Both teams have seen nothing but promise at quarterback for decades, with Green Bay shifting seamlessly from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers and Indy flipping from Peyton Manning to Andrew Luck.
"You look at examples of Rodgers and you look at the example that he got to come in there and work behind Favre," Jones recently said, per ESPN.com's Todd Archer. "Rodgers came from a different system in college. He saw the most freewheeling successful quarterback there's ever been in this league. He saw that work. He added that to his game. It helped him become even more the type in that system than when he came in. Something like that could happen if we decided to go quarterback at some level. I emphasize that -- at some level."
Jones doesn't see a switch any time soon, saying at the NFL Scouting Combine that he expects his 36-year-old quarterback to be the starter in Dallas for the "next four to five years."
That makes picking a quarterback at No. 4 a rich proposition for a Cowboys team with plenty of other needs, but Jones had to be talked out of taking Johnny Manziel two offseasons ago. After Dallas coaches praised the play of Carson Wentz at the Senior Bowl, it's not beyond reason that Big D could swing for a quarterback early.
Besides, the learning period behind Romo is exactly what Jones wants for his next franchise quarterback.
"If a player came in here and played behind him three to four years, he would come out with a Harvard degree in how to play quarterback, in my mind," Jones said. "He would be that influential. And it would open up an area of how to play the game that we all would agree has a certain unique style to it, Romo. Just like, say, Favre did with Rodgers. That's in my mind. That can be very impressionable and really be a big positive. So when I'm sitting there thinking about which way to go here, the ability to with Romo there and the ability to have a top talent learning behind that team and with Romo, it's a big asset."
