Tony Romo Is the Greatest Cowboys Quarterback Since...
Troy Aikman? Roger Staubach? Don Meredith? The dawn of mankind? How you answer that question shows how you feel about the undrafted free agent from Eastern Illinois University who is now the undisputed star of America’s Team—and whether you’re willing to put up with the tabloid headlines that follow him everywhere.
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Nevertheless, Landry was intrigued by Staubach’s potential and announced before the 1971 season that the job was up for grabs. In a rare moment of indecision, Landry kept changing quarterbacks for nearly half a season, first Staubach, then Morton, then Staubach, then Morton. Landry believed that players were more or less interchangeable and seemed blind to the effect this was having on the team. “In the middle of the season, we were four and two, one game behind the Redskins,” Staubach recalled. “At a team meeting before a game against Chicago, he told us we were going to alternate after every play. Craig and I looked at each other like, ‘What’s this?’” The Cowboys gained a lot of yards but lost to a mediocre Bears team. The following week Landry admitted that having two quarterbacks had been a terrible idea and announced that Staubach was the man for the remainder of the season.
“It was a life-changing moment,” Staubach told me. “We had a good team, but we weren’t clicking, weren’t hitting on all cylinders. Landry’s theory was that we were both good quarterbacks, that whoever he put in charge would do the job. But football is emotion, it’s leadership. If Landry had gone the other way, gone with Craig, I probably would have left the Cowboys.”
With Staubach at the controls, the Cowboys won ten straight games, including Super Bowl VI, Dallas’s first championship. It was the beginning of a glorious stretch in which Staubach and the Cowboys appeared in three more Super Bowls over the next four years, beating the Denver Broncos and losing twice to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Staubach went on to a Hall of Fame career, celebrated for leading his team to 23 fourth-quarter comeback victories, including the original “Hail Mary pass,” which beat the Minnesota Vikings in the playoffs in 1975.
Morton had his own life-changing moment in 1972, as he reminded me in a telephone conversation from his home in Berkeley, where he works in development and fund-raising for his alma mater, the University of California. After Staubach separated his shoulder in the opening game, Morton led the Cowboys to a divisional playoff against the San Francisco 49ers. Then destiny reared its savage head. With the Cowboys offense sputtering and only ninety seconds remaining, Landry sent Staubach into the game, even though he hadn’t played for months. Staubach responded by throwing two touchdown passes and leading the team to victory.
Even so, Morton assumed that he would start the NFC championship game the following week, against the Washington Redskins. “I’d played the entire season, while Staubach had played less than two minutes,” Morton recalled. But again, Landry appeared indecisive. “Landry called Roger and me into his office,” Morton continued. “I remember coming in with all these reels of film under my arm and Landry saying—and these were his exact words—‘Craig, you had an unbelievable year. We wouldn’t be in the championship game without you. Roger, you’re a great quarterback, and you’re going to start against the Redskins.’ I was so stunned that I dropped my reels of film.” Though the Redskins dominated the championship game, beating the Cowboys 26-3, Morton didn’t play a down. “I knew then I couldn’t play in Dallas anymore,” he said. The Cowboys traded Morton to the Giants for a number one draft choice, which they used to secure future Hall of Fame defensive tackle Randy White. Morton was later traded to the Broncos, where he was beaten in Super Bowl XII by—wouldn’t you know it?—his old rival, Staubach.
The “America’s Team” label took hold during Staubach’s reign, in large part because of Staubach’s squeaky-clean, all-American image: Heisman Trophy winner, graduate of the Naval Academy, devoted family man, as good and trustworthy and square as the state of Ohio, where he grew up. Staubach and his wife, Marianne, met in the fourth grade in Cincinnati. “I met my Jessica Simpson in elementary school,” he joked one day at lunch, Marianne at his side.
Landry hated all that America’s Team stuff, believing correctly that it infuriated opposing teams and put undue pressure on the Cowboys. But it outlived him, and it is likely to outlive its detractors too, as New York Times sports columnist George Vecsey discovered not long ago. When Vecsey wrote that he couldn’t understand why people thought the Cowboys were America’s Team, he was bombarded with nasty e-mails, declaring that if he didn’t love the Cowboys, he didn’t love America—and should get the hell out of the country.
Chatter about America’s Team lessened after Staubach retired and Danny White took over. Not to damn Romo with faint praise, but in some ways he reminds me of White, the unknown soldier among iconic Cowboys quarterbacks. After a brief stint in the World Football League, White was signed in 1976 as a punter and backup to Staubach. He sat on the bench for four years, then got the starting job after a series of concussions convinced Staubach that it was time to quit. White led the Cowboys to three consecutive NFC championship games, from 1980 to 1982, and broke or tied eight Cowboys single-season passing records. Two of the records that Romo broke last year—his 36 touchdown passes and his 4,211 passing yards—had been held by White. Unfortunately, White is remembered as the quarterback who never got Dallas to a Super Bowl, whether it was his fault or not.
White left the Cowboys in 1989, the same year that a blond-haired kid from Henryetta, Oklahoma, rolled into town. Troy Aikman’s heroics revived the sagging fortunes of the Cowboys, but not without some measure of adversity. Though Aikman was clearly the best player in the 1989 draft, no less an expert than Jimmy Johnson, the coach that owner Jerry Jones hired to replace Landry, had grave doubts. In the book Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty, which will be published this month, Jeff Pearlman reveals that Johnson thought Aikman was stiff and mechanical and maybe not smart enough or passionate enough to play in the NFL. In a move that still mystifies, Johnson used a second first-round draft choice to select another quarterback, Steve Walsh, who had won a national title for him at the University of Miami. Though it was clear to everyone except Johnson that Aikman was far superior to Walsh, Johnson gave Aikman the cold shoulder during long stretches of that first season. So much for Jimmy the Genius.
Of course, Aikman was mechanical: Improvising was not his style. He needed receivers to run precise routes, timed to the split second, and when things broke down, he struggled. But Aikman was also a natural—great poise, strength, accuracy—and he had enough speed and agility, at least early in his career, to turn a busted play into positive yardage. What made Aikman a truly great quarterback, however, was his indomitable competitive spirit, his will to win. No matter how many interceptions he threw or how bleak things looked, Aikman never got rattled. Romo shows that same unconquerable desire. “A player like Romo or like Favre will make bad plays by forcing throws, but they have both made far more great plays with that style,” Aikman told me. “You can’t have one without the other—even though a lot of coaches think you can.”
In 1997 Aikman became the first Cowboys quarterback to have three straight 3,000-yard seasons, but because of the salary cap—and mismanagement by Jones, who in a span of five years fired not only Johnson but also his replacement, Barry Switzer—the team had started its long decline. Aikman dealt with a string of bad coaches, and he took more than his fair share of punishment on the field. In 2000 Redskins linebacker LaVar Arrington hit Aikman with such force that his head literally bounced off the turf, leaving a dent in his helmet. It was Aikman’s tenth concussion, and it ended his career. Still, Aikman put up some amazing numbers, passing for 32,942 yards. His ninety wins in the nineties is the most by any quarterback in any decade, and his three Super Bowl victories is better than Staubach’s record.
Predictably, today’s Cowboys fans are as silly and impatient as their parents and grandparents were back in Meredith’s day. Witness the shrieks of distress over the Jessica Simpson affair, particularly that little trip to Mexico last January, a week before the playoff game against the Giants. Agreed, it may be fair to ask why her? Romo could have his pick of blondes with prominent balconies. One blogger labeled it “the Affleck/J-Lo Corollary.” Two young celebrities meet, find each other attractive, and start thinking, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe I’m sleeping with [fill in the name here].” But Romo offered a perfectly reasonable explanation for the Mexican vacation. Which was the better choice, he inquired, slipping off for a few quiet days in Mexico or going to Las Vegas and getting drunk? This is precisely the sort of straight talk that has attracted Romo a burgeoning crowd of admirers.
Foremost among them, incidentally, are Dallas’s two Hall of Fame quarterbacks, Staubach and Aikman, and a third quarterback who is sure to join them in the Hall in five or six years, Favre. All agree that Romo has the physical tools to succeed, but more than that he has the golden intangibles that separate the good quarterbacks from the great ones—a knack for the big play and a feel for the game.
“When I see him play, it reminds me of myself,” Favre told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last season before a showdown between the Cowboys and the Packers, which Dallas won 37-27 behind Romo’s four touchdown passes. “His creativity to bail himself out is very good. And without being in his head, he probably has the same mentality I had in that there’s never a bad play, which can get you in trouble, but for the most part it has worked for me.”
“Tony’s a terrific player,” Aikman said. “He’s been brilliant, and he has the ability to create something when there’s not a play or when guys are covered.”
“He’s a tremendous competitor,” Staubach said. “You can just see those juices flowing.”
Romo has the chance to take his place among the icons of the Cowboys dynasty, but the clock is already ticking. All the old quarterbacks sounded the same note of caution: A quarterback is only as good as his supporting cast, and supporting casts have a limited shelf life. In other words, the time is now. Romo is only 28 years old, but some of his key teammates, in particular Terrell Owens, his best receiver, are in their mid-thirties. It’s now or never for this team—and maybe for Romo too. “In today’s game you’ve got to take advantage of the opportunity when it’s there,” Aikman told me. “When history is written, nobody will remember the stats. They’ll remember how you did in January.”
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