FRISCO, Texas – The Cowboys have lived a charmed existence with backup quarterbacks. Until now.
For the past nine seasons, they have enjoyed a part serendipitous and part mighty consistent stretch of play from no more than two quarterbacks. And in this NFL, that's rather remarkable since finding a starting quarterback can sometimes be a mountainous search, let alone coming up with a quality and inexpensive second guy capable of keeping the train on the tracks when injury certainly at that position can derail a season.
Just think.
We go back to 2016, the year after that exact backup quarterback calamity struck a Cowboys team that was returning after being a Dez Bryant "catch-no catch" play away in Green Bay, Wisconsin, from advancing to the 2014 NFC Championship Game, where they would have faced a Seattle team the 12-4 Cowboys had already beaten earlier in the season, 30-23, and in Seattle at that.
Basically, 2015 was the same team. Except starting quarterback Tony Romo goes down in Game 2 of that season with a fractured left collarbone, leaving the franchise in the hands of fourth-year veteran backup Brandon Weeden. He saved that game for a 2-0 start and then put up 28 points the next week against Atlanta, only for the defense to give up 39. Then Weeden rallied the Cowboys into a 20-20 tie in New Orleans, only for the defense to give up the game-winning touchdown on the second play of overtime, an 80-yard Drew Brees to C.J. Spiller wheel route of a pass.
Panic struck dropping to 2-3 the next week after a 30-6 loss to New England. During the following week's bye, Dallas traded for 11-year veteran quarterback Matt Cassel, who had been beaten out for the Bills starting job that season. The Cowboys then proceeded to lose the next five games until Romo returned the Sunday before Thanksgiving to beat Miami. Only on Thanksgiving, just four days later, he refractured that same collarbone in a different location in a loss to Carolina. Cassel returned to at least beat Washington but lost the next two, suffering the indignity of having a pass initially flagged for grounding while in the air intercepted and returned for a touchdown.
Some guy named Kellen Moore replaced Cassel in that loss to the Jets in his NFL debut and then started the next two games, both losses for the 4-12 Cowboys.
That was enough calamity incentive for the Cowboys to spend their second fourth-round pick of the 2016 NFL Draft to select Mississippi State quarterback Dak Prescott, wanting to presumably groom him to become Romo's backup of the future and to learn behind current backup Moore as the team's third quarterback.
Now the serendipitous part in a roundabout way. Moore breaks his leg in training camp. Out for the season. Romo in the third preseason game suffers a compression fracture of the L1 vertebrae, and just like that became the arrival of the Cowboys' current starting quarterback Prescott going into his now 10th NFL season. Romo's career was over, the rookie that year winning 11 straight and leading the team into the playoffs as the No. 1 seed at 13-3.
For a backup in 2017, after Romo called it quits and the team moved on from 2016 temp backup Mark Sanchez, the Cowboys signed some undrafted rookie QB named Cooper Rush as the developmental third guy behind Moore. Kellen never played again, transitioning to the Cowboys quarterback coach and eventual offensive coordinator. Meanwhile, this Rush guy becomes the backup in 2017 and holds the position right through the 2024 season after a 2020 offseason cup of coffee with the Giants. Rush went 9-5 as a starter over his eight-year career in Dallas.
And best of all, an inexpensive backup to boot, making just $9.2 million during that eight-year span.
Until now.
After Rush played out a two-year, $5 million contract the past two seasons, Baltimore signed the unrestricted free agent, money-whipping Rush with a deal a little too rich for the Cowboys' salary-cap blood. The contract totaled $6.2 million over two years with $4.2 million guaranteed, a $2.75 million signing bonus and the potential based on playing time to make up to $12 million backing up Lamar Jackson.
See ya, sending the Cowboys into that backup quarterback desert they find themselves in now.
Having taken a two-year shot at former 49ers first-round pick Trey Lance and striking out using a fourth-round draft choice in a 2023 trade in search of a future backup, here the Cowboys sat until Thursday with only two quarterbacks on the roster – a rehabbing Dak from his season-ending torn hamstring tendon and Will Grier, who has played in and started just two games in his NFL career, both for Carolina way back in 2019. That's it. Problems in River City.
While searching for a veteran free agent QB with some playing experience and waiting for the price to decrease since the start of free agency, the Cowboys intent was to draft a groom-able young quarterback later this month, most likely on the third day of the draft, sort of with a presumed Dak II intention.
But while sitting tight for the price to come down on available free-agent-veteran-backup-quarterback types and perusing the likely available college quarterbacks on that third day in the upcoming draft – and knowing their offseason workouts were about to begin on Monday with only one arm capable of being out there, Grier's – the Cowboys instead used that potential third-day draft choice, a lowly compensatory fifth, to trade for second-year QB Joe Milton III and a seventh in return from New England. The Pats had selected Milton with a sixth last year.
If nothing else, at least an available arm.
But before the ink ever dried on the trade, Milton, with all of one game of NFL regular season experience and considered the Patriots' third stringer, was becoming heralded by most as the Cowboys finding their now elusive BACKUP quarterback just because the reactionists know his name from having played his college ball at Michigan and then Tennessee.
Now hold on un momento.
Think about this. If Dak isn't ready to play in the 2025 opener – he will be – or heaven forbid he suffers another multiple-game absence injury, you mean these folks feel comfortable the Cowboys can turn over the keys to the franchise to a former sixth-round draft choice with all of one NFL game of experience? Seriously?
To me, the Cowboys still are in the market for a veteran backup, someone who has played more than one regular season NFL game, and if we are not getting too choosy, has started more than one regular season NFL game. If for now, consider such a move no more than QB Insurance with a low premium.
And there are a bunch of those guys out there. Like a C.J. Beathard, who Cowboys new head coach Briant Schottenheimer was with as the QB coach in Jacksonville (2021), Desmond Ridder with 18 starts in 25 NFL games, my Mizzou favorite Drew Lock or a host of others once the price comes down. Sort of like a Case Keenum, whose name had used here Friday morning only to discover the Bears had signed him Thursday night to a one-year, $3 million deal to back up Caleb Williams. Something exactly like that.
Makes sense, right, because what are the chances the Cowboys catch QB lightning in a bottle like a seventh time in franchise history? Consider this:
- In 1960, having traded their 1961 first-round draft choice for veteran starter Eddie LeBaron, the Cowboys signed SMU quarterback Don Meredith to a personal services contract that the NFL said, uh, wait a second, we don't do business like that. So technically, the Cowboys sent a third-rounder in 1962 to the Bears, who drafted the future Dandy Don for the Cowboys to make peace and aid the NFL's first expansion franchise getting its feet on the ground. In nine seasons, Meredith turned into a Ring of Honor quality starter.
- In 1964, the Cowboys took a 10th-round flyer on Navy Heisman Trophy winner Roger Staubach, who owed the military six years of service but beat the long-absence odds by returning to football in 1969. Staubach became a two-time Super Bowl winning, Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback in his 11-year NFL career.
- In 1974, anticipating the startup World Football League would eventually go out of business, the Cowboys took a third-round flyer on Arizona State QB Danny White, who already had signed prior to the NFL Draft with the Memphis Southmen. Sure enough, the WFL folded after the 1975 season and the Cowboys had the rights to White, who became their punter and eventual backup quarterback to Staubach in 1976. He then replaced the retiring Staubach in 1980 as the starter, taking the Cowboys to three consecutive NFC Championship Games (1980-82).
- In 1989, with White aging out, thanks mostly to a torn wrist ligament suffered in 1986, and Jimmy Johnson wanting nothing to do with Steve Pelluer, the 3-13 Cowboys 14-game starter in 1988 that earned Dallas the No. 1 pick, lo and behold, Troy Aikman was the top QB in the draft for the needy Cowboys taking. How fortunate? Think about this: UCLA's Troy and USC's Rodney Peete, who ended up a Cowboys backup in the 1994 season, became the only two QBs of the 16 drafted that year to excel in the NFL. You know the rest of that story; the Cowboys were gifted the eventual 12-year starter and Hall of Famer.
- In 2006, with aging Drew Bledsoe struggling, head coach Bill Parcells turned to Romo, no more than a 2003 undrafted free agent out of Eastern Illinois, six games into the season who then kick-started his franchise quarterback career (92-64), the starter from then on from 2006 through 2015.
- Then in 2016, the Cowboys selected Dak with the 135th pick in the draft – no more than a compensatory fourth-rounder, the eighth quarterback taken and, by the way, the only one still with his original team – with only the idea of grooming him to be Romo's eventual backup. Prescott is now the highest paid quarterback in the NFL.
Do you believe in miracles, Al Michaels?
This run of QB luck is all stuff out of the Sound of Music, a symphony of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious fortuitous happenings.
So now this: Joe Milton III, essentially this year's Cowboys quarterback draft choice with future backup duties in mind.
And he arrives without the one hand tied behind his back the way Lance did, having had to carry the burden of being the 2021 third overall pick in the NFL Draft, only behind No. 1 Trevor Lawrence and No. 2 Zack Wilson but ahead of No. 4 Justin Fields. Lawrence is the only one of the nine quarterbacks selected that year still with his original team … barely. Remember, the trade for Lance didn't go down until the week before the start of the 2023 season. No offseason with the Cowboys. No training camp. No preseason. Had not played in any sort of NFL game since Game 2 of the 2022 season. You go, Trey, little upset this didn't work out so swell.
At least Milton will be with the Cowboys for the official start of Monday's offseason. He will participate in OTAs and minicamps. He will go to training camp with the Cowboys. Likely play extensively in the preseason. A much better chance of success than Lance. At least Milton has started 21 of 43 games played in college, attempting 540 passes.
Plus, Milton already has made his NFL debut, the rookie starting the final game of the 2024 season for the Patriots. And he played well against the Bills in a game the AFC's second playoff seed did not need to win, completing 22 of 29 passes (75.9 percent) for 241 yards (8.3/attempt), one touchdown, no interceptions and a 111.4 QB rating. He even added a one-yard TD sneak and a long run of nine yards in a 23-16 win. The rangy 6-5 quarterback also at least played in three preseason games, too.
So Joe has all that going for him, maybe able to convince the Cowboys to hold off on that veteran backup. Who knows, they very well might have one already for a mere $960,000 against the salary cap this year instead of like $3 million for a more veteran backup. Have one they hope for no more than $1.19 million a year over the next two seasons if all works out. If not, only cost the 171st pick in the draft. The Cowboys over the years have drafted 14 quarterbacks no higher than 171. Only Jerry Rhome at 172 in 1964 and Ben DiNucci at 231 in 2020 spent more than one season with the Cowboys as a backup.
Now then, we ask, is Milton competing with Grier for the backup QB job or the third QB roster spot if a veteran is signed? Or possibly will he be competing with an impending veteran TBD quarterback for the backup position?
Time will tell. But at least for this 25-year-old, now with a franchise known for QB fortune, time will be on his side.
And for the Cowboys sake, may the, uh, force be with him.
