Romo gave the Cowboys a lot and I appreciate him for it. Much of the problems we had when Romo was the starter was due to bad coaching and general organizational decisions. The issue is that he does deserve some of the blame as well and the Romo lemmings never see that. I'd probably put it 75% coaching/organization failures and 25% Romo.
I don't think he was a top-4 QB of his era...I would take Peyton, Brady, Brees, Rodgers over him. I would take Roethlisberger over him given Roethlisberger's postseason success. But, Roethlisberger has the same type of limitations he just had better coaching and organizational decisions to work around his limitations and make him a 2 time winning Super Bowl QB.
And if you're not in the top-4 at your position, I don't consider you elite.
If you adjust the numbers of other QB's in Dallas for Romo's era...he's way behind Staubach (who could now be made a case for best QB of all time) and even behind Don Meredith and only slightly better than Danny White. However, it's still really good numbers and he's well ahead of Troy. That's why Super Bowl victories matter so much to people when it comes to QB's.
I look at Romo and see what could have been, but as I said before...Romo deserves some of the blame as well. Hopefully we will learn from our mistakes with Dak and I don't think many fans appreciate just how great of a season Dak had. Not just for a rookie QB...but for any QB. Not only has Romo never had a single season QBR as high as Dak did in 2016, but Tom Brady only had 1 season with a QBR better than Dak's (2017). Dak still has a long way to go and the coaching staff and organization have a long way to go before I believe they can handle a player like Dak. But only a fool would want Romo starting instead of Dak and not see the reason why Cowboys fans are optimistic about our young QB.
YR