In 1989, Jerry Jones’ first year as owner of the Dallas Cowboys, the team took a quarterback out of UCLA named Troy Aikman with the first overall pick of the NFL Draft.
Since then, his luck with quarterbacks in the draft has been less fortuitous.
The Cowboys have drafted three quarterbacks since Aikman, beginning with Oregon’s Bill Musgrave in the fourth round in 1991. He never played a game for the Cowboys. In 2001, it was Quincy Carter out of Georgia in the second round, and he led the team to a playoff appearance in 2003 but was cut amid off-field issues just prior to camp in 2004, and had a career passer rating of just over 70. Finally there was Stephen McGee, drafted out of Texas A&M in 2009, who struggled to earn the job of backing up Tony Romo and was waived prior to the 2012 season.
Considering all that, and the Cowboys’ position in the draft, it’s no wonder Jerry Jones finds himself thinking about 1989.
"Frankly, I don't know that we've been here since the day that I walked through the door and there sat Troy Aikman,” Jones said, per the Dallas Morning News. “Tongue in cheek, didn't we do a brilliant job of preparing for the future by selecting brilliantly Troy Aikman with the No. 1 pick? But he had been sitting there and then by the time the evaluation process was over, he was the best quarterback. Did we need a quarterback or did we need a quarterback in '89? And he was the best quarterback to come along in years, and of course, it panned out.
“We need something like that to happen again around here.”
