Cowboys owner and General Manager Jerry Jones said Johnny Manziel “was probably the highest player on the board” when the Cowboys were on the clock with the 16th overall pick on Thursday night. But Jones passed on Manziel because the Cowboys are totally committed to Tony Romo.
“I said last night, it was all about Tony Romo,” Jones said. “I was just looking at it today and thought, ‘You put that with the Dallas Cowboys and you put that with the quarterback controversy over Romo, and you’ve got an explosion.’”
It certainly would have been an explosion of media attention if Manziel had ended up in Dallas, and Jones believes Manziel is going to be a game-changer in the NFL. What Jones doesn’t think is that Manziel would be good enough to beat out Romo.
“[Manziel]’s got a chance to knock it out of the park, and we all know that, but with what Romo’s got, his knowledge of the game, and his experience, then frankly, Romo’s arm is quicker and stronger,” Jones said. “So with all of that, he’s not going to beat Romo out. The only thing this thing does is all of a sudden Romo has a shorter career than we might have anticipated, and then you’re sitting here for several years.”
Jones compared Manziel to Elvis Presley in terms of the impact he’d have at the box office. That might sound exactly like the kind of player Jones would want, but Jones already has Romo, and in Jones’s mind, Romo is like the Beatles.
