With the NFL Combine this week and the Draft a couple of months away, 31 sets of fans are figuring out which area their team needs improvement in the most, and 1 set of fans is figuring out what they need to stay on top. With all 5 of the top rated quarterbacks in the draft having Texas ties, the inevitable debate springs up again among Cowboy fans: what to do with Tony Romo. Now I have always been a Romo fan and defended him in most accounts, and I agree that there are better quarterbacks in the league. However, I still firmly believe you can win a Super Bowl with Romo as your quarterback.
No one can deny that Tony Romo has the statistics of an elite quarterback. This is when all of the Romo-haters say that playing quarterback isn’t all about stats (although they bring in stats to say why others are better, passing yards, interceptions, playoff wins, etc.). However, a quick comparison of the statistics is enlightening:
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With no names attached I’d say it’s hard to distinguish who is who among the supposed “elite” quarterbacks in the league from Tony Romo (the ones that have won Super Bowls, and Matt Stafford because when you throw for 5K in a season you’re elite, period). Tony Romo (D) may have fewer yards than the other quarterbacks, but he also threw the ball a hundred times less than the others except for Aaron Rodgers (A). Romo also had a better completion percentage than Tom Brady (C) and fewer interceptions than Brady, Brees (B), Stafford (E), Eli Manning (F) or Ben Roethlisberger (G). That’s always been a knock on Romo that he can’t take care of the ball and now the only guy taking care of it better had to post the all time record quarterback rating to do it.
That’s another thing to look at: Rodgers, Brees, Brady, and Stafford had 4 of the best seasons in the history of football and Romo is right up there with them. He also did this while being sacked on a higher percentage of his dropbacks than the others except Rodgers (Big Ben’s came from the ankle injury which forced many of his sacks). There’s not an accurate statistic for how many times a quarterback is hurried over the season, but I’d find it hard to believe that Romo didn’t also lead in that category as well.
What I really take out of this is that Romo is capable of leading a team to the Super Bowl if the rest of these guys did. Cue the Romo-Haters with how much he single handedly loses games, just as in this past season against the Jets and Lions. Let’s start with opening night against the Jets. He had the key fumble on the one yard line (one of only three he lost all season, another forward progression for him) while trying to score. Does he need to take care of the ball in that situation of being up 7 in the fourth quarter? Well obviously yes, but I’m never going to get mad at him for trying to make a play at the one yard line. Later in the season he passed up the opportunity to run it in and cost the team 4 points in a game it lost by 3. I’d rather him go for the 7 every time. Then there was the late interception to Revis. Of course Romo isn’t going to call out his receiver, but it was pretty obvious that Dez Bryant was supposed to cut off his route against the bracket coverage, just as he had done earlier in the game and out fought Revis for the ball on the same exact play.
The Lions game was a whole different story. He was integral in getting the Cowboys into position to blow the 35-3 lead to being with. Now he did throw 3 costly interceptions with two being returned for touchdowns. The first two, though, should not have even been called. I’m still curious why Garrett was throwing the ball on first down up 32, but we can still place the blame on Romo’s shoulders. So he lost one game for his team in which he threw nearly a third of his interceptions for the entire season in one half. Drew Brees threw 3 picks against the lowly Buccaneers and gave up a loss last season. Brady threw three to blow a 21 point lead against the Buffalo Bills to lose a game last year as well. Stafford had a 4 interception game against the Bears to get beat by 24. Manning had 2 games in which he threw 3 interceptions in each and led the Champs to lose to non-playoff teams. Every “elite” quarterback that doesn’t wear a Discount Double Check had at least one game where he cost his team; it’s just part of football. At least Romo’s bad game was to a playoff team and he followed it with a streak of 23 quarters and only one interception (which was when Marty B decided to volley the ball into the defender’s hands).
Then there is the beaten down December/January failures. Whether it was Marion barber fumbling three times against the Eagles, the defense allowing Laron McLain to look like Eric Dickerson in the last game at Texas Stadium, or the entire secondary forgetting what pursuit angles are on Victor Cruz, it’s always Romo’s fault when the Cowboys lose late in the season. But this past season, what was his fault? Did he ice his kicker twice, forcing two losses? He tried to come back against the Eagles but the game didn’t matter anyway. Against the Giants the second time, the offensive line allowed a free rusher almost every drop back. And with all of that, he put his team in position to win the division if Miles Austin doesn’t lose the ball in the lights (that should not have even been overhead, but apparently the roof of Cowboys Stadium is broken).
Lastly, if someone thinks that quarterback is an area of concern with regards to the depth chart of this team, then he or she doesn’t know anything about football. In some sort of descending order, interior offensive line, safety, corner, defensive end and middle linebacker are all more vital in improving than quarterback. The only position that is clearly in better shape on the team is wide receiver, and even that might come into question if Laurent Robinson isn’t resigned. By my count that’s about half of the starters on the team that should be upgraded before even discussing quarterback.
So please, enough with the “we gotta’ get rid of Romo” talk. I’m not saying the Cowboys would have won the Super Bowl had Austin caught that pass, but can you say they wouldn’t have? They were given the same odds as the Giants were going into the last game of the regular season. He is clearly a top 10 quarterback, if not top 5 right now, which to me would make him “elite”. Let’s remember what happened just before last season when a quarterback had the confidence to say that he belonged in that category.
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