Cowboys’ turbulent offseason reminds of ‘90s. So, how would Emmitt Smith, Troy Aikman move forward?

There was the fur coat. The drug suspension. Scissor-gate. The Jimmy Johnson-Jerry Jones feud. Rape charges. Drug charges. And the White House. Are we missing anything?

“Yeah we had a lot of stuff,” Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith said.

If you think the HBO series “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” on the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers is funky, how about a series on the 1990s Cowboys?

Maybe Denzel’s son could play Michael Irvin. Who would Brad Pitt portray? Who plays Jerry Jones? John C. Reilly, maybe.

Thoughts of the 1990s came up this week as the Cowboys deal with their daunting offseason.

We’ve seen Jones pause before saying coach Mike McCarthy would return for 2022. He also made sure defensive coordinator Dan Quinn remained with the team instead of taking a head coaching job elsewhere. Sean Payton, a Jones family favorite, left the New Orleans Saints, raising speculation he could become the next Cowboys coach. It prompted McCarthy to talk with Jones about it.

Of course, we’ve had the trade of star receiver Amari Cooper, and a woman filing a lawsuit claiming she’s the daughter of Jones. Then there’s Jones’ own daughter, Charlotte, involved in a divorce that’s linked in some ways to the woman wanting a DNA test from Jerry Jones.

The most serious of all issues is cornerback Kelvin Joseph being questioned by Dallas police about his involvement in a homicide. Friends of his were eventually arrested and charged with murder after the death of a Dallas man.

An offseason of turbulence, just like the 1990s.

“It’s not different,” Smith said. “Turbulent offseasons are offseasons, that’s what they are. It’s during the offseason and not during the season. This has been a year of a lot of change throughout the National Football League and a lot of other things have popped up as well. These are the times when teams should be forging ahead or forging that collective bond; during trying times is when you build character.”

How the Cowboys forge ahead will determine plenty in 2022. McCarthy and Quinn have bonded this offseason during the draft process and the Cowboys are better for it.

The legal issues with the Jones family have nothing to do with football, with it being more tabloid fodder than anything else. It hasn’t stopped the Cowboys organization from pushing forward as the first NFL team to form a cryptocurrency partnership with Blockchain.

But, you can’t ignore some of the issues that have occurred because you wonder if any will seep into the locker room.

“I don’t want to say it’s a big deal, I think especially when a lot of it is self-inflicted,” Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman said. “That’s the hard part, invariably there are challenging times, seemly of different nature of each year. But, I think guys are pretty resilient and once they do get on the field and start practicing, a lot of the things, may feel as a distraction aren’t so much.”

The voluntary offseason program started last week and Cowboys players went into their cocoon of preparing for the season. Quarterback Dak Prescott said there was near perfect attendance.

That football stuff can mask plenty of problems, just ask the ‘90s Cowboys. However, this is a different era. It seems everyone knows what’s going on away from the field.

“What we did not have was all this social media and everybody’s opinion,” Smith said. “Now everybody can chime on everything and some of these fools probably don’t even have real accounts because they don’t want their real names to appear as someone that’s disliking the Cowboys because you can trace them back to who they really are rooting for.”

Sometimes we forget that players are human beings who have problems like everybody else. How they manage those problems in the public eye is judged almost daily.

“Jimmy Johnson once said to me, ‘We all carry around our own bag of rocks,’“Aikman said. “I thought it was a really good point. We all have a burden that we bare, rightly or wrongly. When you play for the Cowboys or you’re in the spotlight, those bags of rocks come to light and everybody talks about it. That’s part of the job and I think being tough-minded when you’re going through that, not to say that scrutiny isn’t warranted or anything like that, but a lot of other people’s lives aren’t open for everyone to know.”