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.
Illustration by Shawn Barber
What’s not to like about Tony Romo? He’s the most exciting Dallas Cowboys quarterback since Troy Aikman in his prime. He has Don Meredith’s devil-may-care charm, that same winning attitude where all things are possible and, admit it, nothing that happens on a football field is all that important anyway. Born with Roger Staubach’s innate ability to lead and to improvise, he has the talent to transform disaster into triumph, to rally a team and in one magic moment change the course of a game or even a season. An undrafted free agent, Romo has been tested in the NFL for less than two full seasons, but people are already calling him a young Brett Favre. Okay, maybe that’s a stretch. But I’m inclined to agree with the judgment of Brian Urlacher, the Chicago Bears’ All-Pro linebacker, who called Favre “an old Tony Romo.”
So how good is Romo? We’re about to find out. As the Cowboys prepare for a run at the Super Bowl—they lost by a hair in the playoffs last January to the eventual champion New York Giants, a team they’d beaten twice during the regular season—Romo is at the center of everyone’s radar screen. His popularity already exceeds his accomplishments: His number 9 jersey is the league’s hottest seller, in keeping with a franchise that has long led the NFL in TV ratings and brand loyalty. Every aspect of his personal life is the stuff of headlines, especially his relationship with Jessica Simpson. When Staubach was interviewed last spring during a business trip to Raleigh, North Carolina, the reporter diverted from his line of questioning about the economy and asked, “Did Jessica Simpson’s romance with Tony Romo really cost the Cowboys the Super Bowl?” (“It caused debate,” Staubach acknowledged. But the Super Bowl? Come on.)
Romo has emerged as the “Lone Star Joe Namath.” He is as likely to show up in the pages of People magazine or the National Enquirer as Sports Illustrated. Entertainment Tonight sent a reporter to a press conference to ask him about Britney Spears, one of the many bimbos on his speed dial. Anywhere there are cameras and spotlights, you are likely to encounter Romo—judging the Miss Universe pageant, escorting American Idol Carrie Underwood to the Academy of Country Music Awards, throwing out the first pitch at a Cubs-White Sox game in Chicago, playing in a celebrity golf tournament. Even Giants quarterback Eli Manning, who got the best of Romo in the playoffs and is now competing with him as the cover boy for the new season, complained at a press conference last fall that an inordinate number of questions directed at him were about Romo.
It’s no secret that the quarterback of the Cowboys is a Texas—and a national—icon, better known in the state than the governor or any celebrity. There have been exceptions, of course: Only hard-core fans will recall Steve Pelluer or Gary Hogeboom. But any schoolkid smart enough to recite the heroes of the Alamo can probably also rattle off the Cowboys icons—Meredith, Staubach, and Aikman. Though it is too early to assign Romo a permanent place among the Cowboys elite, he has shown bursts of magic, early indicators that great things are possible.
One of the most memorable plays in Cowboys history came last season against the St. Louis Rams, when the center snapped the ball over Romo’s head. Resisting the safe move, which would have been falling on the loose ball, Romo instead grabbed it on the bounce, averted two tacklers, and dashed 40 yards for a first down. “Craziest play I’ve ever seen,” All-Pro tight end Jason Witten later told reporters. “I tried to make some blocks out there, but it’s hard because you become a fan. You just sit there and watch him.”
Not since the halcyon days of Aikman and Staubach has a quarterback inspired such confidence among the Cowboys’ rank and file. “His teammates believe in him, and he believes in them,” Staubach told me. “That’s what leadership is.” There was a perfect example last year in Buffalo. Playing before a hostile crowd—Bills fans egged the Cowboys’ bus as the team drove to the stadium—Romo put his team in a hole by fumbling and throwing five interceptions. But in the closing minutes, when things appeared hopeless, he pulled the team together. Completing nine of eleven passes, he directed the Cowboys to a touchdown that cut the Bills’ lead to two points with twenty seconds remaining. Then the Cowboys recovered an onside kick, and Romo moved them close enough for a 53-yard game-winning field goal as time expired. In the dressing room later, he shrugged it off as just another day at the office, telling reporters, “I’m always thinking we’re going to go out and score on the next drive.”
Yet for all the hype, Romo remains an enigma. He has already set passing records for the Cowboys, but he has also failed to produce a victory in a playoff game in each of his two seasons. He has shown that he has the ability to take the team back to the promised land, but he has also embraced the tabloid spotlight in a way that no other Cowboys quarterback ever has. That makes a lot of fans nervous. A friend told me that his mother-in-law loves Romo because he is always smiling. His father-in-law doesn’t trust him because he is always smiling. None of this appears to faze Romo, who treats both triumph and disaster as silly impostors. After botching a hold on what should have been a winning field goal against Seattle in the 2006 playoffs, Romo returned a year later to lead the team to thirteen wins, the Cowboys’ best regular-season record since 1992, when Aikman guided the team to victory in Super Bowl XXVII. Romo put the playoff loss to Seattle in perfect perspective when he said afterward, “I learned a long time ago that if the worst thing that happens to me is sports-related, I’ve lived a pretty good life.”
Romo and Manning will be the most intriguing rivalry in the NFL in the years ahead, not only because the Giants and the Cowboys are the league’s two top franchises and bitter rivals in the tough NFC East but also because of the contrast in their pedigrees. An All-American at Ole Miss, Manning was famous before he was famous, the son of a famous quarterback, the brother of a famous quarterback, the first pick in the 2004 draft. Romo was a nobody from nowhere, a product of renowned football factory Eastern Illinois, ignored in the 2003 draft. The Cowboys signed him for $15,000, pocket change for even journeymen quarterbacks, and then stuck him on the end of the bench for three and a half years. If Quincy Carter hadn’t self-destructed in 2004, Romo probably would have been released before getting a chance to show his stuff.
Romo got the starting job almost by default, replacing the slow-footed Drew Bledsoe in the middle of the 2006 season. And yet in each of his two seasons as a starter, he has been selected to the Pro Bowl. In 2007 he became the first Cowboys quarterback to throw for more than 4,000 yards, and he finished the season with the highest quarterback rating in the NFC. Manning wasn’t especially impressive in the regular season last year, but he was nearly flawless in the playoffs and the Super Bowl.
Why then is Romo getting most of the chatter? Former Giants quarterback Phil Simms has pointed out a wonderful irony: It is easier to keep a low profile in New York than it is in Dallas. “There is so much going on in New York, so many celebrities—I mean, restaurant owners are celebrities—that it’s easier to go unnoticed,” Simms, now the lead NFL analyst for CBS Sports, recently told reporters. “The quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys is probably the most high-profile person in town.”
Fame is and always will be directly correlated to win-loss percentages and an ability to step up in a big game. “There is pressure on any quarterback to win, but if you’re the quarterback of a team with the rich tradition of the Cowboys, the pressure is off the charts,” said Aikman, who led the Cowboys to three of their five Super Bowl titles but who also played on atrocious teams at the beginning and the end of his career. “But if you’re able to win, if you’re successful and add to the legacy, I can’t imagine a greater place to be.”
So Romo’s job description is clear, as are the consequences of failure: God help the poor soul who screws this one up.
Don Meredith retired suddenly at the end of the 1968 season, quitting at the top of his game for reasons that are still difficult to explain but were tragically entwined with the mystique of the Cowboys and the anxieties and adolescent quirks of Dallas’s age of innocence. Four decades later the destinies of the player and the franchise seem willed by the stars. A kid from Mount Vernon, twice an All-American at SMU—Southern Meredith University, some called it—the Cowboys’ first-ever draft choice, the player chosen to lead this franchise to greatness and blamed shamelessly when greatness didn’t come soon enough, Meredith was destiny’s child. “Playing for the Cowboys was something I always wanted to do,” Meredith told me.
Those of us who knew Meredith and are now getting to know Romo are struck by the similarities of the two men—same effervescent, aw-shucks personality; same charismatic leadership style; same athleticism; same gritty toughness. Both excelled in basketball as well as football in high school, and both were natural competitors who loved games, any game at all. A scratch golfer, Romo told my old sportswriter buddy Sam Blair, “I’ve always loved competing, trying to get good at something. It’s just a joy that I get to do [it] for a living.” (Romo declined to be interviewed for this article, a fact I won’t hold against him.) The big difference is that Romo plays on a far superior team than Meredith did, and he has the force of history at his back.
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Cheryl says: The problem with the Cowboys is their stupid owner Jerry Jones - they are NOT America’s team. I was living in Vancouver, B.C., Canada about 13 yrs. ago and grocery shopping and men stocking were wondering how the Cowboys were considered America’s team and I informed them THEY ARE NOT America’s team - just some hype by sports writers. Try Green Bay Packers who are owned by real people, not some egotistical idiot!!!!! (February 17th, 2009 at 6:53pm)
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