Anyone remember these comments from Jimmy Johnson?

[Zimmy Lives]

No offense taken. I would be interested to see those quotes if they're available somewhere. At the time it seemed to me Johnson didn't take Walsh because he thought he was better, but because we needed two good quarterbacks and we needed competition. The proof to me seemed to be in Johnson's preference to play Aikman over Walsh. But if some quote from him exists that shows he actually thought Walsh was better at some point, I'm not averse to changing my views. I do think with perfect 20/20 hindsight, we can say with certainly that we could have gotten better value from that draft pick. At least with Johnson, though he may find some mistakes he made, overall he was successful. The loss of that draft pick didn't hurt the rebuilding thanks to the genius Herschel Walker trade.

Thanks! I did find the piece but, realizing it was written by Skip Bayless, I'm less inclined to believe it now. : )

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=bayless/060807

"Johnson used the first pick in the supplemental draft to take the quarterback he won a national championship with at Miami: the un-Troy, Steve Walsh.

The 6-foot-4, 235-pound Aikman had all the prototype tools. But he didn't have Walsh's eye for speed reading defenses or Walsh's feel for finding second or third receiving options.

Johnson's first team, the equivalent of an expansion team, went 1-15 in '89. Walsh won the only game, beating the defending Super Bowl champs in Washington. When deer-in-oncoming-truck-lights Aikman did play, he took some of the worst beatings a quarterback ever lived to tell about.

The following season, Johnson had a plunger's chance to trade Walsh to New Orleans for a first-rounder, a second and a third. Johnson plunged.

That Sunday, Aikman played what surely was the worst game of his pro career, looking more lost than ever in a hopelessly humiliating loss to the Jets on the New York stage. Losing like that could send Johnson into truth-spewing rages -- and occasionally he would regret what he said to those closest to him.

But two nights after that Jets loss, Johnson was in a stormy mood when he bumped into several media members in the hallway outside his office. He basically told them that he had traded the wrong quarterback.

Johnson said: "Troy Aikman was a loser in college, and he'll always be a loser in the pros."

Holy Cowboy.

Yes, at UCLA, Aikman had lost both games he played against crosstown rival USC, quarterbacked by Rodney Peete.

So through that 1990 season, I began to wonder whether Johnson was right. Did Aikman have a winner's intangibles? Or was he saddled with a coordinator -- Don Shula's son David -- whose offense was just too complicated for him? For sure, Aikman didn't click with Shula.

Desperate, Johnson fired Shula and tried to hire Gary Stevens, then Ted Tollner, then Joe Pendry. Each near-move fell through. Who knows? If any of those three had taken the job, Aikman's career might not have taken off.

Johnson considered five or six other candidates before finally interviewing the Rams' receivers coach -- an unknown named Norvell Turner."

 

[theebs]

Aikman knew. All about how Johnson felt about him, other coaches told him what Jimmy said about him and how he doubted him.

The night before we played the rams in 90 we were 3-7. Aikman had planned to go to Jimmy's room in the hotel and demand a trade but his roommate babe laufenberg talked him out of that.

They ended up winning 4 in a row and finishing 7-9 after aikman missed the final two.

It took jimmy and aikman to have an argument and talk it out at a party at norv turners house the following year to finally get along.

 

[mahoneybill]

Jimmy was also the guy who thought Steve Walsh > Troy Aikman. Not perhaps a great judge of quarterback play.

Good memory. Not many recall that.