The Dallas Cowboys are rumored to be drafting a replacement for Tony Romo with the fourth pick in the first round. In general, teams with bad offenses are the ones that draft quarterbacks, and technically, the Cowboys would fit that mold given the team’s struggles last year. But, of course, the Cowboys expect to have a good offense in 2016 with a healthy Romo, so I was curious how unusual it would be for a good team to spend a first round pick on a quarterback.

The table below shows the offensive SRS grade and the number of wins ^[1]Pro-rated to 16 games for non-16 game seasons. for each team that has drafted a quarterback since 1971 in the year preceding such draft. For example, the 2014 Bucs and Titans had very bad offenses and went 2-14 before drafting quarterbacks with the first two picks. That’s how things typically go, but not always.

Only 14 of the teams that drafted a quarterback in the first round were at least 0.500 in the prior year and at least league average in offensive SRS. In the last 20 years, they were only six such cases, and each case had some extenuating circumstances:

• The 2008 Jets had Brett Favre at quarterback, but he did not return in 2009, leading to the trade up for Mark Sanchez.

• The 2005 Broncos had Jake Plummer, but he was one year away from retiring. Of course, he retired in part because he lost his job to Jay Cutler in ’06, but the Broncos likely always felt that Plummer was not going to be the guy to get the team over the hump (and he struggled in the AFC Championship Game loss to Pittsburgh).

• The 2004 Packers had Favre, and we all know that story. Drafting Aaron Rodgers was a long-term play because Favre stuck around longer than most would have expected, but it still worked out beautifully for the Packers.

• The 1999 Jets had a 36-year-old Vinny Testaverde who tore his Achilles in the season opener; the offense wound up succeeding behind Ray Lucas thanks to Curtis Martin, Keyshawn Johnson, and Wayne Chrebet being in their prime years. In ’00, with four first round picks, New York used one of them on Chad Pennington.

• The ’98 Vikings had Randall Cunningham, but he was 36 years old by the time the ’99 Draft arrived. Given how good Minnesota had been the year before, the Daunte Culpepper pick was a luxury the Vikings could afford.

• The ’96 49ers had a 35-year-old Steve Young; at the time, drafting Jim Druckenmiller, who had fallen in the draft, seemed like a way for San Francisco to continue the team’s excellent quarterback situation. That didn’t quite work out as planned.

The Cowboys situation would be pretty similar to what the 49ers were facing. Young, like Romo, had some durability concerns, and Romo is six months older than Young was at that time. This will be the highest the Cowboys have drafted since owning the first overall pick in 1991, so if Dallas views a franchise quarterback as one of the options at four, it makes sense to draft him even with Romo. The best-case scenario for Dallas under Romo is that he plays well for a couple of years, but in that situation, the Cowboys will be picking at the back end of the first round for the next three years, and without much of a long-term plan at the position.