Tony Romo probably wants to wake up right about now.
Let's go back to last Sunday. The Dallas Cowboys are holding a 36-31 lead over the Green Bay Packers with 2:58 remaining in the 4th Quarter. The Cowboys have struggled in the second half, having led the game 26-3 at the intermission, but they are still in position to win. Green Bay’s swiss cheese defense hasn’t been able to stop the run – RB DeMarco Murray is averaging almost 7 yds. a carry – and even with the Pack crowding the line of scrimmage, running the football and killing some seconds on the clock is the right play in this situation. Indeed, on 2nd-and-7 from their own 35-yd. line, the play call from the sidelines is for a sweep to the right behind two pulling guards.
But on every play, the QB has options to deviate from the script. Playing QB in the NFL is probably the toughest position in sports. Every situation has a myriad of options, dependent upon the situation and what the defense provides. You have to read the defense, you have to see all the options. You also have to have a feel for what’s working and what isn’t – this WR has a good matchup on the outside, this lineman is struggling on the blocks, etc. If the play call presents bad matchups, you audible and shift to something else, and you have to figure all of this out in a matter of seconds. It’s a position that requires extreme confidence, strong leadership skills, and also the ability to improvise. Oh yeah, and then you have to execute the play while the defense is trying to clobber you.
Dallas QB Tony Romo surveys the field, and this is what he sees:
Aha! Look at that! 40 North Texas acres of space behind that one DB on the outside. The Packers are obviously going all in to stop the run. If the WR gets by the DB, it’s a touchdown, a kill shot. Game over baby. And Tony Romo can make all the throws. Statistics show that he is one of the highest-rated QBs in the history of the game. But as we all know, there are three sorts of untruths: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Roll tape …
The play is a disaster. The Cowboys are still run blocking and guys are running all over the place. Tony Romo has his life flash before his eyes as he’s nearly planted by an oncoming freight train that is LB Clay Matthews. Indeed, the WR has a step on the DB, but Romo has happy feet and doesn’t set himself. He hurries the throw, chucks up a flailing pigeon of a pass, and it’s intercepted. It’s the WORST possible outcome. In the abstract, the play made sense, of course, but the situation dictates a more conservative approach. And sure, if he gets that throw up a bit, the WR catches it and is running all the way to Fort Worth. Woulda coulda shoulda. It’s the wrong play at the wrong time. A big mistake squarely on the shoulders of the Dallas QB.
Granted new life and thanking the lucky stars painted on the side of their opposition’s helmets, the Packers take advantage, driving in for a TD to take a 37-36 lead with little more than a minute to play, and Dallas’ last gasp drive also results in an interception, giving the Packers an implausible victory. The Cowboys have managed to blow a 23-pt. lead, and the Dallas faithful in the stands and in the press then speak to the fact that they cannot remember a Dallas collapse of such epic proportions.
Evidently, they have short memories. Read that box score from 2011 – a game in which the Cowboys blew a 24-pt. lead in second half – and notice how the Lions got back into it: two pick sixes. Romo’s third interception of the game, with under 4:00 to play in the 4th Quarter, set up the winning score for the Lions.
I’m hard pressed to think of a more confounding athlete than Tony Romo. Few players, in any sport, have logged such a record of making the big mistake at the critical juncture. Mistakes happen all the time, of course. In most games, the competitor who makes the fewest mistakes is the one who succeeds. When errors happen, you simply have to adjust and atone for it in the flow of the game. Make the next play available to you and go from there. But often times, failure is ultimately determined by who makes the last mistake, that error in judgment or performance from which it is impossible to recover. And for all of his skills and strengths – and there are many – no one makes the last mistake more often than Tony Romo.
Who would’ve thought that, in the NFL playoffs back on Jan. 6, 2007, what seemed an aberration would turn out to be just the tip of the iceberg, and the absurd late-game error would become the norm? Tony Romo had ascended to the starting QB position that season and guided the Cowboys to the playoffs. The Cowboys were primed to pull the upset on the road in Seattle, trailing 21-20 but deep in Seahawks territory in the final minutes. Having been a scrub at the beginning of the year, one of Romo’s responsibilities had been to hold for placekicks, a role he still maintained even as he had become the starter. A chip shot FG would give Dallas the lead …
A play like that, in a situation like that, can define your career, fair or unfair. Anyone who watched that game back in 2007 can’t hear the name Tony Romo without giggling a little. I mean, c’mon here. That kick is the length of an extra point. The extra point is so close to an automatic that there has occasionally been talk of eliminating the extra point entirely, because what’s the good in having a play with an inevitable conclusion. Kickers miss maybe one kick from that distance in a season, if not once every two seasons. How could you possibly screw this up?
Words fail.
But it seems that the greater the stage, the more clumsy Tony Romo’s exit stage left will turn out to be. The Cowboys best season under his helm – 13-3 in 2007 – ended with a 21:17 playoff loss to Giants finished off by an interception of Romo in the endzone. The Cowboys had a chance to win the NFC East again last season with a win in D.C. They had withstood the bruising Washington running game, and trailed the Redskin Potatoes by only 21-18 late in the 4th Quarter, with the ball on their own 28 yd. line. Some late game heroics are in order …
WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!?!?!
Now, pinning all of the Cowboys failings over the past eight seasons on the starting QB would be decidedly unjust. More often than not, the Cowboys have put a flawed product out on the field during Romo’s tenure. The offensive line, in particular, seems to always be problematic. And since one of the primary jobs of an offensive line is to keep the QB standing upright, it's not surprising that Romo’s been banged around like a piñata for most of his career. He’s a tough guy, and he’s played hurt – really hurt, like broken ribs hurt.
The knock on him is that he’s a gambler and a gunslinger, someone who is risky with the ball. Even when he’s bad, he can be really good. He makes ill-advised decisions, in part, because he believes that he can make all the plays, and his confidence gets the better of his judgment. But that supreme confidence is something you want in a QB, particularly when you are trailing. You need a guy under center who can take charge, make plays and lead a rally. Indeed, Tony Romo has led 4th Quarter comebacks over 20 times during his career, some of which being in games that the Cowboys screwed up anyway. (In 2011, they lost twice when Romo led late drives, only to see the always humourous Dallas kicking game allow FGs to be blocked.) He’s sometimes had to singlehandedly compensate for his team’s lack of a running game or a poor performance by the defense, and do it all while scrambling about the pocket and running for his life. If anything, the argument could be made that he has won more games for them over the years than he has lost for them.
The problem is, ultimately, that he hasn’t won that many. The Cowboys are basically a .500 team in his career. And when a football team loses, the first person who takes the blame is the QB. Cowboys Nation are a particularly self-entitled bunch, and a QB who seems to always find a way to make critical errors at critical times is fertile ground for pillory. Everything he does is ludicrously overscrutinized, both on and off the field. This boneheaded move on the eve of the playoffs didn’t help his public standing, and Jessica Simpson soon found herself reviled by Cowboys fans everywhere after another of Romo’s on-field meltdowns, the broadcast of which included countless camera shots of her standing and cheering him on while wearing a pink #9 Cowboys jersey.
Like I say, everyone makes mistakes, but it’s the sheer number of late game blunders by Tony Romo which boggles the mind. Scroll back up and examine those gifs again: whereas the fumbled FG snap (giggle giggle) was something of an anomaly, the plays vs. Green Bay and Washington are both fundamentally bad decisions. Playing QB is inherently about managing the game. Smart decision-making is crucial. Failing to do so is often disastrous. Not only is Tony Romo making bad decisions, but he is apparently not learning from his mistakes. And as good as he has been in his career, Tony Romo’s not going to change the perception of him until he stops making those mistakes when the game is on the line.
Will you STOP DOING THAT?
That particular blunder occurred near the end of one of the best games of this season, when the Cowboys went toe-to-toe with Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos. Tony Romo threw for 506 yards in this game, a franchise record and one of the better games in NFL history. But all of his heroic work was undermined on one single play, an interception which came with the score tied in the final minutes. The Broncos then ran the clock down to near zero and kicked a FG to win 51:48 …
Wait a minute, what? 51:48? Where’s the defense? Oh, that’s right, Dallas doesn’t have one of those. The Cowboys are the worst defense in the NFL this year statistically, and bordering on being one of the worst of all time, but don’t just trust the stats. Trust your eyes as well. Just look at the way the Cowboys defended this quick slant pass, a fairly basic play in contemporary football:
Uh, guys, you might want to cover #81.
Uh, so what part of “you might want to cover #81” did you not understand? I guess by saying ‘might,’ you thought it was somehow optional or something. My bad.
That was Calvin Johnson of the Lions picking up some of the 329 receiving yards he gained against the Cowboys earlier this season. Now, granted, Calvin Johnson is arguably one of the greatest receivers in the history of the game, but still ... 329 yards? By one guy? This was a game in which the Lions amassed over 600 yards, scored 24 pts. in the 4th Quarter, and drove 80 yards in the final minute with no timeouts left to score a TD and win 31:30. Against the Dallas defense, anything is possible. They also allowed the Saints to pick up 40 first downs earlier this year, which is an NFL record. And while Romo gets fitted with the dunce cap for the Green Bay loss, the defense should join him in standing in the corner, as the Cowboys managed to blow a 23-pt. lead to a team led by Matt Flynn, the Packers 4th QB of the season whom they had signed off the streets. Needless to say, the defense doesn’t give Tony Romo any help. He would probably give his team more opportunities to win this year if he knew how to tackle.
It would be easier to feel some sympathy for the guy were it not for the fact that he plays for the Dallas Cowboys, an organization whose achievements on the field – eight trips to the Super Bowl, and winning five of those – is only surpassed by its opinion of itself. Having done things like anointed itself America’s Team and declared that the roof was open on Texas Stadium so God could watch his favourite team on Sundays, the Cowboys are one of the most loathed franchises in all of sports, if not the most loathed. They are a bastion of largesse and excess, and their new stadium is an homage to bombast, right down to the scoreboard that ate the ceiling. (But is it a nice facility? I don’t know, ask the fans whose Super Bowl seats were condemned by the fire marshal in 2011. I’m sure they enjoyed spending at least $900 a pop for the privilege of ultimately watching the Steelers and the Packers at the in-house sports bar.) In the past, however, the Cowboys have certainly walked the walk to back up their ample volume of talk. Five Super Bowl titles does buy you some cred. For a while, anyway.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones likes to think of himself as something of a football man. He and Head Coach Jimmy Johnson were the braintrust of an operation that amassed so much talent in the early 1990s that Johnson coached two Super Bowl champions. (The Cowboys were aided greatly, of course, by the worst trade in NFL history.) The Cowboys were so good that they won a third Super Bowl basically flying on autopilot, with empty suit Barry Switzer masquerading as head coach after Jimmy Johnson had resigned.
But once Jimmy Johnson was gone, it was clear where the brains were in the braintrust. The Cowboys have dwindled in the direction of mediocrity ever since. No, they are even worse than mediocre, in that they are constantly underachieving. Jerry Jones spends early, spends often, but rarely spends wisely. The Cowboys always have their share of fancy, talented players, but rarely do they have the depth required to get through a season, and every offseason is a tangle of drastic contract renegotiations to get the club under the cap. (Or not under the cap – like the Redskin Potatoes, the Cowboys are still paying fines to the league for violating the cap.) They've changed coaches five times in 15 years. Regardless of who is patrolling the sideline, the Cowboys have shown a penchant for making mental errors, committing turnovers, and all-around stupid play.
So, in that sense, maybe Tony Romo is the ideal QB.
You would think that they'd be tired of this in Jerry World by now. The Cowboys gave Tony Romo a 6-year, $67.5 million contract in 2007. Along with this, they’ve had to factor in enormous sums for Tums, Maalox, Pepto Bismol and Excedrin to deal with all of Romo’s assorted foibles. But after seven seasons of generally untimely incompetence, the Cowboys promptly gave Romo a 6-year contract extension worth $108 million, $80 million of which is guaranteed. I’m serious. It is an astoundingly bad contract added to a team already chock-full of bad contracts. I think it was weasly White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf who once complained that free agency in sports demands paying rates set by your dumbest competitors. He has a point. If Turnover Tony gets $108 mil to throw ill-advised passes and blow games with 3:00 left, just imagine what a real franchise QB will be worth in the future.
I mean, I do feel somewhat bad for the guy. He can pretty damn good sometimes. Most of the time, actually. But I must confess that I am among the throngs of un-Americans who think that America’s Team should go suck it. And so long as you keep the game close, and #9 is taking snaps for the opposition, you had best be on your toes, because you never know when a gift is going to come your way, and it will likely be handed to you on a silver platter emblazoned with a blue star.
