1976: The year one swing at Cowboys training camp decided Roger Staubach's backup QB
Training camp is where football dreams come true, where a wide-eyed youngster from a small school can prove his worth alongside the biggest, strongest, fastest, and most skilled athletes on the planet and maybe even beat the odds to earn a coveted roster spot in the NFL.
But training camp is also where many a football dream goes to die, where the grueling workouts, intense physical punishment, and exhausting mental stress that comes with cutthroat job competition prove too much for some.
When the Cowboys gather in Oxnard, Calif. next month, players will hope for a moment- one catch, one juke, one block- which will launch a career. But with that opportunity comes the knowledge that there could also be just one moment- a drop, a stumble, a miss- that brings it all crashing down.
It happens every year. But the way it happened for Clint Longley was truly one of a kind.
Longley was one of the most colorful characters in Cowboys history. Born in north Texas, Longley was known for hunting rattlesnakes in his downtime. He was nicknamed “The Mad Bomber” for his obsession with throwing the deep ball, even famously bouncing a pass or two off of Tom Landry’s coaching tower.
He’s now remembered in Dallas for two things: the gutsy relief performance in 1974 that lives on in Cowboys lore as one of the greatest Thanksgiving Day games ever played… and the cowardly move he pulled in the summer of 1976 that got him booted off the team just days before the season, left a locker room bloodied, and sent the organization’s greatest icon to the hospital.
It’s the ultimate cautionary training camp story, and it wasn’t even Longley’s first training camp.
Upon leaving Abilene Christian three credit hours shy of graduation, Longley had been picked up in the 1974 supplemental draft by Cincinnati and then subsequently dealt to Dallas for a fifth-round selection. His rocket-launcher arm quickly won him the backup job behind Staubach after veteran Craig Morton was traded away, but his maverick attitude and lightning-rod personality didn’t endear himself to Coach Landry, who prized unquestioning discipline and exacting conformity above all else.
Longley was thrust into the spotlight as a rookie, on one of the biggest stages imaginable. In the second half of the team’s Thanksgiving contest that year, Longley took over for an injured Staubach with the Cowboys trailing Washington by 13 points and facing an early elimination from playoff contention. In his very first NFL action, he engineered one of the unlikeliest comebacks in franchise history. Posting a stunning 123.5 passer rating, he led the team on three touchdown drives, including a 50-yard prayer to Drew Pearson in the final minute to pull out a dramatic 24-23 win.
"The Clint Longley Game"
Thanksgiving '74
Seeing his first action as a pro, #Cowboys rookie backup quarterback Clint Longley replaces injured starter Roger Staubach in the third quarter — entering the game trailing Washington, 16-3.
Longley orchestrates three scoring drives,… pic.twitter.com/T2VUPnXpgF
— Kevin Gallagher (@KevG163) November 23, 2023
Longley’s incredible off-the-cuff effort was credited to, according to offensive lineman Blaine Nye that afternoon, “the triumph of the uncluttered mind.”
Off the field, the starter-backup relationship between Staubach and Longley was a good one.
“Clint and I sat together every trip in 1974,” Staubach said. “We would talk, he would ask me questions. I kind of thought he looked up to me in a way.”
Longley would make six more game appearances over the 1974 and 1975 seasons, including valuable mop-up duty in a playoff win over the Rams.
But in the summer of 1976, everything changed. Danny White had been picked up after the WFL folded, and there was suddenly competition for the QB2 role.
“Roger was one of the first guys to welcome me,” White explained, “and we started working out together every day. And Clint would never come when we were there. He was upset because all of a sudden, I was a threat to his job.”
“He really didn’t speak to us by the time we were in training camp,” Staubach said. “It wasn’t hunky-dory.”
“Clint didn’t like [Roger]. Clint didn’t like Danny. Clint didn’t like Coach Landry. He didn’t like those guys. That’s just the way it was,” Pearson offered. “So Clint was always doing things the opposite of what should have been done.”
Things were awkward and icy as the team was put through the paces in Thousand Oaks, Calif. White progressed noticeably behind Staubach. Longley didn’t see any action at all in the Cowboys’ preseason finale. And with less than a week of camp to go, tensions reached a boiling point.
What started it differs slightly depending on who is telling the story. Some accounts have Longley simply overthrowing Pearson on a route. Some have Pearson falling and Longley beaning him with the ball on purpose. Words were exchanged- maybe by Pearson, maybe by Longley, maybe by Staubach in defense of his receiver, maybe all of the above.
Most versions of the story, however, have Staubach escalating the situation by making a derogatory bunny-rabbit joke about Longley’s prominent front teeth. And a challenge to fisticuffs was thrown down.
Staubach and Longley reportedly moved to a nearby baseball field on California Lutheran College’s campus. White was told to act as a lookout.
“The next thing you know, I saw Clint’s feet up in the air, and Roger slamming him to the ground,” Pearson offered. “I don’t know what Roger did. He put one of them Vietnam holds on him, that kung fu fighting.”
“I turn around and look,” White would add, “and Roger is over there, down on his knees, just pounding away at Clint.”
Assistant coach Dan Reeves finally caught wind and rushed in to break up the fight.
“If I hadn’t gotten there, Roger probably would have killed him,” Reeves would say. “And I didn’t want my starting quarterback in prison.”
But things were far from over.
A few days later, as the team dressed for practice on the final day of camp, Longley tried to exact his revenge by taking a blindside swing at Staubach’s head as the Super Bowl MVP adjusted his shoulder pads in the locker room. The two men crashed into some equipment and ended up on the ground. There was blood, a lot of it, pouring from above Staubach’s left eye.
After Randy White peeled the two apart, Longley took off running to the dorms. Pearson was actually concerned that the country boy Longley was going to retrieve a gun, of which he had several at camp (for bagging rabbits at night).
Mel Renfro would later tell Staubach that Longley had told him he was looking to get kicked off the team, and the locker-room punch had been part of a premeditated plan.
“He’s been trying to provoke me the whole training camp. He thinks he’s a coach,” Longley reportedly said of Staubach. “I’m going to disappear now. I need a vacation. I’m going to New Mexico.”
Staubach went to the hospital and received nine stitches.
Lot of talk about Staubach getting punched in 1976. This photo shows black eye, bruised forehead, but no broken jaw pic.twitter.com/XDgYVgBqDy
— Gil Brandt (@Gil_Brandt) August 12, 2015
By the time he got back to the facility, Longley was long gone.
“His sucker punch was as dirty as dirty could be,” Staubach would say. “That was the last I saw of him.”
White would serve as Staubach’s backup for four seasons (and the Cowboys’ punter for nine). He took over as the starting QB in 1980 and played another nine years. He would appear in 18 playoff games wearing the star.
Longley would be traded to the Chargers. (The Cowboys would use the two picks they got in return to maneuver into position to draft Tony Dorsett No. 2 overall in 1977.) Longley would complete just 12 more passes in the NFL. Two different comeback attempts in the CFL were short-lived.
Staubach would later say he was always bothered by the 1976 incident with Longley and was open to a reconciliation meeting. It never happened.
D.D. Lewis was one of the few Cowboys to see Longley after the infamous fight. The two went fishing in Corpus Christi in 2003; Longley declined Lewis’s invitation to reach out to Staubach. An NFL Films special a few years later stated that Longley was said to be selling carpet samples out of the back of a van in west Texas.
A colorful character and once a promising talent, Longley’s heroic Thanksgiving Day performance in 1974 remains one of the most legendary tales in franchise history.
But his Cowboys career ended ignominiously with one lapse in judgment less than two years later… that also remains one of the most legendary tales in training camp history.
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