IRVING, Texas -- For more than an hour after the game, most of the 63,854 in attendance Sunday afternoon stayed to honor their humble hero, and then boisterously filed out into jammed parking lots to raise a toast to Dallas Cowboys tailback and NFL career leading rusher Emmitt Smith.

By pounding away at the league's worst defense against the rush, totaling a season-best 109 yards on 24 carries, the 13-year veteran supplanted the late Walter Payton as the most prodigious runner in NFL history and also added to his own record by scoring his 150th touchdown on the ground.

But by the time Smith finally made his way to a postgame news conference, the residual sting of a 17-14 defeat to the Seattle Seahawks had draped a shroud around the prideful Smith. And by the time fans' hangovers subside Monday morning the resultant dose of pragmatism might prove more powerful than some of those toxic potions that were being brewed up by tailgaters well into the evening.

	Emmitt Smith holds a trophy presented to him by team owner Jerry Jones.

That the classy Smith finally found his personal Holy Grail was tremendous, a testament to his will, a benchmark that manifests equal parts football ability and old-fashioned durability. But now that the Smith resume includes 16,743 rushing yards, now that this distraction-turned-diversion has finished its high profile run in the spotlight, this question awaits the Cowboys once the warm-and-fuzzy wears off.

Now what?

"Well, the journey goes on," said Smith, surrounded by family members and relatives. "You just try to keep on going and getting better. I don't plan on it ending, not anytime soon, that's for sure."

But the reality is that, at age 33, Smith is in the dotage of his career. And at 3-5, a Cowboys outfit that was a chic preseason playoff selection by many of the pundits but whose offense moves only in sputters and spasms, is more pretender than contender at this juncture of its development.

So here's hoping all those camera flashes that exploded when Smith set the record -- passing Payton on an 11-yard blast over the left side, on a staple run termed "15-Lead" in the lexicon of the Dallas playbook, with 9:10 left in the fourth quarter -- resulted in thousands of perfectly focused pictures.

There don't figure to be, after all, many more such bursts remaining in the Smith repertoire. And it could be a while before this franchise experiences a glorious moment even remotely approximating Smith's amazing feat.

Those preseason prognostications aside, the Cowboys simply aren't a very good team, and must develop a viable quarterback before the future begins to brighten a bit. While an indomitable Smith is on pace for yet another 1,000-yard rushing campaign, which would be quite an achievement for a man with so much mileage on his piston-like legs, he is Old Emmitt and not The Emmitt of Old.

There is, to be sure, a notable difference.

Smith is moving along this season at an 1,112-yard pace, which would be more than he gained in 2001, and is still averaging close to his career mark of 4.3 yards an attempt. In eight games he has 556 yards, more than Payton gained the entire 1987 season, at 33 years old.

In fact, Smith already has more rushing yards than all but four of the league's "top 20" career rushers posted when they were 33 years old. But Smith's output Sunday was just his fifth 100-yard performance in the last 20 games and his 24 carries represented a season high. He was the preordained centerpiece of the Dallas offense Sunday, because Cowboys management desperately wanted the record to fall at Texas Stadium and not on the road, but has not been for much of this season.

Said one veteran Seattle defender: "Look, the guy is a great back, what can you say? But when he hits you now, he doesn't knock you back as far as he used to, and he doesn't get to the hole (as quickly) as he did when he was a younger guy. But then, again, he shouldn't."

Among his 24 attempts Sunday afternoon, Smith had six rushes of 10 yards or more, and that is notable, because he entered the game with just three runs that netted double-digit yards. Buried in the ground statistics, though, were eight rushes of a yard or less: five for a yard and three for negative yardage. For the season now, Smith has 47 rushes of a yard or less. That means nearly 36 percent of Smith's carries in '02 have netted 36 inches or less.

Of course, there are financial realities as well, as there always are anymore in the league. Smith is under contract through the 2005 season. He is due a base salary of $7 million in 2003 and $10 million each in 2004-2005. His cap values, respectively, for those years are $9.806 million, $11.07 million and $11.07 million. According to NFL Players Association documents, the Cowboys are about $11 million under the projected '03 spending limit, but that doesn't mean Smith is affordable.

You hate to rain on the parade of any man as estimable as Smith, a player who exemplified the values of the player whose record he surpassed here, and who has exuded class his entire career. But long before Sunday there were whispers, some of them from the Dallas locker room, that youngster Troy Hambrick deserved more playing time at tailback. And while no one was willing to acknowledge that Smith's playing time might be reduced, now that the record is no longer a factor, Cowboys players allowed they will breathe a little easier now.

"Absolutely, absolutely, I'd think so," said quarterback Chad Hutchinson, whose performance was spotty in his first start on any consequence since his sophomore season at Stanford University.

	“	Well, the journey goes on. You just try to keep on going and getting better. I don't plan on it ending, not anytime soon, that's for sure ”
		— Emmitt Smith, Cowboys running back

The party line had been that Smith's quest for the rushing record was not a distraction, but clearly the Sunday game plan called for him to carry early and often, and to assure the mark fell on home turf. None of the Cowboys coaches would address what might transpire now with the starting tailback spot the rest of the season. Head coach Dave Campo insisted the attention paid the record was not an element of the team's poor performance through the first half of the campaign.

And no one, including high-ranking members of Cowboys management, was of a mind to consider Smith's future with the franchise. "That's hardly a (subject) for today," said owner Jerry Jones.

In an article in the Sunday edition of the Dallas Morning News, former Dallas star running back and Hall of Fame member Tony Dorsett strongly suggested that Smith retire rather than play elsewhere for the rest of his career. Dorsett requested a trade from the Cowboys in 1987 as the team brought in Herschel Walker as its feature back. Dorsett was dealt away to the Denver Broncos, and regretted it.

"It's just my opinion but, if Emmitt can't work it out contractually with the Cowboys, he should just shut it down and retire a Cowboy, because that is how everybody views him," Dorsett said. "If I had it to do all over again, I would have stayed right here. I'm hoping that happens for Emmitt."

Kind of as a symbol of what Smith has meant here, a group of flagbearers carried a string of banners that spelled out "E-M-M-I-T-T," with a Dallas star at the beginning and the end of the parade. Perhaps it was an auguring that Smith will begin and end his career with a star on the side of his helmet. But as touched as he was when the team unfurled an end zone banner to mark his record, the flag hanging amid those documenting the five Dallas victories in Super Bowl games, Smith could continue his career elsewhere.

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," said a family member. "There's a lot of time before we have to starting thinking about that."

It figures to be a long time, as well, before the Cowboys can begin thinking about making room for another Super Bowl placard. Especially on offense, the team is chaotic, and has scored only 10 touchdowns in eight outings.

Pried away from the other NFL suitors with a $3.1 million signing bonus, Hutchinson completed only 12 of 24 passes for 145 yards. He tossed one touchdown pass, to a wide-open Joey Galloway, and did not give away the ball on an interception. But to use a baseball term, the former St. Louis Cardinals pitcher tossed too many 60-foot fastballs, many times bouncing passes in front of would-be receivers.

He missed Galloway on another possible touchdown, when he failed to lead him toward the middle of the field on an attempt swatted away by Seattle cornerback Shawn Springs. On the final play of the first half, Hutchinson dropped a "Hail Mary" pass perfectly into the hands of wideout Ken-Yon Rambo, and the ball was dropped.

But the lingering vision of Hutchinson, who is blessed with great pocket stature, was of a guy who can't deliver the ball on the move. Knowing Smith typically runs inside, and they were facing a quarterback with no movement skills, the Seahawks constantly blitzed inside.

"Give him credit for this," said quarterbacks coach Wade Wilson of his new project, "he didn't do things to give away the game. We've asked our guys to manage the game now. We don't expect them to win it but we can't have them losing it. (Hutchinson) will get better, but he hasn't played very much, and there's some rust there. I just don't know if you can say, "OK, this is when it will all click for him,' and he'll be up to speed."

For the Cowboys, unfortunately, that assessment applies to the whole team.

Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.