Cowboys owner compares Ezekiel Elliott to Joey Galloway
Why did Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones mention former wide receiver Joey Galloway when talking about new rookie running back Ezekiel Elliott?
If you mention the name Joey Galloway to a Dallas Cowboys fan, they are likely to wince in pain as a response. That’s mainly due to the former Cowboys wide receiver being the focus of one of the worst trades in franchise history.
In 2000, the Cowboys traded two future first round draft picks to the Seattle Seahawks for the 28-year old Galloway, who was a first round selection himself out of Ohio State just five years earlier. He signed a massive seven-year, $42 million deal just prior to coming to Dallas.
With those traded selections, Seattle ended up drafting running back Shaun Alexander (2000, 19th overall) and defensive end Andre Carter (2001, 7th overall). The latter played for the San Francisco 49ers as the Seahawks traded that pick in order to move down two spots to select wide receiver Koren Robinson.
In his first real game as a Cowboy, Galloway tore his ACL, thus ending his debut and his first season before it even began. During his entire four-year run in Dallas, the wide out would never register more than 61 catches in a single season, recording just 34 receptions his final year with the Cowboys (despite being targeted 83 times) in 2003.
Galloway was traded to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers the following year for star receiver Keyshawn Johnson. Joey’s exodus out of Dallas made the trade one of the worst in the Cowboys history, as the team’s combined win/loss record was 25-39 during his time in Dallas. Without their first round draft selections for two of those four seasons, the Cowboys struggled to be competitive.
Bottom line is, for many Cowboys fans, the Galloway trade is a sore subject. So imagine my surprise when Dallas owner and general manager Jerry Jones mentioned the former wide receiver’s name when talking about the possible impact of this year’s first round pick, Ohio State running back Ezekiel Elliott.
"“We did it with Troy (Aikman), when we traded big picks for (Joey) Galloway,” Jones told the MMQB. “You put things in place around the quarterback when he’s in his prime. Ezekiel is a lot of that. He helps long-term, but he has a chance to help us right away. You do look for opportunities, it’s no different than last year, when we took a chance on Hardy. If you don’t have a quarterback in his prime, it’s a question if you’d do that.”"
What Jones fails to mention here is the fact Aikman and Galloway never really had a chance to play together. Due to the aforementioned knee injury, the receiver played only one game in 2000. That happened to be Aikman’s final season in the league as well. And being that it was the Hall of Fame quarterback’s 12th year in the league, and as he was 34-years old by seasons’ end, Troy wasn’t even near his prime.
At 36-years of age, quarterback Tony Romo isn’t in his prime either. But the addition of Elliott to the backfield has obvious benefits. Running the ball takes the pressure off of Romo of having to perform miracles on a regular basis to win ball games. Also, Elliott’s prowess as a pass blocker should help the aging gunslinger stay upright more and hopefully avoid those big hits that cost Romo a total of twelve games last season.
Personally, I’m not one for superstition. But can we please avoid any sort of comparisons between Elliott and Joey Galloway in the future? It’s hard to make the bad memories go away when your team’s owner/general manager keeps bringing it up like it wasn’t one of the worst trades ever.
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