If good health was a certainty, Tony Romo is the best player on this team, and it ain't even close. That will be true until the minute they release him later today as expected.
Not Zeke. Not Tyron. Not Martin. Certainly not Dez or Lee or Witten or whoever. Romo is an elite NFL player, and a quarterback at that. Eons beyond Dak Prescott, who is young and promising and working to figure out this league from the absolute best perch a young QB has ever inherited. He won't be at Romo's intellectual football level for many seasons from now.
Good health, however, is anything but a certainty, especially when it comes to back issues, and even more so from an aging veteran. Today is an unfortunate reality resulting from a very fortunate finding of a young QB of the future.
I feel for Tony. I feel for Dak, too. I even feel for Jerry Jones, whom I'm not one to sympathize with often. Too often he fails to exemplify the characteristics of good men, and this franchise has suffered from his ill-tempered ego and irrational stubbornness and insecurity. But there's goodness in him, too, and today is a hard day for Jerry, who just wants to say thank you and apologize to a QB that's born the brunt of his perpetual misgivings.
I wish so badly that Tony would stay. I think opportunities still await here as young Dak goes through the inevitable bumps. However, I understand why Tony wants to leave. The spirit of an undrafted man who beat all odds and secured the most celebrated position in professional sports, well, that's not a guy who sits and waits at this point. He sat and waited already, years ago.
The fallout of all this could make for a nightmarishly difficult 2017 season for many Cowboy fans.
Most hope he goes to Denver. I'm sure that Jerry does. That's the most innocuous place he can be, outside of a head-to-head matchup Sunday that we'll have to suffocate through. Otherwise, he'll be over there while we're over here, and we can all comfortably root for both while it all unfolds.
But what if it's Houston. Oh, boy. Look out. Jerry won't sleep a wink.
Instantly, (and here's where that health thing has to be set aside again), Houston becomes the best team in Texas. Vastly better defense. Terrific receivers. Good running back. An offensive line that needs some work, but isn't unfixable. And, most importantly, a much better quarterback.
Our quarterback. Winning lots of games. Only a four-hour drive away.
Houston will be the talk of the town. The talk of the NFL. Houston has never been the talk of anything. You'll see Romo jerseys at Cowboys Stadium, but in Texans colors. You'll see local media scurrying and reporting on his every move. You'll hear infinitely more locally about Tony than you will the Cowboys, all season long.
That will drive Jerry insane.
And it could compound far worse. The Cowboys are losing players left and right from a defense that was already bad. The draft can't fix the secondary and the pass rush in one offseason. Cap space is limited, and difference-making free agents are sparse and drying up fast. Jaylon Smith's nerve isn't healing, and those workouts don't account for reaction time. Ron Leary is about to leave, and La'el Collins isn't as good. Right now, if Dez goes down (again), Brice Butler is the No. 1 receiver, and Jason Witten is just not Jason Witten anymore. God forbid we suffer a significant injury on the offensive line.
The schedule will be tougher. There won't be so many weak quarterbacks on the roster. The division is strengthening. And let's not forget, the Cowboys just got beat by a team that got pulverized by the Falcons. That 13-3 was a lot of fun, but it was also flimsy. This team easily could have gone 0-6 in the division.
So Jerry has this team that I think will finish somewhere between 10-6 and 8-8. Imagine the internal pressure on Jerry, Garrett, Dak, and everybody if the Cowboys are resting at 4-4 while Romo is streaking to a 6-2 or better just to our south.
Cowboy fans are among the worst in professional sports, on par with Laker or Cubs fans. Mostly know-nothing bandwagoning simpletons that don't know the difference between a football and a rutabaga, but boy can they recite the opinion they heard third hand like Gospel. I love my Cowboys, but I'm often embarrassed to be associated with that lot.
Such a scenario will temporarily split this fan base. Today, most everyone lives on extremes and can't balance the nuance of rooting for Dallas and Romo at the same time. I guarantee you there will be fist fights at the stadium over Tony Romo arguments. If you've been there, you've unfortunately seen the DNA mutations that frequent these games. There's too many of them drinking away their paycheck before kickoff.
I look forward to the day that Tony finds peace. I hope he goes on a helluva run. He's taken the literal abuse, physically and emotionally, from carrying the weight of this franchise's countless mistakes for too long. I hope that body holds up so he can finish on his own terms.
I wish the same cathartic peace for Jerry, and us all. This is going to be a crazy, memorable, stressful, and surreal season upcoming. It will be all day, every week. The Cowboys and Romo comparisons, 24-7 on every TV and radio broadcast for as long as Romo stays upright.
Mostly, I look forward to the day Tony returns, in whatever capacity, to Dallas. And when he's inducted into the Ring of Honor, I hope we all become family again.
