The Green Bay Packers' blueprint for aligning the careers of back-to-back Super Bowl champion quarterbacks has been followed before, but never quite as successfully as the club built Super Bowl champions around both Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers. That's why it remains a blueprint 11 years after the Packers drafted Rodgers in the first round of the NFL draft with the intention of grooming behind a still-highly effective Favre.
Still, Troy Aikman believes the Dallas Cowboys should play their draft hand the same way.
"If there is a player who ... is what you view as a franchise quarterback, I think you have to take that guy," Aikman told PFT Live. "Jerry Jones] is all in now and certainly he feels [Tony Romo can play another three or four seasons, but I liken it a little to the Green Bay situation when the Packers took Aaron Rodgers. At the time, Brett Favre had never missed a game. And he would go on to never miss a game for three more years. In Dallas, we all know what happened with Romo going down last season and the backup situation, although I think their problems went beyond the quarterback position."
Dallas holds the No. 4 overall draft pick in the 2016 NFL Draft. Scouts believe Cal's Jared Goff, North Dakota State's Carson Wentz and Memphis Paxton Lynch have the strongest chance of being the first quarterback chosen. The Jason Garrett's staff coached the North squad at the recent Reese's Senior Bowl. Wentz was a member of that North squad and had an impressive week in Mobile, Ala.
Green Bay chose Rodgers No. 24 overall in 2005, and didn't benefit from its foresight until Rodgers was a fourth-year pro in 2008 before making his first NFL start. Since then, he's posted five seasons of 4,000-plus yards. Dallas, with Tony Romo presumably in the latter stage of his career, doesn't need a quarterback in the short-term as long as Romo is healthy.
But the time has perhaps come for a more long-term decision.
"To me, if you have a chance to add a franchise quarterback, and if you're going to the team that Jerry thinks they are going to be, then you're never going to be in this draft] position again, at least not anytime soon," the former [Cowboys star quarterback added. "To have a chance to set your team up for 15 years, I don't know how you bypass that."
Aikman isn't the first to make note of Dallas' unusually high position in the draft, and the opportunity for a top quarterback that goes with it. NFL Media analyst Mike Mayock made much the same point during the NFL Network's Senior Bowl broadcast last weekend.
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