Amtrak To Hell

Okay, now that I’m somewhat over the shock of that disastrous (for Cowboys’ fans) game yesterday, I’ve had a night to sleep off all the alcohol intake for the weekend, and I’m thinking coherently again, I feel it has to be said: Tony Romo is one of the best quarterbacks in the league.

Any team not already being QB’d by Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Michael Vick, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers or Cam Newton would be happy, ecstatic even, to have him, and that’s a lot of teams.

Yes, those 3 interceptions yesterday were bad. Horrible, in fact. They are the reason that the Cowboys lost that game, there’s no getting around it. That loss was squarely on Romo’s shoulders.

The problem with being Tony Romo, of course, is that he’s blamed for EVERY loss, whether it’s his fault or not, and I would say a good 90% of the losses he gets blamed for are nowhere close to his fault.

He grew up as a Brett Favre fan, an obviously great hall of famer who broke the NFL interception record a week after he broke the TD passing record. It’s a gunslinging mentality, and whatever you might say about the major mistakes that go along with it, it’s fun as hell to watch.

The good thing for Favre is that he managed to win a Super Bowl early in his career. Romo has not, but he’s had nowhere near the supporting players that Favre had at the time.   

He’s still managed to break every single season QB franchise record so far in his career, and we’re talking about a franchise who was led at various times by the likes of Roger Staubach and Troy Aikman. Statistically, he’s been as good or better than every one of the NFL QB’s mentioned earlier over the last few seasons, with the exception of Tom Brady, and any fantasy football nerd knows he’s one of the top five point makers in the game.

Still, people want to call him a “choke artist” who can’t win the “big game”. The problem there? EVERY game is a big game to hungry Dallas fans who were at some point used to greatness but have since endured a decade of .500 ball with one playoff win to show for it.

Again, not Romo’s fault. Anyone who knows the basics of NFL football should be aware that you can attribute the last couple of playoff-less seasons more to bad coaching, questionable offensive line play and a horrible secondary than Romo being a choke artist.   

In fact, Romo is not a “choke artist”. A choke artist is someone who caves under the pressure of the limelight. Romo, on the other hand, pretty much does the opposite. His stats don’t go down, nor do his turnovers go up, in all these so called big games he supposedly choked away.

He’s always been who he is, no matter what. Unfortunately for Cowboys fans, that sometimes means throwing questionable passes into double and triple coverage when he maybe should just throw it away or take the sack. 

But “choke artist”? Come on, not even close.

Noone speaks, of course, of all the times he threw those “questionable” passes, managed to thread the needle and complete them for long yardage or a score.

Yesterday was a hard one to swallow, no doubt about it.

Still, unless you have a way to trade him for Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady, I’ll take Romo for now.