It’s that dreaded time of the year again for Dallas Cowboys fans. It’s an all-too-familiar feeling by now, to the point where it feels expected and would come as a genuine surprise if it didn’t happen. What should land as a soul-crushing smack to the face now registers as inevitable and shoulder-shrugging to fans of the franchise. What I’m talking about, of course, is the new injury to quarterback Tony Romo. In just the third play of Thursday’s preseason bout against the Seattle Seahwaks, Romo went down in pain after having a defender land awkwardly on his back. Even if they initially denied the seriousness of it, we all kind of knew what had happened.
Romo is a talented football player and one tough son of a bitch (he’s played, and played very well, through so many different injuries it’s hard to keep count). One thing he hasn’t ever really been, though, is lucky. Since around 2008 he has missed significant time due to injury: a broken pinky finger here, ruptured disk there, add in a couple of fractured collarbones, and of course the multiple back procedures in the last two years. You can imagine my surprise when news of his latest setback starting making the rounds.
“Romo broken bone in back, not ruled out for season. Expected to miss 6-8 weeks. He should just give up already”. This is a text I received from a friend of mine, who is also a Cowboys supporter, the morning the news of Romo’s latest setback first surfaced. Notice the lack of urgency, the lack of panic usually associated with hearing that your franchise quarterback is out for half of the season at least (and let’s be honest, in this case, with Romo, he’s almost surely out for the entire year. He might try to come back for a game or two, but then something else will break).
Even if it feels like deja-vu 10 times over and garners a lethargic response now, it really is a sad thing to see happen. Romo spent his early years almost single-handedly carrying the Cowboys to any sort of relevance they might have had in the past decade, gun slinging behind mediocre-at-best offensive lines and a running game that never did much (minus a few Marion Barber and one Demarco Murray season). There were a few scattered years where the defense was pretty good too, but Romo really was the key to most of Dallas’ success. Eventually the front office finally started doing him some favors by putting together a dominant offensive line and he had one of the best receivers in the game in Dez Bryant to throw to. Only by this time his body started to quit on him.
I’ll be the first to admit I was one of those fans who railed on Romo every time he would make an inconceivable error that would cost the team in crunch-time situations (and, as good as he is/was, his mistakes did come in the untimeliest of manners that almost always made your heart sink). Later on he would tidy up his game a bit and turn into a truly elite quarterback in the league, but even when he was trigger-happy Brett-Favre-light he was no scrub and didn’t deserve some of the hate that he got. In 2014 he had the best season of his career: 69.9% completion rate, 3,705 yards, 34 TD’s and only 9 interceptions. He also was top of the league in passer rating and total QBR that year and very well might have been named MVP of the league if not for Aaron Rodgers’ spectacular season.
And that is what makes this all the more heartbreaking: we were robbed of a Tony Romo in his prime. When I say ‘we’, I don’t just mean Dallas Cowboys fans. I mean fans of watching football. Tony Romo at his best is about as fun to watch as football gets. Seeing him wiggle and squirm around multiple pass rushers to avoid being sacked then step up in the pocket and deliver a perfect bomb downfield is pure joy to see. Maybe we will get to see him deliver a few more of those throws before he is forced to call it a career. Maybe not. It might be premature to call it, but it really feels like the latter.
The thing is, I’m not sure what’s more disheartening: seeing his best years wasted because he couldn’t stay healthy, or the fact that it almost doesn’t even matter anymore to Cowboys fans (or to me, at least) because how many times can you get heartbroken by the same thing? It feels like it’s just been the same season on repeat for the past four or five years, and it’s hard to get up in arms about it anymore. Frustration had over and over eventually turns into passive acceptance. I’m a diehard Dallas Cowboys fan, always have been and always will be. Tony Romo is out for most, if not all, of the season. I don’t really care. Bring on Dak.
