Top 5 QBs: Captain America and the Good Time Cowboy.

Roger Staubach, Tony Romo and how Dallas Cowboys quarterbacks symbolize AMERICA. Also featuring a punter, some country music stars, Jack Ruby and a hypnotist.

This is the Cowboys segment of the All-Time Top 5 QB series. The headline was tweaked to reference an Elton John album while avoiding redundancy.

1. Roger Staubach

In the 1970s, the Steelers represented the working class, the Raiders represented the counterculture, and the Cowboys represented the establishment.

NFL dynasties are aspirational. They reflect some crucial set of values or desires back on us. The Patriots Way was a secular theology of neo-Boomerism for the early 21st century. Fate brought Taylor Swift and the Chiefs together. The Lombardi Packers exemplified Midwestern no-nonsense perseverance in the face of the tumultuous 1960s. Joe Namath’s Jets ushered in the sexual revolution with one swift bang. It doesn’t take much – a quarterback’s sunglasses and headband, perhaps – for a team to become the symbol of a generation or a subculture. And the Cowboys had a wide swath of American geography all to themselves for many years, not to mention the shiniest uniforms, sexiest cheerleaders, shrewdest leaders and most overtly AMERICAN iconography any sports franchise could ask for. They weren’t villains, despite how they were perceived by this Jersey boy. Instead, they represented the country club membership, the sleek Cadillac, the trophy wife, the things the steel worker and outlaw biker openly resented but may have secretly wished for.

Oh, and the quarterback: a midwestern lad with aw-shucks Gary Cooper looks. An academy man. A Heisman winner. A war veteran. A walking slice of apple pie off the field, a non-stop fireworks display on it. A cunning gunslinger who saves the town in the final reel, then orders a glass of milk at the bar. You could hate the Cowboys, absolutely loathe them, for strutting into town, beating the pants off your down-and-out local heroes and converting your best friends to their cause. But who on earth could hate Roger Staubach?

Staubach even came equipped with an origin story worthy of a comic book superhero.

Dallas cannot accept the alien notion that it is in some way guilty of the shooting of John F. Kennedy, but neither can it understand why it feels guilty. A young woman flying back for the Cotton Bowl game after vacationing in Florida said that the whole time she was there she did not once reveal her home town. "I was ashamed," she said. "But I can't tell you why, really."

The significance of the Cotton Bowl game—national champion Texas vs. second-ranked Navy—was established the moment the match was made, but Dallas looked forward to it with the special eagerness of a town in dire need of a pick-me-up. "It would be in bad taste," said Navy Coach Wayne Hardin, a sensitive man who is learning to eat crow and therefore knows about taste, "to associate this game with Kennedy's death."

But if Hardin and many others around the country sensibly avoided the association, it undeniably was there in the minds of local people. Crowds still come to view the fatal spot of the assassination at Elm and Houston streets just below the School Book Depository building, and far from lost in the throngs were many midshipmen. Others who were curious tried Jack Ruby's Carousel Club, a walkup on Commerce Street, and found its decor overripe and its strippers the same. Eastern sportswriters paid cabbies to retrace the steps of Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy's alleged assassin, who was later killed by Ruby, and theorized about him into the night when talk of Roger Staubach, Navy's Heisman Trophy winner, had been exhausted. – John Underwood, Sports Illustrated, January, 1964.

Staubach’s Midshipmen would lose to the Longhorns on New Year’s Day in 1964, just weeks after the assassination that shook the world, in the city where it happened, in the city where he would someday achieve stardom. A symbolic military surrender to help a city heal? Bad taste, Coach Hardin might warn. Foreshadowing? An epic prologue? Excelsior, Stan Lee might exclaim.

Staubach won the Heisman in 1963. He played through injuries in 1964. The Cowboys and Chiefs selected him in late rounds of the NFL and AFL drafts, but military commitments weren’t waved away back then, and Staubach would not have considered it. Staubach volunteered for a tour of duty as a Supply Corps officer in South Vietnam. He served for a few more years stateside. He used his military leave to attend a Cowboys rookie camp. He resigned from the navy and attended Cowboys training camp in 1969.

The Cowboys were already perennial contenders under Tom Landry. But – you aren’t going to believe this – they had a reputation for folding in big games. “While the Cowboys always seem to have the best team ‘on paper,’” wrote Sports Illustrated’s Mark Mulvoy in 1971, “football, alas, is played on a field and they usually have come up with ways to fold—ones not dreamed of in origami.”

Staubach, already 27 years old when he entered the NFL, backed up Craig Morton for two years, leading a pair of victories during the Cowboys’ 1970 Super Bowl run. Staubach told Landry he either wanted to start or get traded before the 1971 season. Landry alternated Staubach and Morton through the preseason. When neither outperformed the other, Landry declared a dual-quarterback system, or perhaps a dueling-quarterback system.

Staubach was scheduled to start the 1971 opener but suffered a groin injury. Morton played well in his place.

Staubach started the second game, threw an early interception, took a cheap shot from a defender and got yanked. Morton led a cakewalk over the Eagles.

Morton started game three, but got pulled in the third quarter of a loss to Washington. Morton relieved Staubach in a Week 4 win.

Staubach relieved Morton in a Week 5 loss, then led a romp over the Patriots in Week 6. But instead of granting Staubach the starting job, Landry came up with the dumbest decision any great coach ever had until Bill Belichick allowed Matt Patricia to act as offensive coordinator: he made Staubach and Morton alternate on a play-by-play basis in the next game. It was a disaster. Morton threw three interceptions, Staubach one. The Cowboys committed several delay-of-game penalties as they shuffled signal-callers. The Bears beat the Cowboys 23-19. Landry faced a general mutiny.

“I think a two‐quarterback system is fine,” Landry was quoted when he finally settled on Staubach as the regular. “But the public doesn't identify with it. You divide the whole town.”

The town was divided, but not evenly. Staubach was a firm favorite by estimates of anywhere from 60 to 70 percent.

Even though the Cowboys have won both games with Staubach, the schism remains. Pro football traditionalists prefer Morton because he is a drop‐back, pocket passer. But the pro football mods prefer Staubach because of his colorful scrambling when pressured out of the pocket. The mods dismiss the theory that scramblers are injury prone. The ultimate scrambler, Fran Tarkenton of the Giants, has never missed an N.F.L. game in 12 seasons.

“Some people,” Staubach says, “are just waiting for me to get hurt so that they can say, ‘I told you so.’”

But sociologically, the traditionalists and the mods differed. Here amid a conservative populace, Staubach's credentials were obvious. Married, former naval officer, neatly trimmed hair, Staubach could be trusted.

In contrast, Morton is a mod bachelor with a history of bankruptcy and hypnosis. – Dave Anderson, New York Times, November 20, 1971.

More on the hypnosis later. I promise.

Landry picked Staubach. The Cowboys went undefeated down the stretch. They beat the Dolphins in Super Bowl VI. Staubach led the league in passer rating (not yet an official stat) and finished second to Vikings defensive lineman Alan Page in the MVP vote.

The Cowboys could never have become America’s Team under Morton. They needed the dichotomy of Landry, himself a combat veteran, and Staubach, who was always a little more like Captain Kirk than Captain America. The wise general, the brash-but-trustworthy hero, the colorful supporting cast, the cheerleaders acting as combination Greek chorus and vestal virgins: it was great football and great spectacle.

Staubach separated his shoulder in 1972. Morton played well for most of the year, but Staubach relieved him in the playoffs and led a playoff victory over the 49ers. That was that for Morton. Staubach led the NFL in touchdowns in 1973. He led the Cowboys back to the Super Bowl in 1975. Along the way, he coined a new phrase for a desperate end-of-game pass when he explained his game-winning bomb to Drew Pearson against the Vikings in the 1975 playoffs.

“It was a Hail Mary pass,” Staubach said after the game. "I just threw it up there as far as I could."

As Phil Sheridan wrote for The History Channel, the term “Hail Mary” had been used for last-gasp plays since Notre Dame in the 1920s. But the Cowboys were popularizing football to new audiences in new ways. Teams had been using the shotgun offense since the 1920s, too. But in the 1970s, it was one of the Cowboys’ signature “innovations.”

And of course, there was Staubach’s most famous quote, from his 1974 interview with Phyllis George:

Having introduced Catholic prayer to the popular lexicon, Staubach and the Cowboys issued a position statement on the sexual revolution. Cowboys fandom was a lifestyle: affluence, spirituality, monogamy.

Staubach led the Cowboys to a second championship after the 1977 season, defeating Morton’s motley Broncos in Super Bowl XII. He took them back to the Super Bowl in 1978. The Steelers got the better of the Cowboys in the big game; the common man triumphing over the aristocracy felt reassuring in the weary, jaded 1970s.

Staubach suffered several concussions during the 1979 season. His wife Marianne, a nurse, urged him to see a neurologist. Tests (whatever they consisted of back then) showed no damage. The doctors in Dallas expressed no concern.

Marianne put her foot down. "I've always been really calm at games," she told the Washington Post in 1980. "But I'm afraid if he had decided to play another season and he went down with a head injury, I probably would just come unglued right in my seat for fear of the worst." A specialist in New York ultimately advised Staubach to not play, or at least to have the good sense to listen to the wife he was so devoted to.

Staubach retired in March of 1980. He was still near the top of his game, but no longer culturally necessary. The 1980s were the decade the Cowboys created: an era obsessed with both innovation and image, a time to both openly want it and gleefully flaunt it. The city that could not express its shame on New Year’s Day in 1964 became the setting of the sexiest, greediest soap opera to ever dominate the national zeitgeist. And, just a few months after Staubach’s retirement, American voters would express just how deeply they longed for someone who could play the part of an old-fashioned cowboy hero.

2. Troy Aikman

Hey readers: do you or someone you love think that Troy Aikman is “overrated” or “wasn’t that good”? Is the person in question under 40? Are they basing that conjecture on Aikman’s Pro Football Reference page, their preconceptions about “game manager” quarterbacks and/or a vague assumption that a bland color commentator could not have been that great a quarterback?

If so, be sure to show that person Aikman’s DVOA rankings during his peak:

• 1991: Fourth in the NFL in DVOA

• 1992: Second

• 1993: First

• 1994: Third

• 1995: First

• 1996: Seventh

• 1997: 16th

• 1998: Seventh.

I used DVOA instead of DYAR because the latter metric is cumulative, while DVOA is rate-based. Aikman did not throw as much as other quarterbacks of his era. That’s because he didn’t have to: Cowboys games of the early 1990s were often over by halftime. Passing in the fourth quarter with a lead was just becoming a popular strategy, and the Cowboys had no reason to subscribe to it. Also, Emmitt Smith and the Cowboys offensive line were so effective in the red zone that Aikman rarely threw short touchdown passes. But Aikman’s passing was a force multiplier for a historic all-around roster. Oh, and he still ranked in the top five in DYAR in his prime years, often behind less-efficient passers like Erik Kramer or Scott Mitchell who threw 100 more passes.

Aikman faded quickly in his mid-30s, which makes his career stats even less impressive. But the Aikman of 1991 to 1996 was just as good as the Tom Brady of 2001 to 2006, if not better. Brady just got Randy Moss at about the same point in his career that Aikman got to watch Jerry Jones declare himself lord and emperor.

3. Tony Romo

The autumn of 2006 played out for Romo like a montage from a cheesy sports movie. He was an undrafted nobody from Eastern Nowhere. A three-year bench warmer. An unknown backup to the big-name veteran. He suddenly got his chance, playing for the toughest coach in the NFL and most glamorous sports franchise in the nation. Bippity-boppity-boo. Instant success. Instant stardom.

With its shrill hucksterism to a gigantic fanbase, the RomoMania of 2006 was like the TebowMania of five years later, except that there was substance behind it: this quarterback could actually play. The America’s Team mythmaking machinery, up on blocks on the front lawn after a decade of neglect, began humming with all eight cylinders as soon as Romo began leading victories.

In his first NFL appearance, a preseason game on Aug. 9, 2003, at Arizona, Romo tried an improvised shuffle pass in the red zone, and it was intercepted. Parcells met him halfway between the huddle and sideline. "Hey, Pancho Villa," Parcells shouted, referring to the daring Mexican revolutionary. "What was that?"

By his second season Romo's scattershot passing had earned him an upgrade to Wild Thing in Parcells's lexicon …

And now that Romo is the starter, the highest-rated quarterback in the league ... Parcells has ratcheted up the abuse.

"You're not Johnny Unitas yet, Romo!"

"You're not Joe Montana!"

"Oh, I get it, you're a celebrity quarterback now."

Says Romo, "Ninety-five percent of it is just needling, and it's hilarious. I get along with Bill because we're both competitive. We both want the same thing." – Tim Layden, Sports Illustrated, December 2006.

Ah, but beware of too much success, too soon. Fairy godmother? More like a snickering devil with a too-good-to-be-true bargain. Romo rose to fame just as Internet snark was peaking. He played for the team the cool kids loved to hate. His Golden Boy image came with too much mainstream-media polish. His name rhymed with a slur that many folks still used rather casually less than 20 years ago. My fellow snark-bloggers all but demanded the tearing down of this new false idol. We got our wish the moment the 2006 playoffs arrived and Romo was asked to hold for what should have been a game-winning chipshot field goal.

Romo was immediately typecast: great in the regular season, lousy in the playoffs, the Scaramouche of the NFL’s annual opera dei pupi. Romo, so thrilling and effective in the regular season, essentially leaned into his role as a playoff buffoon.

A lively personal life did nothing for Romo’s on-field reputation.

Jessica Simpson and pervy Papa Pimp Joe Simpson and her mother and her friends took Tony Romo to Cabo this weekend for a little R&R. Apparently Jess and Tony were seen rubbing each other’s asses, very affectionate with each other and very friendly with her parents. Ew.

They also enjoyed the services of a personal chef.

Sounds like Romo is livin’ the Simpson life. Large. Well done.

Or is it?

The Cowboys had a first round bye and will not play until they face the New York Giants on Sunday. Tony is now presumably back in Dallas to begin preparing in earnest. And he better be prepared come game time. Because the Giants looked good yesterday. Tops in the entire league in sacks with one of the strongest road records. If Romo stumbles, they will blame the Bimbo and they will not look back very favourably on a weekend getaway during the playoffs. – Lainey, LaineyGossip, January 6, 2008.

The Cowboys lost to the Giants in that playoff game. Fans blamed Romo, not “the bimbo,” because a quarterback is expected to resist all urges and live like a monk before a playoff game, or something like that.

Then there was the time at the end of the 2008 season when Romo and the Cowboys just needed to beat the Eagles in the season finale to reach the playoffs.

Meanwhile, on the romantic front, Romo upgraded (artistically!) from Simpson to Carrie Underwood. The relationship was stormy. There was widespread speculation that Underwood wrote “Cowboy Casanova,” with lyrics about a “good time Cowboy” who is really “candy-coated misery,” about Romo. Underwood denied it. “I would never immortalize a guy that did me wrong,” she said. “I would never give him that much credit." Youch!

Romo and the Cowboys exacted revenge on the Eagles in the 2009 playoffs. They promptly lost to Brett Favre’s Vikings 34-3 in the second round, with Romo enduring six sacks. “He was wide-eyed a lot,” defender Jared Allen said of Romo after that game.

The Cowboys sputtered into perennial mediocrity as the 2010s unfolded. Romo became the standard-bearer for overpaid big-name quarterbacks of the post-2011 lockout era: the guy who eats up too much salary cap space to build around but is too good to replace. Candy-coated misery indeed.

Romo appeared poised to break his cycle of disappointment in 2014, with 34 touchdowns for a 12-4 team and his second career playoff victory. Romo and Aaron Rodgers dueled until the fourth quarter of the divisional round playoff game. Romo threw deep down the sideline to Dez Bryant on fourth down with the game on the line and ...

The Faustian fine print. The Rod Serling twist. The wish with a “catch.” A blown call? More like a bad rule. But we can all agree that a very borderline call went against the Cowboys, something which never happened, not a single time (that this lifelong Eagles fan can recall) from 1970 through 1995.

It was the 2010s. The Cowboys no longer symbolized prosperity and all-American glamor as they did in Roger Staubach’s time. They weren’t even chest-thumping, cocaine-fueled 1990s antiheroes anymore. They had become a cautionary tale of pride, style-over-substance, conspicuous consumption and shortsightedness. Romo was no longer dating country music chanteuses by then, but he was typecast as the easily-dispatched recurring villain. When a neck injury ended Romo’s career prematurely, Dak Prescott quickly slipped into the same role. The narrative changes were unnoticeable.

Romo moved to the broadcast booth and became an instant sensation. Viewers could not get enough of him. But as CBS throws more and more money at Romo, his limitations become increasingly obvious each year, and his gee-whiz histrionics ever more tiresome. Romo, talented and successful in so many ways, is now as much a caricature as a broadcaster as he was as a quarterback, even though he was really quite good in both roles. Bippity-boppity-boo.

4. Dak Prescott

Here are the top Cowboys quarterback (passing + rushing) seasons since 1980, according to DYAR:

1. Dak Prescott, 2019

2. Dak Prescott, 2016

3. Tony Romo, 2009

4. Troy Aikman, 1995

5. Dak Prescott, 2023

6. Tony Romo, 2011

7. Troy Aikman, 1992

8. Troy Aikman, 1993

9. Tony Romo, 2007

10. Tony Romo, 2014

Aikman, as mentioned earlier, didn’t throw as often as most quarterbacks and rarely threw in goal-to-go situations, so his rate-based DVOA is more impressive than his accumulative DYAR.

Anyway, the numbers suggest that Prescott is better than Romo. They are similar players: come-from-nowhere backstories, sudden success, middle-of-the-zeitgeist fame, huge contracts, an earned reputation for January pratfalls. Romo was the original, and he helped the Cowboys regain a degree of relevance. Prescott needs to do something his predecessor could not accomplish in order to climb this list. And he’s running out of time.

5. Danny White

White's debut as No. 1 quarterback—he has been the Cowboys' No. 1 punter for the last four seasons—had been awaited in Dallas with a mixture of eagerness and dread, but most of the misgivings were soon forgotten. "To say that we have as much confidence in Danny as we did in Roger, after all the things he did for this team, would be ridiculous at this point," said Wide Receiver Drew Pearson, "but we've worked with Danny for four years, and we all know what he can do." – Bruce Newman, Sports Illustrated, August, 1980.

There’s an old Internet meme which goes like this: The samurai were officially abolished as a caste in Japanese society during the Meiji Restoration in 1867. The first ever fax machine, the "printing telegraph", was invented in 1843. And Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theater in 1865. Which means there was a 22-year window in which a samurai could have sent a fax to Abraham Lincoln.

I think of that meme when I think of Danny White. White was the Cowboys starting quarterback AND punter from 1980 through 1984, when he was relieved of punting chores. The Internet was unofficially born on January 1st, 1983. Impressionist painter Mark Chagall passed away on March 28th, 1985. Which means there was a two-year window when a French Impressionist could have sent an email to a still-active NFL quarterback/punter.

White entered Arizona State as a baseball star. Football coach Frank Kush, sensing White’s gridiron gifts, made him the Sun Devils’ punter. Soon, White was the starting quarterback as well. The Cowboys drafted him as a punter in the third round of the 1974 draft. White chose the World Football League instead. He played quarterback and punted for the Memphis Southmen for two years, then joined the Cowboys when the WFL exploded in a fireball of debt and irrelevance. White spent four years as a punter and Roger Staubach’s backup.

Quarterback/punters were not that unusual in the 1970s. We have met a few, including Bob Lee and Dan Pastorini. We also met quarterback/kicker George Blanda a few times, though he was a man outside of time. The Bears had a tight end/punter in Bob Parsons, the Bengals a wide receiver/punter in Pat McInally. Kicker/punters, as you might imagine, were still somewhat common. Quarterbacks tended to be punters in high school and sometimes college, and the roles of the kicking specialists evolved slowly across all levels of competition, so there was nothing unusual about White’s dual role in college or when he was serving as a backup.

By 1980, however, punter, kicker and quarterback were three very distinct jobs at the NFL level: the kicker/punters were giving way to specialists in each role and guys like McInally stopped catching passes. White, however, became the Cowboys STARTING quarterback and punter when Staubach retired. What’s more, he was outstanding at both jobs, leading the Cowboys on deep playoff runs while never suffering the type of catastrophic injury one might expect to befall an indispensable individual handling such a difficult set of tasks.

White ranked 10th in the NFL in DYAR in 1980 and 1981, 11th in 1982 and fifth in 1983 (punting not included). Granted, he did so with a supporting cast that would make Brock Purdy jealous. The Cowboys resumed their recurring role as the team that came up short in the playoffs, and White never left Staubach’s shadow. Still, it’s hard to imagine that the Cowboys could have done much better than White, unless they took a draft flier on the USFL-bound Jim Kelly instead of the player they chose instead (Herschel Walker). Landry and the Cowboys veterans needed a quarterback they trusted. White was that quarterback.

Giants linebacker Carl Banks broke White’s throwing wrist midway through the 1986 season. The Cowboys were in decline. The rest of the NFL had caught up to and passed both Landry and the personnel department that had outsmarted the league for nearly two decades. The 1987 strike and replacement games tore the Cowboys apart; White, like many veterans, crossed the picket line, not-quite-totally voluntarily. That’s a story for another time. White retired after the 1988 season and began a long association with arena football.

The analytics suggest that White was not quite as good as Prescott or Romo. Hence his ranking here. But in fairness to White, I never saw the other guys punt.

6. Don Meredith

Dandy Don, as Texan as a Texan can be, was the Cowboys’ first successful quarterback and a great candidate for the title of Best #6 QB of This Series, at least among guys listed for their primary teams. Meredith improved steadily as the Cowboys improved and took them to the 1967 NFL championship Ice Bowl against the Packers. He retired at age 30 after a disastrous performance in the 1968 playoffs and embarked on a successful career as a broadcaster and pitchman. He also made a classic appearance in King of the Hill.

7. Craig Morton

We met Morton, aka The Big Hummer, in the Broncos feature. Morton replaced Meredith in the 1968 playoffs. The Cowboys picked up right where they left off, soon reaching Super Bowl V. Morton may be the Best #7 QB of This Series.

Now, about that hypnotist: there are several stories about Morton and hypnosis from 1970 and 1971, each more stilted and odd than the last. Here’s how the New York Times smash-cut to the tale in a feature about the Morton-Roger Staubach rivalry:

During the last 12 games last season, including the N.F.C. playoffs and the Super Bowl, he was operating under posthypnotic suggestion on the morning of each game in telephone conversations with Edward J. Pullman, the 58‐year‐old director of the Southwest Hypnosis Research Center here.

“Black bait,” Pullman would say over the phone.

With that, Morton dropped into his hypnotic spell.

“You're in a deep sleep,” Pullman would say, reminding him of their midweek session. “But you can hold the phone. You feel fine. You must remember all the suggestions I gave you. You must be perfectly relaxed and calm. You must use all your ability and you must remember the game plan. You will experience no pain in your elbow.”

On the field before the game, Morton would take three deep breaths as a physical reminder of his hypnosis.

“It was like having a file drawer with the papers out of order,” Pullman has said. “Hypnosis can put the papers back in their proper order.”

It helped to put the Cowboys in the Super Bowl game. But there, two of Morton's passes bounced off Cowboy receivers’ hands for interceptions and led to the Baltimore Colts’ 16‐13 victory. This season, Morton has not resumed the hypnosis because of the inherent controversy. But if he had, Pullman had planned a new posthypnotic suggestion.

“Craig would put his finger alongside his nose,” Pullman has said. “That would have been the signal.”

Too bad. From the sideline, Roger Staubach probably would have been trying to break the spell. – Dave Anderson, New York Times, November 20, 1971.

Hypnosis can be a valuable therapeutic tool, but Pullman’s version of hypnosis sounds like something from a cheesy horror movie. At first I thought that was because the story was being filtered through skeptical sportswriters approaching hypnosis about the same way I approach darkness retreats. Some cursory research, however, revealed that Pullman was a shadowy character who believed that the Soviets were telepathically spying on the Pentagon, had some connection to Jack Ruby and may have been a furniture manufacturer and game designer before suddenly becoming a leading authority on hypnosis.

Aaron Rodgers would have LOVED the early 1970s. And I am as surprised as you are that Ruby ended up with two mentions in this segment.

8. Drew Bledsoe

Yeah, let’s wrap this up.

9. Quincy Carter

A troubled soul and a smarter-than-the-league Jerry Jones quarterback experiment. Carter was bad, but not as bad as you might remember.

10. Steve Beuerlein

Beuerlein went 4-0 down the stretch and led a victory in the 1991 playoffs in relief of Troy Aikman. He backed Aikman up during the 1992 Super Bowl run. It was either rank Beuerlein tenth or place Vinny Testaverde on yet another damn countdown.