First, it's my understanding that the original call was a run, and that Romo audibled to that play. Imo there were two problems with his decision making:
- Any play that involves a pass is inherently more risky than running the ball up the gut;
- Glenn is the wrong guy to run the play Romo chose.
In that situation you have to think in terms of risk vs reward. Imo it was a bad decision by Romo, for the same reasons that running a toss play in that situation would have been bad:the potential consequences of a mistake were too severe.
Also, that play isn't exactly Terry Glenn's forte. Owens is good at it because he has the size to shake off a db, as well as the moves to elude a tackle. Glenn is too small to run over anybody, so he had to try to dance past the defender. That's a recipe for disaster.
My guess is the coaches had called either a qb sneak or a dive play for the hb. Presumably Romo audibled because he saw the defense stacked up where the play was going to run. If Romo wanted to audible to a pass, it needed to be either something quick to Owens or Witten, or a deep ball down the sideline to a wr in single coverage.
