October 12, 1989

Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson were in their first year running the Cowboys, the team was 0-5, and they knew they needed to do something dramatic. The Minnesota Vikings had slowly climbed from 3-13 to 11-5 over five seasons, but were now just 3-2 and worried that their momentum had stalled. Dallas had two major tradable assets: WR Michael Irvin, and RB Herschel Walker. Minnesota felt that the speedy power runner would shore up the ground game that had ranked 20th in yards gained and 21st in yards per rush the year before. It was a match made in heaven, or at least Jimmy Johnson’s version of it. 

The deal was the biggest in NFL history. It was also more complicated than three-dimensional chess. In the original version, the Cowboys received five players and six draft picks, five of them attached to the players in the deal; after the season, Dallas was to decide if they wanted the player or the pick. One of them refused to report to the Cowboys, and was sent to San Diego and ultimately back to Minnesota in an arrangement that gave Dallas additional draft selections, one of which was passed along to the Vikings.  Dallas waived one of the players, and threatened to waive others at the end of the season in order to solidify the conditional picks; a further swap of draft choices locked in those that were previously conditional while allowing Johnson to keep three players.

When the smoke had cleared, the Cowboys gave up Herschel Walker, their 3rd and 10th round draft picks in 1990, San Diego’s 5th-round 1990 pick, and their own 3rd-round pick in 1991.  In return, they got the following:

• LBs Jesse Solomon and David Howard
• CB Isaac Holt
• Minnesota’s 2nd and 6th round picks in 1990
• Minnesota’s two 1st round picks and a 2nd round pick in 1991
• Minnesota’s 2nd and 3rd round picks in 1992
• Minnesota’s 1st round pick in 1993

In one sense, the trade worked for Minnesota, because the Vikings did improve their running game, up to seventh in yards and eleventh in yards per attempt. In every other sense, the trade was a disaster. 

The team slipped to 10-6 in 1989, and 6-10 in ’90, making those draft picks all the more valuable. Jimmy Johnson treated such picks as raw material, trading up and down maniacally to get the players he wanted and whatever other value he could extract. He did not use any of the actual selections acquired in the deal, but turned the surplus into higher picks that let him choose Emmitt Smith, Darren Woodson, Alvin Harper, Russell Maryland, and Kevin Smith, all mainstays of the Super Bowl-winning Cowboys teams of the 1990s.