The Dallas Cowboys have come a long way since the lowly days of 1989. Sunday’s convincing 33-13 victory against the division-leading Philadelphia Eagles at AT&T Stadium in Arlington is but just one sign of that progress, but it’s a significant one. The win ties the two teams atop their division with a 10-3 record, something that seemed out of reach just a few weeks ago.

Yes, QB Dak Prescott added to his growing MVP resume (he is now the Las Vegas favorite to win the trophy), while receiver CeeDee Lamb continued to make this season the best one yet in his already impressive young career. Of course, the dominant defense of Micah Parsons, Demarcus Lawrence, DaRon Bland and Stephon Gilmore was disruptively on point in the primetime glow of Sunday Night Football. And lest we forget, it seems as though we’ve found an absolute stud in kicker Brandon Aubrey, the North Texas native who started his Cowboys career this year after trying his hand at professional soccer first.

It wasn’t the prettiest win of the year, but in a way that’s a good thing in this case. There were plenty of penalties on both sides, missed scoring opportunities and injuries to key players such as defensive tackle Johnathan Hankins. But it was the kind of win the team needed, regardless: a decisive statement over a fellow Super Bowl contender that didn’t come easy.

But for many Cowboys fans, a victory over the Eagles, any victory over them in any circumstance, just means something different since 1989. That was the first season Jerry Jones owned the Cowboys, and the year the team went 1-15 to finish last in the NFL.

For a large group of fans, however, 1989 was most notable for something else: the “Bounty Bowl.”

The team had been laughably bad for a couple of years, and after Jones fired iconic head coach Tom Landry before the start of the ’89 campaign, the “Cowboys Star” was more than a little tarnished in the eyes of the nation. “America’s Team” was a joke to snicker at, not a model franchise to admire.

There wasn’t a lot for Dallas fans to rally around in 1989. Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin were pups and had yet to show any of the promise that would eventually lead them to the NFL Hall of Fame. The all-time leading NFL rusher, Emmitt Smith, hadn’t even been drafted yet. But a rallying point for fans to focus on arrived on Thanksgiving Day when Dallas welcomed the Eagles to Texas Stadium in Irving.

Philadelphia was coached by Buddy Ryan, a loud-mouthed red-ass known as much for his bad attitude as for his defensive game-planning genius. Prior to ’89, Ryan had been vocal in his distaste for the Cowboys, and kicking a team while it’s down was just the sort of thing he was into. There’s no doubt the coach, who would go on to further infamy after punching another coach in the face on the sidelines in 1993, enjoyed thoroughly beating the Cowboys on Turkey Day ’89 by a 27-0 score.

Seems he got too much enjoyment out of it.

During the game, one of the Eagles’ players laid a devastating, unnecessary, hit on tiny Cowboys kicker Luis Zendejas, a former Eagle. Zendejas could be seen wobbling towards the Philadelphia sideline to exchange words with players and staff. Legendary broadcaster John Madden, alerted the viewers to what was going on by incredulously saying “I think he got knocked down!” It was a chaotic scene in a game that would propel that game from forgettable into folklore.

Immediately following the game, Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson called Ryan out for what he saw as an unsportsmanlike attitude. With a great deal of anger highly apparent in his face, Johnson told the assembled media he had received information that Ryan placed a bounty on both Zendejas and Aikman. Had social media been around back then, it’s not a stretch to say this press conference clip would’ve quickly gone viral.

“I have no respect for how they played the game,” Johnson said. “I would’ve said something to Buddy [Ryan] but he didn’t stay on the field long enough. He put his big fat rear end in the dressing room.”

Allegedly, Ryan had offered Eagles players $200 for a vicious hit to Zendejas and $500 for a hit that would take out the QB Aikman. Zendejas claimed he had been told as much by some Eagles players and that he had seen Ryan make similar offers in the past when he played for Philly.

If a few hundred bucks doesn’t sound like much of an incentive, well, it seems that’s because the bounty wasn’t near that low. In a 2019 interview commemorating the 30th anniversary of the infamous game, former Eagles linebacker Seth Joyner cleared some things up, saying “I will confirm that there was a bounty on Luis Zendejas and it wasn’t $200, it was for $10,000!”

In another 2019 article looking back on the game, USA Today called the Bounty Bowl “an unfortunate stain on the league’s rich Thanksgiving Day tradition, and one of the most notorious chapters in one of the nastiest rivalries in the National Football League.” British sports website TalkSport has dubbed it “the dirtiest game in NFL history.“

Ryan, of course, denied he offered cash prizes for injuring specific opposing players at the time. Such behavior is frowned upon by the league, and an NFL investigation found no wrongdoing. The New Orleans Saints weren’t so lucky in 2012 when their head coach, Super Bowl winner Sean Payton, was suspended for the entire season after the league uncovered a long-running bounty system inside the New Orleans locker room.

Two weeks following the Thanksgiving ’89 game, the Cowboys again faced the Eagles, but this time the game was in Philadelphia. If you’re familiar with the violent reputation of Philly sports fans, it won’t surprise you to learn that the lion’s share of the violence that day emanated from the stands and not from the players on the field.

In the time between the two games, the media had hyped the Dec. 10 matchup, turning “Bounty Bowl II” into more than just a typical late-season matchup between division foes. The less-than-polite Eagles fans pelted the field and the Cowboys sidelines with snowballs and more. The television broadcast was sure to capture images of signs painted with slogans mentioning the bounties all over the stadium. This game was closer, but Dallas lost 20-10. The Eagles would go on to make the playoffs a few weeks later but lost in the wild card round.

Speaking of the Bounty Bowl years later, Jimmy Johnson couldn’t help but gloat a little. That was the low point for his squad, a team that would go on to make league history over the next few years, while Ryan’s Eagles would never win a playoff game under his watch.

“In the end, I had the last laugh,” Johnson said on a 2010 Fox Sports pre-game broadcast.

There have been years since ’89 when the Eagles were clearly the better team, but not that many. And it does hurt that Philly has been to the Super Bowl three times since the Cowboys were last there in 1996, winning it all in 2017. But Dallas has a 3-0 playoff record against the hated Eagles since1993.

On top of all that, there continue to be heated moments and mammoth battles between the two clubs, twice a season. After all, who can forget the game in 1999 when Philly fans cheered as Michael Irvin was taken off the field because a spinal cord injury during what would turn out to be the final game of his career?

Sunday night’s win? Not only did it tie the two clubs atop the division standings, but it fell on a noteworthy date: Dec. 10, the 34th anniversary of Bounty Bowl II.