I can't say I blame Bill Parcells for wanting to win now with Drew Bledsoe rather than risk throwing a year (or more) away to develop a completely unproven player in Drew Henson.
In all sports today, especially football, a team can be turned into a winner in about a month - sometimes that month is November or October and sometimes it's April or June.
Most NFL teams are a few players or even a few bounces away from being 6-10 or 10-6. That's the difference between making the playoffs and watching from home (disregarding for the moment the fact that 8-8 got a team into the postseason in the NFC this year).
The Cowboys are a perfect example of this phenomenon, having been down, up, and back down again in the past three years.
So why not bring in a proven quarterback and see if they can make a run? After the arrival of Julius Jones, the team played much better to close out the season, posting a 3-3 record that also included a narrow defeat at the hands of the Eagles.
Now they add a player who is familiar with Parcells' system and led a second-half resurgence of his own last year. Bledsoe's Bills lost only twice in the last 10 weeks, to the Patriots and the Steelers, and narrowly missed the playoffs.
Not only does Parcells know Bledsoe (does anyone know Henson?), but this Bledsoe has become even more Parcells-friendly than the one he coached in New England. During the Bills' hot streak last season, Bledsoe was merely guiding his team, not dominating it the way he always did back with the Pats.
Meanwhile, the Cowboys have been compelled to turn their team over to a player who has started, in seven years, a total of nine games above the high school level (eight at UM, one last season with Dallas). He has physical talent, for sure, but everyone knows that doesn't always translate into success. If it did, he would probably be wearing Yankee pinstripes today anyway.
