Ranking the top 10 Dallas Cowboys villains to Eagles fans

It’s Dallas week, so the boss said to come up with a list of 10 Cowboys villains.

Wait, only 10???

They’ve played 128 times and there could probably be a list of 128 villains — for each side. But in the interest of brevity, we cut it down.

Parsons hasn’t contributed much in the way of off-field nastiness. He did whine last month that Dak Prescott gets criticized more than Jalen Hurts, but that was him just defending a teammate. Parsons, however, is the most dangerous player on the field and should be the focus of everybody at the Linc on Sunday — despite the fact that he’s a fan of the Phillies and Sixers.

» READ MORE: What the Cowboys are saying about the Eagles ahead of Sunday’s NFC East showdown

The five-time Pro Bowler was a fine player, but he nearly ended Terrell Owens’ magical 2004 season with a horse-collar tackle. Owens suffered a fractured fibula and a severely sprained ankle and missed nearly two months, returning just in time for the Super Bowl. The horse-collar maneuver was outlawed the following season; it was even called the “Roy Williams rule.” Despite the legislation, Williams still used it. In 2007, his streak of 94 consecutive games played ended when he was suspended for a game for yet another horse collar. This time it was on Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, who fortunately was not injured on the play.

Meredith had five TD passes in a game that marked a turning point in the rivalry. The Eagles controlled the Cowboys for most of the early 1960s, but a 56-7 Dallas thrashing in 1966 was another step in the Cowboys’ graduation from fledgling expansion team to annual contenders. The Eagles, who won the championship the same year the Cowboys came into the league, in 1960, were headed in the other direction. Meredith wasn’t necessarily the villain unofficial mascot “Crazy Ray” was, but that day at the Cotton Bowl changed things. And, for the Eagles, not for the better.

“It was really a shocker when we looked at the film again,” defensive end Don Hultz said that year. “We all squirmed in our seats and right then and there if we could have gotten a hold of Don Meredith, we’d have choked him.”

Eagles fans hated the offensive nucleus of the Cowboys mostly because they often ran roughshod over the Eagles defense in the early ‘90s. Dallas won three Super Bowls, twice beating the Eagles soundly in the playoffs along the way. No excuse, however, for fans cheering as Irvin laid motionless on the Veterans Stadium turf following a career-ending hit by safety Tim Hauck. It was one of the low points of the Vet, but Irvin has shrugged it off as Philly being Philly.

Eagles wide receiver Charles Johnson disagreed. “I know our fans pride themselves on being tough, but that wasn’t tough,” he said. “That was just plain ignorant. … I was embarrassed to stand on the sideline.”

The architect of the franchise that would annoyingly be referred to as “America’s Team” when it appeared in five Super Bowls in the 1970s. Schramm’s most colorful contribution to this rivalry probably was dubbing a 1990 game “The Pork Chop Bowl,” after Eagles coach Buddy Ryan had to spend a night in the hospital after choking on a pork chop.

Zendejas had been cut by the Eagles in the middle of 1989 only to be picked up by Dallas. Zendejas and coach Jimmy Johnson accused the Eagles of placing a bounty on his head — and quarterback Troy Aikman’s — after Eagles special-teamer Jesse Small made an obvious attempt to flatten Zendejas while covering a kickoff. The Eagles denied the accusations and the NFL’s investigation cleared the Birds when Zendejas failed to produce the tape of an incriminating phone call he said he had with Eagles special-teams coach Al Roberts, Zendejas’ coach here. Bounty Bowls I and II were theater of the absurd. As Ryan said, “Be realistic. … If you had a bounty out, why in the hell would you put it on a kicker who’s been in a six-week slump?”

» READ MORE: Bounty Bowls were key moments in Eagles-Cowboys rivalry

Landry, with his trademark fedora, cast an imposing shadow on the Eagles for most of his tenure. In fact, when the Eagles hired Dick Vermeil as head coach, he openly admonished his players during subpar workouts, lashing out, “The Cowboys are practicing harder than you.”

Buddy Ryan had a Frankford-and-Cottman personality when he was hired to coach the Eagles in 1986. He used to openly pick at Landry, who was more like a golf country club. Ryan felt Landry had run up the score in a 1987 game when the Eagles played mostly with scabs who crossed the striking players’ picket lines. Toward the end of the rematch, which the Eagles won, Ryan called for Randall Cunningham to fake a kneel-down and fire a pass, leading to one final touchdown.

Dallas won three Super Bowls in Jones’ first seven years, but the dynasty faded fast and the only thing notable to come out of the Cowboys lately is complaints about a missed call on a Dez Bryant playoff touchdown in Green Bay and a $1.3 billion stadium that has hosted as many NFC championship games as Murphy Rec.

He coached the Cowboys for only five seasons, but he brought enough arrogance back to the Dallas franchise that fans here still give Johnson the one-finger salute. The Ice Bowl, a particularly nasty incident in 1989 when Philly fans pelted Johnson and his team with ice and snow balls, was a low point. (This also was the Bounty Bowl II.) Dallas went 1-15 with two losses to the Eagles that season, but Johnson got the last laugh when the Cowboys won four out of five against the Birds on their way to winning Super Bowls following the 1992 and 1993 seasons.

Did you know? The week after the Cowboys throttled the Eagles in the 1992 divisional playoffs, Johnson came up with the exclamation “How ‘bout ‘dem Cowboys?” following a win over San Francisco in the NFC championship game. Still makes Eagles’ fans nauseous.

He gaslit the rivalry with a vicious hit on Eagles running back Timmy Brown in 1967 that cost Brown nine teeth and miffed the Eagles’ players. Hall of Fame Philadelphia sportswriter Ray Didinger called it probably the dirtiest play he’d ever seen.

Randy Galloway, who is the equivalent of Didinger when it comes to Cowboys lore, wrote an interesting piece in 2003 about that game 36 years before.

“Off the record,” Galloway wrote, “the Cowboys shrugged off Jordan’s hit as simply a little give and take. In that December game in ‘67, Mike Morgan of the Eagles landed a blow that made Don Meredith’s nose look like a road sign for an upcoming S-curve. To this day, the Danderoo’s broken beak is still bent, courtesy of the Morgan elbow.

» READ MORE: The hit that started the Eagles-Cowboys rivalry

“The Cowboys’ story, and they continue to stick to it, is that Timmy paid for Morgan’s hit. That is, of course, of little comfort to Timmy.

“But maybe that’s it. Maybe it was Lee Roy. Maybe it was December of ‘67 when the city of Philadelphia started really hating the Cowboys.”

The Eagles host the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from Lincoln Financial Field.