Romo not in Brady-Manning class, but he's doing fine
Tim Layden
Inside The NFL
Tom Brady is easy on the eyes. And not just in the way you're thinking, ladies. He's easy on football eyes, too. The poise. The vision. The textbook, 12-to-six delivery with the tight spiral. And in other ways you seldom hear about. Toughness? The Cowboys brought the heat on Brady last Sunday and put him on his back. And Brady kept getting up. Arm strength? Brady threw one ball 72 yards flatfooted.
Did I mention the three Super Bowl trophies that make Brady one of the all-time winners in football history?
Imagine being the other quarterback on the field with Brady. Unless you are Peyton Manning, who will live alongside Brady in Canton forever, you are going to be overlooked or worse, humbled. Entering last Sunday's too-hyped early season battle of unbeatens in Dallas, the performance of Cowboys' quarterback Tony Romo was no insignificant subplot.
Just six days earlier, Romo had survived a Monday night adventure like few in NFL history. Five picks. One lost fumble. And then two scores in the final minute of the game for a remarkable victory. From there he faces Brady, a matchup that is highly unlikely to flatter Romo, yet Romo's performance would say much about his development and his cojones. There is no small lobby in the noisy world of NFL analysis that thinks Romo has been given too much praise for too small a body of work.
Big picture: The Patriots are better than the Cowboys, by every bit as much as the final score of 48-27. The Cowboys are still the best of the NFC, but the NFC is mediocre on a good day, with little chance of winning the Super Bowl. Brady is great.
Smaller picture: Romo wasn't bad at all on the big stage. He was tentative early, but completed 17 of his last 24 passes for almost 200 yards and a couple of touchdowns. He threw only one pick, very late. In all, it was a solid performance on a big stage against a daunting opponent. All good, except for the final score.
You should have come to expect this from Romo. Go back a year, to when Cowboy Country was clamoring for Bill Parcells to bench Drew Bledsoe. Back then Romo was a fourth-year quarterback who had never thrown a pass in a regular-season game. He got his chance, of course, one year ago this weekend against the Giants on a Sunday night, and the 12 months since have been every bit as chaotic as the Monday night in Buffalo.
He was up and down a year ago -- six pretty good games followed by five pretty poor ones. But the turning point came on Jan. 6 in Seattle when Romo famously bobbled a field goal snap that cost the Cowboys a playoff victory in Parcells's last game.
On the long charter home that night, tight end Jason Witten sat next to Romo. "It was quiet for a long time,'' Witten told me a couple of weeks ago in Dallas. "I guess it was about an hour into the flight when I finally just said, `So, what's up?' He was devastated. I went right into the subject. I told him, `Look, you're going to be a better player for this, and we're going to be a better team.'''
Romo said, "The worst thing is, I want to be the guy who has the ball. And then I let everybody down.''
A few weeks later, new offensive coordinator Jason Garrett went one night to the Cowboys' Valley Ranch practice facility to throw with Romo. "It was pretty clear that he still had a hangover [not literally] from that game,'' says Garrett. "But it was also clear that he is great natural competitor. I knew that day that he was going to be fine.''
Much has been made of those 12 months. How Romo was red-faced from crying after the Seattle loss. How he was accused of spending his spring a little too much like Lindsay Lohan spent hers. (In Romo's case, squiring Carrie Underwood to the Country Music Awards, judging the Miss Universe pageant, and in general just looking like he was having too much fun and playing too little football; or more to the point, doing too little mourning).
In truth, Romo was doing two things: First, he was playing plenty of football. "There are no TV cameras around when I'm at the facility throwing and running at 10 o'clock at night,'' Romo told me in the week before the Bills' game. "People saw me on television three times in the offseason and they assumed that's all I was doing.''
Second, he learned to move on. He convinced himself that there was no value in dwelling on an inexplicably bobbled snap (and by the way, Romo still thinks he would have made the first down if he had known that Jordan Babineaux was diving at his ankles; instead he was trying to make a move on the man in front of him). He spent a lot of time with Underwood, and saw what it's like to really get scrutinized, in ways that an athlete can never understand. "What she goes through is on a totally different level, way beyond me,'' says Romo. "But our backgrounds are similar: Small towns, sudden rise to fame and all that. We act as sounding boards for each other.''
The process left him pushing forward, not back. "At this point, I don't think too much about things I can't control,'' says Romo. "If you play sports long enough, and you try to put yourself in situations where the game is in your hands -- and I do want to do that -- it's not always going to go your way. I've kind of learned to roll with those things and accept what I can't control. I knew I would get over the Seattle thing.''
Just like he knew he would get over the Buffalo thing (although winning helps that one). And he knows he will get over the New England loss in time to play well against Minnesota on Sunday.
It is an evolving time in Romo's life. He still likes to plop down on the couch and play EA Sports College football with roommates Tom Brewer and Nick Sekeres, but he can't pop out for dinner without getting recognized. His relationship with Underwood crossed him over into the entertainment media, where he as likely to be scrutinized by perezhilton.com as by SI.com.
He loves Wade Phillips (as do all the Cowboys), but he misses Parcells. "I'm nostalgic about great players and great coaches,'' says Romo. "I like to read about them, talk about them. I wouldn't be where I am today without coach Parcells. I miss being around him from day to day. I like to see legends go out on top and I'm disappointed that coach Parcells didn't get a chance to do that and I'm part of the reason.''
His 50-year-old father, Ramiro, a carpenter and builder whose tough hands were once bloodied catching Tony's passes on a vacant lot near their home in Wisconsin, is fighting recently diagnosed prostate cancer. Father and son are close and Tony will feel his dad's fight.
On the football field, he spent the spring and summer trying to get better and better at delivering the ball when the pattern breaks clear, whether he's ready to throw or not. He's not perfect yet, but he's better at everything. His feet are still a terrific weapon. Most of all, his mind is older and more mature. "The pressure to perform isn't going to wear me down,'' he says. "I'll work and prepare and then I'm OK with our outcomes.''
Outcomes are going to be fine, too. There is Brady. There is Manning. There is Favre, for history's sake. And then there is everybody else. Romo is near the top of Everybody Else and here to stay for a long time.
Inside The NFL
Tom Brady is easy on the eyes. And not just in the way you're thinking, ladies. He's easy on football eyes, too. The poise. The vision. The textbook, 12-to-six delivery with the tight spiral. And in other ways you seldom hear about. Toughness? The Cowboys brought the heat on Brady last Sunday and put him on his back. And Brady kept getting up. Arm strength? Brady threw one ball 72 yards flatfooted.
Did I mention the three Super Bowl trophies that make Brady one of the all-time winners in football history?
Imagine being the other quarterback on the field with Brady. Unless you are Peyton Manning, who will live alongside Brady in Canton forever, you are going to be overlooked or worse, humbled. Entering last Sunday's too-hyped early season battle of unbeatens in Dallas, the performance of Cowboys' quarterback Tony Romo was no insignificant subplot.
Just six days earlier, Romo had survived a Monday night adventure like few in NFL history. Five picks. One lost fumble. And then two scores in the final minute of the game for a remarkable victory. From there he faces Brady, a matchup that is highly unlikely to flatter Romo, yet Romo's performance would say much about his development and his cojones. There is no small lobby in the noisy world of NFL analysis that thinks Romo has been given too much praise for too small a body of work.
Big picture: The Patriots are better than the Cowboys, by every bit as much as the final score of 48-27. The Cowboys are still the best of the NFC, but the NFC is mediocre on a good day, with little chance of winning the Super Bowl. Brady is great.
Smaller picture: Romo wasn't bad at all on the big stage. He was tentative early, but completed 17 of his last 24 passes for almost 200 yards and a couple of touchdowns. He threw only one pick, very late. In all, it was a solid performance on a big stage against a daunting opponent. All good, except for the final score.
You should have come to expect this from Romo. Go back a year, to when Cowboy Country was clamoring for Bill Parcells to bench Drew Bledsoe. Back then Romo was a fourth-year quarterback who had never thrown a pass in a regular-season game. He got his chance, of course, one year ago this weekend against the Giants on a Sunday night, and the 12 months since have been every bit as chaotic as the Monday night in Buffalo.
He was up and down a year ago -- six pretty good games followed by five pretty poor ones. But the turning point came on Jan. 6 in Seattle when Romo famously bobbled a field goal snap that cost the Cowboys a playoff victory in Parcells's last game.
On the long charter home that night, tight end Jason Witten sat next to Romo. "It was quiet for a long time,'' Witten told me a couple of weeks ago in Dallas. "I guess it was about an hour into the flight when I finally just said, `So, what's up?' He was devastated. I went right into the subject. I told him, `Look, you're going to be a better player for this, and we're going to be a better team.'''
Romo said, "The worst thing is, I want to be the guy who has the ball. And then I let everybody down.''
A few weeks later, new offensive coordinator Jason Garrett went one night to the Cowboys' Valley Ranch practice facility to throw with Romo. "It was pretty clear that he still had a hangover [not literally] from that game,'' says Garrett. "But it was also clear that he is great natural competitor. I knew that day that he was going to be fine.''
Much has been made of those 12 months. How Romo was red-faced from crying after the Seattle loss. How he was accused of spending his spring a little too much like Lindsay Lohan spent hers. (In Romo's case, squiring Carrie Underwood to the Country Music Awards, judging the Miss Universe pageant, and in general just looking like he was having too much fun and playing too little football; or more to the point, doing too little mourning).
In truth, Romo was doing two things: First, he was playing plenty of football. "There are no TV cameras around when I'm at the facility throwing and running at 10 o'clock at night,'' Romo told me in the week before the Bills' game. "People saw me on television three times in the offseason and they assumed that's all I was doing.''
Second, he learned to move on. He convinced himself that there was no value in dwelling on an inexplicably bobbled snap (and by the way, Romo still thinks he would have made the first down if he had known that Jordan Babineaux was diving at his ankles; instead he was trying to make a move on the man in front of him). He spent a lot of time with Underwood, and saw what it's like to really get scrutinized, in ways that an athlete can never understand. "What she goes through is on a totally different level, way beyond me,'' says Romo. "But our backgrounds are similar: Small towns, sudden rise to fame and all that. We act as sounding boards for each other.''
The process left him pushing forward, not back. "At this point, I don't think too much about things I can't control,'' says Romo. "If you play sports long enough, and you try to put yourself in situations where the game is in your hands -- and I do want to do that -- it's not always going to go your way. I've kind of learned to roll with those things and accept what I can't control. I knew I would get over the Seattle thing.''
Just like he knew he would get over the Buffalo thing (although winning helps that one). And he knows he will get over the New England loss in time to play well against Minnesota on Sunday.
It is an evolving time in Romo's life. He still likes to plop down on the couch and play EA Sports College football with roommates Tom Brewer and Nick Sekeres, but he can't pop out for dinner without getting recognized. His relationship with Underwood crossed him over into the entertainment media, where he as likely to be scrutinized by perezhilton.com as by SI.com.
He loves Wade Phillips (as do all the Cowboys), but he misses Parcells. "I'm nostalgic about great players and great coaches,'' says Romo. "I like to read about them, talk about them. I wouldn't be where I am today without coach Parcells. I miss being around him from day to day. I like to see legends go out on top and I'm disappointed that coach Parcells didn't get a chance to do that and I'm part of the reason.''
His 50-year-old father, Ramiro, a carpenter and builder whose tough hands were once bloodied catching Tony's passes on a vacant lot near their home in Wisconsin, is fighting recently diagnosed prostate cancer. Father and son are close and Tony will feel his dad's fight.
On the football field, he spent the spring and summer trying to get better and better at delivering the ball when the pattern breaks clear, whether he's ready to throw or not. He's not perfect yet, but he's better at everything. His feet are still a terrific weapon. Most of all, his mind is older and more mature. "The pressure to perform isn't going to wear me down,'' he says. "I'll work and prepare and then I'm OK with our outcomes.''
Outcomes are going to be fine, too. There is Brady. There is Manning. There is Favre, for history's sake. And then there is everybody else. Romo is near the top of Everybody Else and here to stay for a long time.
posted by The Gryphon at 6:48 PM
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