Are Dallas Cowboys, Fans Really Ready to Turn Back the Clock?

Just weeks after many declared the Dallas Cowboys Stephen Jones' team, as the Star-Telegram's Clarence E. Hill Jr. did, the new-look Cowboys are decidedly old-school. Two decades after a team full of electrifying talent and terrifying off-the-field issues won three Super Bowls in four years, the Cowboys are trying to turn back the clock.

As Bleacher Report's Mike Freeman wrote, Randy Gregory is just the latest high-risk, high-reward talent who figures to play a huge role in bringing a championship back to Dallas this season. Were the Cowboys to fill their post-draft opening at tailback with Ray Rice, they'll have cornered the market on such players.

Between his failed drug test at the combine, and the "mental health issues" reported by ESPN's Ed Werder via Pro Football Talk, Gregory not only has to overcome an illness but the consequences of his terrible decision-making.

Gregory's bookend pass-rusher, Greg Hardy, won't join him on the field for the first 10 games of the regular season. Hardy's serving a suspension imposed for serious charges of domestic violence against his former partner, which were dropped when she failed to testify against him.

Don't forget about holdover Dez Bryant, whose old ghosts haunted him while the Cowboys weighed giving him a massive extension this winter; rumored video evidence he'd assaulted a partner never materialized—but neither did the contract. Bryant's playing on the franchise tag this season, and staying away from team facilities (and oversight).

Even after this article was originally published, linebacker Rolando McClain had a court date trying to get charges of disorderly conduct dismissed before trial, according to Paul Gattis of AL.com. 

The 2014 season was a welcome return to elite football in Dallas. After four straight years of .500 or worse results, the Cowboys went 12-4 and won their first playoff game since 2009. They fell agonizingly short of a berth in the NFC Championship Game, and the team that barely beat them very nearly made the Super Bowl too.

After a few years of spending top dollar and top draft picks on the offensive line, the Cowboys again have one of the league's very best units. Their balanced, explosive offense, featuring a dominant, mercurial receiver, is again one of the league's most prolific. The defense doesn't yet stack up to the legendary units Jimmy Johnson presided over, but made enormous strides last summer and looks set to do so again.

“We believe we have the right kind of environment here," head coach Jason Garrett told NFL Network, per Pro Football Talk's Michael David Smith. "Some of the off-the-field concerns that we have with Randy, we feel like we can help address." As we've seen over the years, strong football coaches like Bill Belichick, and strong football organizations like his New England Patriots, can support and include volatile personalities. The Cowboys, however, are not the Patriots, and Garrett is not Belichick.

If the additions of pass-rushers Greg Hardy and Gregory can put the Cowboys over the top, it'll be exactly 20 years since the last Cowboys championship—and 19 years and 11 months since Cowboys Hall of Famer Michael Irvin was found in a hotel room full of cocaine and possible prostitutes, as described by Sports Illustrated at the time.

In 1996, there was no Twitter. There was no TMZ. There were 24-hour news networks, but the offseason travails of athletes weren't really news, yet.

If Johnny Manziel legally drinking champagne and legally riding an inflatable swan in a legal hotel pool set off a 48-hour media feeding frenzy, imagine body-camera footage of a coked-up Cowboy asking police if he can tell them his name breaking the Internet.

BILL JANSCHA/Associated Press

Winning used to be not just everything in football, but the only thing. The world of the NFL has changed dramatically in the past two decades, though—even the past two years. Non-traditional fans of all stripes are now part of the NFL's core revenue base. An unfathomable array of NFL-branded goods lines the walls and fill the closets of millions of Americans. As America's Team, countless fans of every age, gender, race and creed gladly brand themselves with the silver star.

How many woke up today and thought twice about that Cowboys T-shirt? How many are rushing out to buy Nike Randy Gregory Cowboys jerseys or New Era Cowboys draft hats? Probably an awful lot, but maybe not quite as many as might have, had the Cowboys gone a different direction.

Cowboys fan reaction on Twitter was largely positive, as collated by Steven Mullenax of Cowboys blog The Landry Hat. Another Cowboys site, Blogging the Boys, polled its readership and found 86 percent thought the pick at least "solid," but 8 percent selected "uh-oh," or "I need a drink." Most fans love the idea of giving Gregory a second chance—but will they want to give him a third?

As Mike Garafolo and Alex Marvez of Fox Sports reported, there's already been a "verbal altercation" between Hardy and teammate Davon Coleman, who called him a "woman beater." It's hard not to recall Cowboys Hall of Fame pass-rusher Charles Haley's long list of reported altercations with teammates (and that Los Angeles Times article was only from 1993), and wonder if the Cowboys' dressing room isn't turning into a similar powder keg.

There was two-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle Leon Lett, suspended numerous times for positive drug tests. Safety Clayton Holmes was released after being suspended a year for marijuana use, and defensive end Shante Carver was suspended six games for alcohol abuse. Then there was six-time Pro Bowl guard Nate Newton, jailed just two years after his Cowboys career ended after being caught carrying a mind-blowing 388 pounds of marijuana over two separate runs.

RON HEFLIN/Associated Press

Winning still papers over just about every flaw. Jones and his boss/father Jerry surely see a Super Bowl championship as both validation of and vindication for everything they have done until now: dismissing Johnson, hiring a long string of mediocre coaches in his stead, questionable draft decisions and building the most outrageous sports edifice in human history. If this squad can win it all before the lit fuse burns all the way down to the charge, maybe it'll all be worth it.

Gregory, after all, is an incredible talent. Bleacher Report's Matt Miller had him going No. 3 overall before the failed drug test, and too-skinny weigh-in, at the combine. Hardy's last full season in the NFL was a 15-sack Pro Bowl campaign; he added another sack in the only 2014 game in which he played.

Both could transform one of the league's worst pass rushes—28th in sack rate, per Pro Football Focus—into one of the best. Bryant is already one of the NFL's best receivers. Even McClain was a vital run-stopping cog in a defense that had too few of them in 2014.

But just how much tarnish can the Joneses, or Cowboys fans, stand to see on that star?

Will a rogues' gallery of troubled talents be received as well in the 2010s as they were in the 1990s? Will the glory and thrill of playing the league's best for the highest possible stakes still feel as good when the media are cracking old jokes about barbed wire and guard towers around the Cowboys training facility?

If one or more of the new Cowboys does something awful and gets hauled away in handcuffs—before or after the Lombardi Trophy comes back to Big D—will this challenge for the championship still be worth the risk?

How about it, Cowboys?