Not sure 'wasted' is the right word. I think we made some serious mistakes with Romo.
For starters, the entire 'model Romo after Brady because Brady stands all the way back in the pocket and that takes longer for teams to get to the QB' was a very bad mistake. Romo isn't Brady. Different size, different throwing style and different strengths as QB's and throwers. Having a 6'2" QB that throws with a 3/4 delivery isn't a very good idea. Romo was also very deadly when he climbed up the pocket as well. We should have had him follow more of Brees' movement and launch points in the pocket. Brees is a really good screen/swing pass thrower...Romo was poor on those passes, but I think Romo was better throwing on the run than Brees. We essentially needed to use more bootlegs, allow Romo to climb up into the pocket and keep him away from throwing short, underneath passes.
We also started to see that some of the other top QB's could throw a lot of passes and we thought 'Romo = good and more throwing the ball = more good for us!'
Less is more with Romo. The same with Roethlisberger. Romo was always a poor underneath thrower and an excellent intermediate route thrower. His deep ball accuracy wasn't great, but his anticipation was and he could create broken plays to throw to wide open WR's deep as well as having a terrific play action. So while his accuracy deep wasn't great, he had the ability to get WR's more open so his accuracy deep didn't hurt him.
This requires a run game to allow us to make up for Romo's weaknesses as a short route thrower. The run game will also help with the play action and create more 1-on-1 coverages on deep passes to allow us to be more effective on the deep pass. We didn't really develop a run game until 2012 and then we would forget about the run game. That was until 2014.
And I think we fell in love with Romo audibling so much. That will eventually serve to players getting their signals crossed and too slow of a pace on offense is almost as bad of an idea as having a Chip Kelly fast break offense for the entire game. D-Coordinators like Jim Haslett would just blitz Romo and get a read of where he was going with the ball and then set Romo up for a key INT later on.
It's like we saw the other top QB's in the league and decided to follow them instead of working with what Romo does well and what he doesn't do well. Brady was king, so we took his launch point even though he's a different QB. We saw Brees, Brady and Peyton throwing a ton, so we wanted to become a heavy throwing, dink and dunk offense. We saw that Brady and Peyton audible a lot, so Romo should do that as well.
We kind of have the habit of doing this...we tend to try to fit players into what our ideal is instead of seeing if the player can actually do it and if not, adjust to their strengths and hide their weaknesses. We had to make Julius Jones and Felix Jones bigger and it sapped their quickness and speed. We had to make Escobar into a blocker and he couldn't get on the field to be an effective pass receiver.
Rich, I know you have been critical of him and we have disagreed a lot, but unlike some of the other cheap shot, drive by posters, yours was always analytical and it never felt personal like a recent "good riddance" post which is just ridicules for what he has done for the franchise.
I just want to say that this post is as fair and good of an appraisal of Tony as I've read.
YR
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