Nevertheless, the reaction from many when the deal was announced was that Minnesota had gotten the upper hand by getting a star. The Cowboys at the time had a collection of young players who had a chance to pan out and aging veterans, but Walker was the team's only Pro Bowl player the previous season.

"The trade caught everybody (on the Cowboys) pretty much by surprise," said Steve Walsh, a St. Paul native who was then Dallas' starting quarterback while rookie and future hall of famer Troy Aikman was sidelined with a broken finger. "I was like, 'Wow, who do we have left?' We had some average running backs, but nobody with the explosiveness of Herschel."

In hindsight, Walsh said Walker's "shelf life of really high production" was running out. Walker had plenty of carries in nine-plus years with Georgia, New Jersey and Dallas, where he had 361 attempts in 1988, second in the NFL.

When Walker showed up in Minnesota, there was plenty of excitement. Teammates looked at the famous athlete with awe.

"When he arrived, we were all a little star-struck," guard Randall McDaniel said. "Herschel was that big. I was in my second year in the league and I remembered what he did at Georgia and in the USFL. I remember just looking across at him in the locker room and saying to myself, 'That's Herschel Walker.' I got an autograph from him for my parents."

But while McDaniel went on to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Walker didn't. The Vikings went just 21-22 in games he played, with Walker gaining 2,264 yards.

"Herschel was a great guy to be around, but I think by the time we got him, his best days were behind him," Burns said. "He was basically a T-formation back, and we were running the wing-T. We couldn't make a great deal of changes because we had another 10 guys lining up on the offensive side."

Walker disputes the idea that he was significantly on the decline when he got to Minnesota. He points to rushing for 1,070 yards for Philadelphia in 1992, when he was 30.

"The coaches didn't want me in Minnesota," Walker said. "I had been forced upon them by management."

Burns doesn't completely deny that. He said the trade was orchestrated by Lynn and he didn't know anything about it until just before it was announced.

"It was a tough year for coaching. It was a difficult final two or three years," said Burns, who retired after the 1991 season. "Obviously, the trade helped Dallas and it did not help us."

With Smith on his way to becoming the leading rusher in NFL history, Dallas won Super Bowls after the 1992, 1993 and 1995 seasons.

"We already had some good young players," said Babe Laufenberg, the Cowboys' radio analyst who was a quarterback for the team in 1989 before doing radio work during the championship seasons. "It was a piece to the puzzle, but I think it's a little elementary to say that trade brought them three Super Bowls."

Johnson has expressed similar sentiments over the years, saying there were plenty of other factors that led to the titles, two won by Johnson and one by Barry Switzer. Many note that Dallas' roster already included Aikman and rising receiver Michael Irvin.

However, Jones recently told the NFL Network, "If I don't do the Herschel Walker trade, we don't win the Super Bowls."

Interestingly, Jones ended up bringing Walker back to Dallas after the Super Bowl wins. Walker returned for the 1996 and 1997 seasons, mostly returning kickoffs, before retiring at the age of 35.

Walker now makes his primary home outside Dallas while also owning residences in his native Georgia and in Philadelphia. As for the one in Edina, he'll never forget how he got it.

Crying Ramtard · 10-12-2014, 11:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by beach tribe

Yup. I'm sure the Vikings GM loves being called a ****ing moron for the rest of his life so that JJ could get him some super bowls.

What an idiot.

If its fake that means the owners don't care in the first place. Do you not get that all owners get the same amount of money no matter which team is successful. So making sure the most popular teams are successful benefits everyone.

what millionaire cares what a stupid beer drinking dumb fan thinks ? he's still a billionaire because theres plenty of cattle that go to losing teams games anyway

Sweet Daddy Hate · 10-12-2014, 01:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ram29jackson

If its fake that means the owners don't care in the first place. Do you not get that all owners get the same amount of money no matter which team is successful. So making sure the most popular teams are successful benefits everyone.

what millionaire cares what a stupid beer drinking dumb fan thinks ? he's still a billionaire because theres plenty of cattle that go to losing teams games anyway

Welcome to the Kingdumb.

Crying Ramtard · 10-12-2014, 03:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 505 Chief

Welcome to the Kingdumb.

IE its where you live and have no clue what's going on.

LOL grow up dude

kcxiv · 10-12-2014, 03:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Al Bundy

JJ was a failure in Miami with the Dolphins.

everyone but Shula was a failure with Miami.

**TimBone** · 10-12-2014, 03:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr. Flopnuts

I read a long article on this. Jimmy Johnson pretty much invented the draft pick value chart. He assigned values to each pick, and no one else in the league was doing that at the time. Now everyone uses it.

Jimmy wasn't just some college coach that won a National Title. He was a revolutionary, and a great GM as well as a great coach. It's really remarkable. He's an egomaniac, but he's earned the right too be in my eyes.

Even more reason they should have done a full show on this subject.

However, what kind of dumbshit GM needs a chart to realize that of you assign 1st and 2nd rounders to role players in a trade then they're gonna be cut?

10-08-2014, 09:45 PM
'Hamas' Jenkins Now you've pissed me off! Join Date: Jan 2006 Casino cash: $8009572	30 for 30 Short: The Herschel Walker Trade Everyone knows the outcome, but the backstory is great, too: http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=espn:11619469 After his rookie year, Johnson considering trading Irvin just to acquire draft picks, he felt the team was so bad.
Posts: 74,829

10-12-2014, 07:15 AM	#16
scho63 Politically Incorrect Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Scottsdale, AZ Casino cash: $2691110	I hate the Cowboys but that was an awesome story and Jimmy Johnson really pulled a good one there! I never knew that Jimmy Johnson and Jerry Jones were classmates...... __________________ *"The only difference between sex for free and sex for money is that sex for free costs you a WHOLE LOT more!"* ~Redd Foxx~ ~~2018 2019 2020 20212022 2023~~ 2024 Adopt a Chief - Clark Hunt and Brett Veach "The men who drafted Patrick Mahomes"
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10-12-2014, 08:29 AM	#18
Al Bundy Damnit Peg Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Overland Park Casino cash: $5361831	JJ was a failure in Miami with the Dolphins.
Posts: 23,318

10-12-2014, 08:37 AM	#20
Al Bundy Damnit Peg Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Overland Park Casino cash: $5361831	http://www.twincities.com/sports/ci_...ill-owns-edina After all these years, Herschel Walker still owns a home in Edina. The former star running back has four houses around the country, and he occasionally stops by the one in Minnesota. What's unusual about this one is it was part of the Walker trade made 25 years ago Sunday. On Oct. 12, 1989, the Vikings and Dallas Cowboys completed perhaps the most famous trade in NFL history. Some might also call it the most famous swindle in league history. In a deal involving a record 18 players and draft picks, the Cowboys traded Walker for a bevy of selections, including three in the first round and three in the second. Although Walker never panned out in Minnesota, the Cowboys used the assets they received to help win three Super Bowls in the first half of the 1990s. But the deal never would have happened had Walker not agreed to waive his no-trade clause. To do that, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones had to appease him with an exit bonus of $1.25 million, two cars and the house in Edina. Walker heard about the impending deal the week before it became official. But the 27-year-old wanted to stay in Dallas, where he rushed for 1,514 yards in 1988 while making his second straight Pro Bowl. "I was comfortable in Dallas, and I didn't want to leave my teammates," said Walker, who joined the Cowboys in 1986 after starring for three years with the New Jersey Generals in the USFL. "I didn't want to desert them. That's not the type of person I am. I wanted to be in a foxhole with them." It was up to Jones and first-year NFL coach Jimmy Johnson to persuade Walker to accept the trade. Meanwhile, Dallas, which was 0-4 at the time and bound for a 1-15 season, still had games to play. Walker suited up for Dallas for an Oct. 8, 1989, game in Green Bay knowing the trade with the Vikings was missing one thing to be complete -- him signing off on it. He carried just 12 times that day but thought that was too much. "They didn't give me the ball much because they didn't want me to get hurt and mess up the deal," Walker said. "I probably shouldn't have played at all." Finally, the next week, Walker said he would go to the Vikings under certain conditions. He was stunned when Jones accepted his demands. "I didn't want to go, so me and my agent at the time, Peter Johnson, threw out a bunch of ridiculous stuff," Walker said. "We figured if we asked for a rocket ship, they weren't going to give us that. So we asked for houses and cars and all sorts of junk. We really didn't want the stuff. I didn't care about the money. We just threw it out because we thought they'd say no. And then Jerry agreed to it. He called our bluff." So Walker, who signed a five-year, $5 million contract with Dallas in 1986, was bound for Minnesota. He said the house in Edina, the two cars he received (one a sport-utility vehicle and the other a luxury vehicle for his then-wife Cindy) and some other non-cash items were worth more than $1.25 million. Throw in the $1.25 million Walker got in cash, and he received goods totaling more than $2.5 million. That was more than 2-1/2 times his 1989 salary. "I'm sure it was worth it for (the Cowboys)," Walker said. "They got three Super Bowls." Meanwhile, the Vikings soon floundered. After going 11-5 in 1988 and 10-6 in 1989, they fell to 6-10 in 1990 and 8-8 in 1991 -- and Walker was released. It's no wonder the deal eventually was dubbed "The Great Trade Robbery." "It's the 25th anniversary of the debacle," said Tommy Kramer, Minnesota's starting quarterback when Walker showed up in 1989. "It sticks out as the worst trade in the history of the NFL. Herschel came to Minnesota, and he started tiptoeing through holes. I don't know why." Walker, who had won the Heisman Trophy at Georgia in 1982 and then rushed for a pro-record 2,411 yards in 18 USFL games for the Generals in 1985, did at least get off to a good start for the Vikings. On Oct. 15, 1989, against the same Packers he had seen the week before, he lost his shoe on his first carry but still gained 47 yards. He finished the game at the Metrodome with 148 yards on 18 carries in a 26-14 victory and ended up on the cover of Sports Illustrated. But Walker didn't do much after that. He finished 1989 with 669 yards rushing in 11 games and a 4.0-yard average. He had 770 yards in 1990 and 825 in 1991, with a 4.2 average in each season. "I loved Minnesota," Walker said. "I loved the people there. I always felt that I owed them more. But I didn't get the opportunities to carry the ball or catch the ball. They never gave me a chance to fit in." Then-Vikings coach Jerry Burns said Walker didn't fit into his offense well and he couldn't change it for one player. Walker, who averaged 12.8 carries in 43 games with the Vikings, disputes that, saying he could have been effective in any offense if given more chances. The bottom line, though, is the Vikings mortgaged their future for a player they thought could be the final piece to a championship. The deal was put together by then-general manager Mike Lynn, who died in 2012. Lynn said when the trade was announced and the Vikings were 3-2 that they badly needed a "marquee" running back. He said if they didn't "get to the Super Bowl while Herschel Walker is a member of the Minnesota Vikings, then we have not made a good trade." One thing is for sure. The Vikings did not make a good trade. Much of the problem was what Lynn did to outbid Cleveland for Walker. He initially sent Dallas five players and a 1992 first-round pick. But Lynn agreed to give the Cowboys additional draft picks if they ended up cutting the players received by a certain period. Johnson later said it was his intention all along to eventually dump the majority of the players he acquired. The Cowboys got running back Darrin Nelson, linebackers Jesse Solomon and David Howard, cornerback Issiac Holt and defensive end Alex Stewart, none of them stars. Nelson refused to report and was traded to San Diego. The other players had short Dallas tenures except for Holt, who stuck around long enough to win a Super Bowl ring after the 1992 season. So the Cowboys ended up with eight picks: three in the first round, three in the second, one in the third and one in the sixth. In addition to Walker, Minnesota also got from Dallas two third-round selections and one in the 10th as well as a fifth-rounder from the Chargers for Nelson. The key to their future success was what the Cowboys did with all those draft choices. They used several in other trades, and players they landed included future hall of fame running back Emmitt Smith and eventual stars Russell Maryland at defensive tackle and Darren Woodson at safety. "I think it accelerated the building process for them dramatically," said NFL Network analyst Charley Casserly, then general manager of the Washington Redskins, Dallas' primary NFC East rival. "We thought that Herschel Walker was a good player, but we didn't think he was quite as good as maybe he was billed up to be." Nevertheless, the reaction from many when the deal was announced was that Minnesota had gotten the upper hand by getting a star. The Cowboys at the time had a collection of young players who had a chance to pan out and aging veterans, but Walker was the team's only Pro Bowl player the previous season. "The trade caught everybody (on the Cowboys) pretty much by surprise," said Steve Walsh, a St. Paul native who was then Dallas' starting quarterback while rookie and future hall of famer Troy Aikman was sidelined with a broken finger. "I was like, 'Wow, who do we have left?' We had some average running backs, but nobody with the explosiveness of Herschel." In hindsight, Walsh said Walker's "shelf life of really high production" was running out. Walker had plenty of carries in nine-plus years with Georgia, New Jersey and Dallas, where he had 361 attempts in 1988, second in the NFL. When Walker showed up in Minnesota, there was plenty of excitement. Teammates looked at the famous athlete with awe. "When he arrived, we were all a little star-struck," guard Randall McDaniel said. "Herschel was that big. I was in my second year in the league and I remembered what he did at Georgia and in the USFL. I remember just looking across at him in the locker room and saying to myself, 'That's Herschel Walker.' I got an autograph from him for my parents." But while McDaniel went on to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Walker didn't. The Vikings went just 21-22 in games he played, with Walker gaining 2,264 yards. "Herschel was a great guy to be around, but I think by the time we got him, his best days were behind him," Burns said. "He was basically a T-formation back, and we were running the wing-T. We couldn't make a great deal of changes because we had another 10 guys lining up on the offensive side." Walker disputes the idea that he was significantly on the decline when he got to Minnesota. He points to rushing for 1,070 yards for Philadelphia in 1992, when he was 30. "The coaches didn't want me in Minnesota," Walker said. "I had been forced upon them by management." Burns doesn't completely deny that. He said the trade was orchestrated by Lynn and he didn't know anything about it until just before it was announced. "It was a tough year for coaching. It was a difficult final two or three years," said Burns, who retired after the 1991 season. "Obviously, the trade helped Dallas and it did not help us." With Smith on his way to becoming the leading rusher in NFL history, Dallas won Super Bowls after the 1992, 1993 and 1995 seasons. "We already had some good young players," said Babe Laufenberg, the Cowboys' radio analyst who was a quarterback for the team in 1989 before doing radio work during the championship seasons. "It was a piece to the puzzle, but I think it's a little elementary to say that trade brought them three Super Bowls." Johnson has expressed similar sentiments over the years, saying there were plenty of other factors that led to the titles, two won by Johnson and one by Barry Switzer. Many note that Dallas' roster already included Aikman and rising receiver Michael Irvin. However, Jones recently told the NFL Network, "If I don't do the Herschel Walker trade, we don't win the Super Bowls." Interestingly, Jones ended up bringing Walker back to Dallas after the Super Bowl wins. Walker returned for the 1996 and 1997 seasons, mostly returning kickoffs, before retiring at the age of 35. Walker now makes his primary home outside Dallas while also owning residences in his native Georgia and in Philadelphia. As for the one in Edina, he'll never forget how he got it.
Posts: 23,318