That’s because you think the game of football and a player’s capability and importance to the team is based on the stats they put up regardless of context. Aikman was extremely efficient. He rarely if ever needed to put the team in his back. And if you want to complain about how his stats deteriorated beyond 1997, so did the coaching and drafting of those Larry Lacewell teams which were downright awful. One of the worst in the league. Aikman led a timing based offense where he threw the ball to a spot before the receiver even made his break. That requires superior accuracy. There were many times in practice that Norv Turner remarked that his accuracy was so good the ball never even hit the ground. If those names don’t sound familiar it’s probably because you’re a Dak fan and not a Cowboys fan. When you can’t do anything else, you rely on stats. After all, it’s the only quantitative measure that an agent can point to and say, “yeah it’s true my client threw two crucial picks, but he fought back and threw for over 400 yards! Never mind that it was against the second team and they started playing soft, he deserves a gazillion dollars.”
