FRISCO, Texas – Many moons ago, the late Larry Lacewell, the one-time college defensive coordinator, head coach and Cowboys director of scouting, imparted this wisdom upon me.
Said when it comes to defense, even if he did not have the most talented players, he could devise a scheme to muck up an offense. But that when it comes to offensive football, there is no faking your way out of a talent-deficient group, and for sure there is no faking the quarterback position. Either you have THE guy or you don't.
Now, we are going to discuss the quarterback position in the NFL and with the Cowboys this season, and you will be allowed to decide if this is circumstantial evidence or prime examples supporting Lace's theory of football.
Obviously, NFL owners, presidents, general managers and head coaches must believe the quarterback position is vitally important to a team's success. Of the top-21 average salaries in the NFL, the first 17 belong to quarterbacks, and not until 18, 19 and 20 did other position players arrive: wide receiver Justin Jefferson is 18th and tied for 19th are wide receiver CeeDee Lamb and defensive end Nick Bosa. And even a quarterback is at 21.
Let's repeat. Can't fake the quarterback position, which is why teams are willing to pay these outlandish salaries when they think they have one, and why the Cowboys paid top dollar to re-sign Dak Prescott to the NFL average high of $60 million a year. And let's remember, Dak finished second in the 2023 season MVP voting while leading the NFL with 36 touchdown passes.
THE guy.
Now then, let's continue, realizing Dak started only eight games this season, finishing just seven before suffering his season-ending injury after 47 snaps in the eighth game. And, of course, the Cowboys finished 7-10, their first losing season since 2020 (and we'll get to that in a moment) and out of the playoffs for the first time in four seasons. Obviously, 2020 was the last time, Dak playing just 47.5 percent of the snaps before suffering a season-ending ankle/leg injury in Game 5. Coincidence or not, head coach Mike McCarthy's two losing seasons of the five he's been here.
So now let's consider the 14 teams heading into this season's playoffs. Only one playoff team, Pittsburgh, is heading into the postseason with a quarterback starting fewer than 15 games. Remember, Russell Wilson missed the first six games of the season with a calf injury, returned in Game 7 to win six of the next seven, and despite finishing with a four-game losing streak, managed a wild-card berth at 10-7.
Other than Wilson, only two playoff quarterbacks were limited to 15 starts, Philadelphia's Jalen Hurts missing two while in concussion protocol and Green Bay's Jordan Love with an elbow injury. Of the other 11 playoff quarterbacks, Patrick Mahomes and Matthew Stafford were limited to 16 starts, both sitting out the inconsequential 17th game of the season.
The rest, all 17 starts, and only one of them played less than 91 percent of the snaps, that being Buffalo's Josh Allen (89 percent), and that because of getting only one snap while starting the meaningless final game of the season and pulled in other games with the Bills holding double-digit leads. Nine of those playoff quarterbacks played at least 97 percent of their team's offensive snaps.
Coincidence these teams are in the playoffs?
Me thinks not. QBs and their health matter.
Then stumbled into this when just reminiscing over the Cowboys' past losing seasons, knowing the past three – 2024 (7-10), 2020 (6-11) and 2015 (4-12) – all coincided with season-ending or altering injuries to Dak and Tony Romo, who started just four of 16 games in 2015 but finished just two of them.
Let's continue looking back. So 2010, the next losing season, Romo starts only six games, missing the final 10 with a broken collarbone. John Kitna started nine and Stephen McGee the final one, though under Romo they did get off to a 1-4 start before the injury occurred in Game 6.
Go back five consecutive winning seasons and three playoff appearances to 2004. The Cowboys had signed 41-year-old QB Vinny Testaverde to ostensibly be the backup and tutor to Quincy Carter, who in 2003 became the exception to Lacewell's theory. Dallas went 10-6 and captured a wild-card playoff berth, but mostly thanks to defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer's No. 1 ranked defense. The Cowboys that 2004 season under Bill Parcells went 6-10 with the backup Testaverde starting 15 of 16 games after the Cowboys cut Carter early in training camp for violating health-related clauses in his contract. Drew Henson started one game on Thanksgiving, lasting but the first half until Parcells yanked him. That was Parcells' only losing season of his four with the Cowboys.
Now retreating to those three consecutive 5-11 seasons of 2000, 2001 and 2002. So in 2002, the Cowboys were just 3-4 after Carter was picked off four times in a 9-6 overtime loss at Arizona and having scored no more than 17 points in six of those seven game and but 21 in the other. In comes former baseball player Chad Hutchinson, a two-year starting quarterback at Stanford (22 starts) before embarking on a baseball career with the St. Louis Cardinals. Hutch, having not played football since 1997, started the final nine games, going 2-7.
In 2001, even though the Cowboys signed veteran Tony Banks in the offseason, they decided to release Banks and start Carter, the raw rookie having been selected in the second round of the draft after dabbling in baseball, though getting benched at Georgia in his third season. Carter, becoming the first NFL rookie quarterback drafted in the second round to start a season, but thanks to an assortment of injuries (thumb and hamstring), along with being in over his head, he started just eight games, going 3-5 while completing only 51 percent of his passes with five touchdowns and seven interceptions.
That was the season the Cowboys started four quarterbacks, Carter, backup Anthony Wright (3), taking a flier on one-time first-round pick Ryan Leaf (3), drafted second to Peyton Manning in 1998, and 2020 practice squad and former Arkansas QB Clint Stoerner (2 games) after he spent the early part of 2021 playing in NFL Europe. That conglomeration of quarterbacks went 2-6.
Then, alas, there was 2000, Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback and three-time Super Bowl champ Troy Aikman's final season of his 12-year NFL career with the Cowboys. The 1989 first pick in the draft was limited by concussion and back problems to 11 games that 5-11 season, the Cowboys winning only one other game without Aikman (4-7), starting backup Randall Cunningham in three games and Wright in two.
Please consider: In the Cowboys' last eight losing seasons there either were injuries to the starting quarterback (five of them) or problems with the starting quarterback (Carter in three of those).
Why, you have to go back to the 1997 season, finishing 6-10 after a 6-5 start in head coach Barry Switzer's final season, to find the last time the Cowboys experienced a losing season with the starting quarterback, Aikman, starting all 16 games.
Coincidence?
Me thinks not.
In fact, the Cowboys' NFL record streak of 20 consecutive winning seasons from 1966-85 under the late Hall of Fame coach Tom Landry came to an end in 1986 after getting off to a 6-2 start, tied for first place in the NFC East with the 6-2 Giants, until losing Game 9 to New York after starting QB Danny White suffered torn ligaments and a broken bone in the wrist of his right throwing hand, forcing backup Steve Pelluer to finish that game. The team then went 1-6 the rest of the way to finish 7-9.
Quarterback problems plagued the Cowboys during the NFL player strike in 1987 in that 7-8 season, along with Pelluer taking over for White in the 3-13 season of 1988. Then the rookie Aikman in 1989 going 0-11, with backup Steve Walsh, after Troy went out with a broken left index finger, went 1-4 during the 1-15 season.
Want one more? In 1990, with Aikman getting the Cowboys to 7-7 thanks to a four-game winning streak with two games to play, and needing to win just one more to qualify for a wild-card playoff berth, suffered a season-ending separated shoulder in the first quarter of Game 15 at Philadelphia. In comes now backup Babe Laufenberg after the Cowboys had traded original backup Walsh to New Orleans earlier in the season, only for the Cowboys to lose 17-3. And while still needing to win the final game at Atlanta to qualify for the playoffs, the Cowboys lose on a rainy day in Georgia, 26-7.
Now this is not to say the Cowboys haven't benefited from backup quarterback success: Steve Beuerlein in 1991, Jason Garrett and Bernie Kosar in 1993, Garrett and Rodney Peete 1994, the late Wade Wilson in 1995 and, of course, Dak in 2016 and Cooper Rush in 2021. But generally, in the history of Cowboys losing seasons, there have been quarterback problems. Just sayin'. There is a common thread.
And maybe now you catch my drift how there is a correlation between quarterbacks and team success, and don't you forget it.
Quarterbacks, quarterbacks, quarterbacks.
They do matter.
