We can’t escape the Romo vs. Dak debate. It’s talked about on ESPN, every sports radio show, forums, blogs and articles all over the internet. We’ve discussed it on my podcast in every single episode. We’ve had Marcus Mosher (NeonDeion21) and Mark Lane (The Emperor) on the show and those two very popular Cowboys fans had drastically differing opinions. On Monday we’re gonna talk to Dave Halprin from BTB about it. I’ve remained relatively silent on it, but a moment of clarity yesterday has inspired me to write about it. What follows is no more and no less than one man’s attempt to find some sanity in a truly crazy situation.
These two quarterbacks take remarkably different approaches to the position. Romo is all pre-snap, and Prescott is all post-snap. Romo affects the running game with audibles, and blocking scheme changes, Prescott affects the running game with his legs and play fakes. When Romo misses, he usually misses wide, when Prescott misses he usually misses high. Two very different players operating what is essentially the same offense in very different ways.
When Romo steps up to the line of scrimmage in the pre-snap phase, he has four responsibilities. He must identify and call out the mike, he has to set the protection, he has to pick from a myriad of plays and make sure everyone on the offense knows which play he’s chosen, and he must, MUST get the defense to show their hand before the snap. This is why he runs the clock all the way down to 0.00001 second before the snap, because it forces the defense to get in the position they need to be at the snap. This is why Romo appears to go through his reads so fast, because he knows where he is going to throw the ball before the ball is snapped on probably 70% of his throws. When he’s wrong pre-snap, this is where he gets into so much trouble post-snap, holding onto the ball for too long, taking sacks and late throws that the defense has time to react to. On the plus side of this style, when he’s right pre-snap, he pushes the ball down the field several orders of magnitude better than Prescott. This style of play leaves Romo open to more hits which only exacerbates his current health problems.
When Prescott steps up to the line of scrimmage in the pre-snap phase, he has three responsibilities. He has to identify and call out the mike just like Tony, he does not set the protection, Fredbeard does that. He has to pick between one of two plays he’s been given and alert the offense if he’s checking away from the called play to the alternate (a much easier task than Romo’s) and he has to make his best educated guess about the defensive coverage before the ball is snapped. The majority of Prescott’s success comes post snap where I find he processes information much faster than Romo. The scary part about that is how green he is right now, he’s only going to get faster and better at post-snap diagnosis as his career continues. While this style of play tends to be safer it leads to a lot of shorter throws which can lead to other problems down the line. A quick example being a defense that decides to play a 2 man shell the whole game, Dak will automatically just take the checkdown every time because his pre-snap and post-snap reads will confirm the defense has the downfield stuff covered up. Typically defenses love doing this and forcing you to make your way down the field a little a time without making any mistakes. Fortunately Dak has shown the ability and patience to do just that. It’s also difficult to play that coverage when facing this offensive line and this stable of running backs.
All of this is why the pre-snap phase looks so much more hectic with Romo under center. Romo has a lot more to do and by design needs to snap the ball as late as possible.
So where do I come down on the whole Dak vs. Romo thing? I’m getting to that. When I have this debate internally, I always find myself going back to the play in Seattle where Tony got hurt. Two things really stand out to me about that play, neither of them being the injury itself. One, Tony bailed out of a clean pocket. Yes, it was a blitz, but Zeke stepped up and chopped down the blitzing player giving Romo plenty of time and space to throw. Tony bailed anyway. The second was how horribly unathletic he looked running/sliding. He didn’t get hurt because he’s fragile, numerous doctors have said as much on countless radio shows and blogs. He got hurt because he chose to slide in the most awkward way imaginable. If Tony’s mind is causing him to bail out of clean pockets, or his athleticism has eroded to the point that he can’t slide properly, he doesn’t need to be out there. Of course the rust factor has to be taken into account and perhaps if he hadn’t gotten injured on that play, it would have all started coming back to him before the Seattle game was over.
We’ve all asked the question: What happens if we are 5-1 when Romo is ready to come back? If Dak wins the next two games, and especially if the offense looks impressive in those wins, I think you have to stick with him simply because you don’t want to ruin something that is clearly working. If Dak loses one or both of the next two, or the offense looks very poor in wins, you have to give Romo a chance, with the caveat that he has to knock the rust off relatively quickly and improve the offense. Of course all of this is contingent on Romo being completely healthy. You stick with Dak until Romo is 100%.
The fun part about the debate is that the future is extremely bright no matter which side you find yourself on, which is great for this football junkie.
