In past decades it was standard procedure to pull your starting QB when the result was no longer in doubt. The thought process was that you'd be foolish to risk injury to your starter. I remember one year it being a big deal that Jags QB Mark Brunell took every QB snap in a season - and was the only QB to do so. Since then a culture has developed whereby starters refuse to come out of games. I dont know if this is something to do with them wanting to protect their own positions by ensuring nobody else got a snap/experience.
Going back even further to the 70s/80s it was common to replace starters mid game if they were playing mediocre. Sometimes backups would even play a couple of series while the coaches spoke to the starter about adjustments before returning him to the game. It is unusual for a starter to be pulled mid game now unlesa injured.
I think the overall standard of QBing in the league is worse as a result - there is a much bigger drop off from starter to backup than at any time in history.
Those are some excellent points. That does make me question whether today's standard operating procedure is the right one. It seems to me it would be possible to let Dak know that Mike White will see some playing time and not to be offended. As always, the team's effectiveness is above any one person's ego. White getting some snaps in real game-time situations would make him more ready should he need to play in relief of Dak due to injury. I do remember that Steve Beuerlein quarterbacked this team to the playoffs because Aikman got injured against the Commanders. When Aikman had healed up, it was tough to go back to him because the team had already gelled around Beuerlein and was playing well.
I think we would be better off if the team found a way to get White some real-time snaps. As you suggest, get him in there when the game's outcome is no longer in question. I remember what a disaster it was when Romo went down in 2015. Weeden was just not the guy, so they shopped around to get Matt Cassel. Cassel did not look very good most of the time, and I believe there were reasons behind that besides his innate abilities. He was acquired during a mid-season trade and thus did not go through our training camp. If the team could have realized in the offseason that Weeden just simply was not the guy and thus had gotten Cassel earlier, that would have helped. He could have been through our training camp and thus would have had more time to learn our system. Then if he could have had some playing time besides preseason, I believe he could have been a more effective backup than he was. How much better is a big question mark, but we do know he did a lot better playing in relief of Tom Brady in New England than he did in Dallas playing for Romo. We'll never know for sure if he could have been better enough to win some of those games, but his having not had our training camp and no preseason snaps and no regular season snaps certainly made it harder for him than it would have been otherwise. He still might have floundered -- his skills since New England may simply have eroded, but we don't know for sure. Your backup has the best chance to do well the better he knows the system and the more oiled up he is due to reps under center.
