Cowboys History: 1971's bizarre experiment with QBs Roger Staubach, Craig Morton amid Super Bowl run
This time of the NFL offseason invariably brings about a lot of soul-searching for team’s front offices and coaching staffs as they make personnel decisions about the coming year. Big-name free agents, aging veterans, and young collegiate superstars are all in the hypothetical mix for what will be a limited number of roster spots come fall.
That can lead to some real mental gymnastics as teams try to piece together new lineups and even consider mixing and matching players in unconventional ways.
While many clubs currently (or will soon) find themselves in a controversy at a key slot here and there, most of those position battles get worked out over the course of training camp. Every once in a while, a team fully embraces the madness and even lets the committee approach spill over into the season.
But perhaps no team has tried a tactic as head-spinningly crazy as the Dallas Cowboys did in 1971. Head coach Tom Landry was one of the sport’s greatest innovators, to be sure. But if his experiment that season had caught on, today’s NFL rosters would look staggeringly different.
Here is the story of the year the Cowboys had two starting quarterbacks and utilized them in a confounding way that had never been seen before… and probably won’t be again.
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