Farewell Fragile Prince

As you may have heard today the Dallas Cowboys are going to release Tony Romo.  Doing so will save the Cowboys $14 million against the cap this coming season, although over the next two years Romo will cost them $10.7million and $8.9 million respectively, so don’t expect Ol’ Double J to start refunding PSLs at Jerrah World just yet.  Or ever.

The Cowboys, (read: Jerry Jones), delayed the inevitable on this move, apparently hoping that someone, anyone, would offer them something for a 37-year old QB with two broken backs and 1 TD pass in a year who had a ginormour contract but not even the Browns, (I know, right?  I was surprised too!), were going to be that stupid and so Romo was cut loose to move to a farm up north and play with all the other quarterbacks.

By which I mean that he’s going to sign with Denver.  By which I mean he’s going to break his back for a third time, (for the sake of symmetry let’s say in Week 3), because last I checked Denver’s O-line looked a lot like a NYC subway turnstile in that when people weren’t running through it they were jumping over it.  Best of luck with that Tony, and maybe take a hard look at Houston before packing for the north.

A few words about Tony.  As a Cowboys fan since the days Roger Staubach was completing Hail Marys to a not-at-all-interfering-with-the-defender Drew Pearson I know something about the whiplash effect watching your team have no real back-up plan for a the retirement/injury/rape conviction of their really, really good QB.

Staubach was followed by Danny White, who punted when he wasn’t QBing, and that went so well that there was a QB controversy over whether White of Gary Goddamn Hogeboom should be the quarterback.  While I personally voted for Hogeboom, because I am an idiot, the answer, of course, was neither.  After those two the Cowboys were led by people named Steve Pelluer and Kevin Sweeney and those two could literally be living right next door to me and I would not know who they were.  This was early in my college career and it’s quite possible that I would have been blackout drunk anyway but given how the Yankees and Cowboys, (and God bless them the Whalers), were doing at the time it seems just as likely that I was drinking to forget that my teams sucked a collective bag of dicks.

Pelluer and Sweeney did so well that the Cowboys got a high enough draft pick, (#1 in 1989.  There were literally no teams worse than the Cowboys in 1988), to draft Troy Aikman.  Aikman led the Cowboys to 3 Super Bowl wins and probably would have had a fourth if the referees hadn’t let Deion Sanders molest Michael Irvin in the NFC championship game in 1994.

Aikman also generally led the league in landing on his head and retired after 8 diagnosed concussions and probably 10-3,000 times that many that went undiagnosed.  He is now the color man on Fox’s #1 team with the beloved Joe Buck and shows absolutely no ill effects from getting slammed on his head over and over and over.

Well, at least not when compared to Phil Simms he doesn’t.

The Cowboys prepared well for Aikman’s retirement by drafting Quincy Carter and pairing him with, among others, Ryan Leaf.  We all know how well that worked out.  Carter’s inevitable washing out, (to say nothing of Leaf’s inevitable washing up in prison), was followed by retreads like Vinne Testaverde, (I remember he was rumored to be colorblind and while I don’t know if that was true to my recollection he had a hell of a time remembering what color his team was wearing from one game to the next), and Drew Bledsoe.  The less said about those years the better.

Romo went undrafted in 2003 but signed with the Cowboys thanks in part to the efforts of Sean Payton, who went on to not do anything worth mentioning in football again.  By 2006 he had become the starter as the scar tissue on Drew Bledsoe had grown to the point that not even noted sushi-enthusiast Bill Parcells could ignore it.  Romo got the Cowboys into the play-offs and promptly dropped a late FG snap, leading to him getting tackled at the 2 and the Cowboys losing.

It was the first of many such late season late-in-the-game snafus for which Romo would become famous.  While the talking heads never seemed to tire of telling us how many late game comebacks, and to be fair he had his share, but they never seemed to mention that when the season was on the line, Romo had a knack for finding a way to ensure that the Cowboys made their early tee times with a minimum of fuss.  To be fair, (but really, how much fun is that?), in some seasons, (notably 2010), Romo played hurt when he probably shouldn’t have, except that the back-up was Jon Kitna or someone named Stephen McGee; in others, (2015 springs to mind), the entire team just sucked and while he may not have played that well, no one else did either.

Despite his propensity for season ending dipshittery Romo was entertaining.  He gave my team a chance to win when he was healthy and not surrounded by cast-offs, has-beens and never-weres.  He also gave my team a chance to lose, especially late in games, and really, why watch sports if you know how it’s going to end.  Might as well just say “fuck it”, sell your soul to Satan, join the Klan and root for the Patriots.  No, fahck you!  Youah mawm’s a whore!

Romo retires as the Cowboys all-time leader in passing yards and TDs.  He is tied with, among others, Brandon Weeden for number of Super Bowls won played in, with zero.  When all is said and done he’ll have made well over $100 million from football and my thanks for making my team somewhat relevant and worth watching again.  Also he never got Jerry Jones another Lombardi trophy and while I do indeed root for the Cowboys there’s certainly something to be said for that.

So well done Tony.  Good luck in the future and for the love of God you hopeless idiot, you’ve had two back surgeries already, your wife is gorgeous, you have more money than you could spend in three lifetimes, (assuming you’re not Bernie Kosar), STOP PLAYING FOOTBALL!!!