After another season of great disappointment, missing the playoffs for a third straight time, Tony Romo and the Dallas Cowboys are feeling more heat and criticism than ever, especially due to the massive contract extension the quarterback got, aligning with his individual numbers but contradictory to his success in the games that matter.
When you have your franchise quarterback, you give him the big contract. That’s how it works every time. Romo was given a 6-year extension worth $108 million (with $55 million guaranteed, including $25 million in bonus money), because the Cowboys aren’t in that mode of rebuilding, which first and foremost means finding a new quarterback to take you somewhere.
Romo might not be the best in the NFL, but his numbers suggest that he is one of the best passers in the league, and as long as he has a bad offensive line standing in front of him while his running game always gets derailed in some way, it’s going to be hard blaming him for the Cowboys’ problems.
I think more than anything I think the media, not trying to be rude, but you guys don’t matter. Saying that, I know you guys all have a job to do and it helps grow the game and there’s a lot of talk about the game and it’s a wonderful aspect of it, good and bad. None of it matters.
It’s going to be played out on the field, no matter what we’re going to do we have to open up the football season against the New York Giants and whether you said great things or whether you said the Cowboys are whatever, they’re the best ever, the worst ever, they can’t ever, they can, it doesn’t matter. You still have to show up and you got to play.
The biggest beef with Romo people have is his record in the playoffs, when he and the Cowboys actually make it, which currently stands at only one win to three losses, often having terrible games (like in 2009 against the Minnesota Vikings) that go hand in hand with the Cowobys’ painful exits.
Every year seems like the last chance for him to prove he can carry this team forward, but there are always other problems with the team that get in the way of isolating him as the sole cause of the Cowboys underachieving. The biggest one? Probably the decisions Jerry Jones, the owner and the GM, makes.
I just don’t think what anybody says has any influence on this football team. What anybody would say in those situations is they have their own agendas. They have their own lives they have to live. So for some people, it’s a positive for them to use certain things and use stuff and talk about it and that’s good for them if it helps them get a job or a write up or whatever, that’s positive for them.
So I think go ahead use it, I think that’s important for them to get to where they’re trying to go. It’s not important to us, it’s not important to me and it doesn’t make one bit of difference to this football team. This football team knows it’s job and it’s to get better today and that’s the objective and that’s the approach we take every day.