Eagles-Cowboys in Week 10 Will Be a Special Broadcast for CBS

As the NFL’s media empire continues to rake in billions of dollars by carving up its oh-so-lucrative pie into more and more slices, doling out the goods to as many different broadcasters and streaming services willing to pay, we get further and further away from the good old days of the 1970s and ‘80s, when the NFL on television was as simple as it comes: AFC games on NBC, NFC games on CBS and “Monday Night Football” on ABC.

So much has changed since then, from adding Thursday and Sunday night packages to streaming games on Amazon and Peacock. Every year there seems to be a new wrinkle. Perhaps the biggest seismic event occurred in 1994, when the fledgling Fox network entered the picture for the first time and ripped the NFC package away from CBS, which had it for decades.

With all the changes that have been made through the years, even the rigid AFC-NFC demarcation has been massaged. Since both CBS (now with the AFC package) and Fox (NFC) must give up some good games every year to the NFL’s prime-time partners, the league has been more flexible in making sure the two network broadcasters have big games for their national time slots on Sunday afternoons.

In that spirit, CBS will actually get a prominent NFC matchup for its Week 10 national game this season. The Bengals, Ravens, Dolphins and Texans are all playing prime-time games that week, and Chiefs-Bills is the national game in Week 11. So the NFL schedule-makers gave CBS the Philadelphia Eagles at Dallas Cowboys matchup for Week 10. As CBS Sports president David Berson pointed out at a media event in New York on Wednesday, this will be the first Eagles-Cowboys broadcast for CBS in 31 years.

Amazingly, the same play-by-play man for that game in 1993 — Jim Nantz — will be on the call for this year’s game. This time, he’ll be with former Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo. Back in ’93, his booth partner was Randy Cross.

The connection to this season’s game gives us a good excuse to take a trip in the time machine and look back on that 1993 matchup. The game was played on Halloween, which was Week 9 (they met again in Week 14 but that was a Monday night game on ABC). Here are some quick facts about the game:

• The Cowboys were defending Super Bowl champs in 1993, on their way to winning back-to-back titles. It was Jimmy Johnson’s fifth season as head coach (and it would be his last, resigning from the team after Super Bowl XXVIII).

• The Eagles were 11-5 in 1992 and had won their first playoff game in 12 years, but they were on the decline in 1993 and would finish 8-8 after a promising 4-0 start. Hall of Famer Reggie White had departed in free agency, signing with the Packers, and quarterback Randall Cunningham was suffering from nagging injuries that would often relegate him to the sidelines. The Eagles head coach was Rich Kotite.

• The Cowboys won the game 23-10, their fifth straight victory after an 0-2 start. They lost those first two games when Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith was holding out in a contract dispute. Dallas relented and made Smith the highest-paid running back in the NFL. In this game, Smith set a new single-game Cowboys record with 237 rushing yards (since broken by DeMarco Murray in 2011). Smith’s effort included a 62-yard TD run , which would be Smith’s longest run of the ’93 season.

• With the ground game and defense in total control, Dallas asked very little of its Hall of Fame quarterback. Troy Aikman attempted just 19 passes the entire game, completing nine for a paltry 96 yards. The third member of the Cowboys’ Hall of Fame Triplets, Michael Irvin, caught three passes for 36 yards.

• The Eagles’ lone touchdown in the game was scored by a player that was a key to the Cowboys’ success in the ‘90s. Dallas famously traded running back Herschel Walker to the Vikings in 1989 for a boatload of draft picks that helped rebuild the franchise. Walker played two-and-a-half seasons in Minnesota and then signed with the Eagles in 1992. After scoring 10 total touchdowns in ’92, he only scored four in ’93, including a 3-yard TD reception in this game. The quarterback who thre that pass? Former Jets first-round pick Ken O’Brien.

• Hall of Famer Charles Haley had one of the Cowboys’ two sacks in this game.

• The game’s leading receiver was James Lofton, a Hall of Famer who played just one of his 16 NFL seasons in Philadelphia. He caught four passes for 57 yards, his most productive game of the season. This was the first of four games Lofton played for the Eagles before he retired after the season.

Related: Dak Prescott’s ‘Got to Be Better in Clutch Situations,’ Scout Says

Related: Scout Questions If NFL Has ‘Figured Out’ Jalen Hurts After Eagles Collapse