Why I’m tired of Romo…being Romo.
The following article is from our newest writer here at The Landry Hat, Artie Cappello. You can follow his insightful stories every Monday morning. Enjoy! – SM
The season’s just started and I’m already tired.
First, and very foremost: What a great celebration and display of patriotism before the game last night and what a match-up the NFL had for us on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. The Dallas Cowboys, America’s Team, vs the New York Jets in New York (sort of). Watching the stories again this weekend ten years later was emotional and reminded me that, even in these current difficult times, I am sooo proud to be an American!
As the game turned out, I’m sure that the Jets comeback was a feel good ending to the day for New York. Not so much for Cowboys fans.
…Back to being tired.
If anyone who reads my articles doesn’t know already, I’m a bonafied Romosapien. I think Tony Romo can be a great quarterback. He is great for the Cowboys. A player with charisma and talent that fans of the Dallas Cowboys can really rally around. A popular face for the franchise..But.. I’m getting tired of saying to (more like yelling at) the TV, “Romo! What was that!?”. And it’s only the first game of the season!
With 5 minutes left in the game and the score tied 24-24, Cowboys ball, I said to myself that now we’ll see who these Cowboys are and, to some degree, I guess I did. During the waning moments, Tony rolls to the right and doesn’t hesitate to throw a pass (in the direction he’s rolling!) directly to… Darrelle Revis, who was wide open. Unfortunately, he doesn’t play for Dallas. Now to be fair, Dez Bryant ran a horrible route because he was hurt and probably shouldn’t have been in the game at that point. Still, Romo was rolling in his direction and saw him slip and threw the pass anyway. A game losing mistake. Let’s hope he owned up to it and apologized to Rob Ryan.(and to Jason Witten for wasting Witten’s great catch and run with a follow up fumble)
Speaking of Rob Ryan, he did a hell of a job! Too bad the Offense (Romo) let him down on such a big night, playing against his brother with his dad and America looking on. After last year, all I wanted to see was some fight and heart (and some tackling) from this Defense. I saw it. The defense played great for the most part, even with the top 3 corners out for parts of the game. Lets hope Orlando Scandrick’s ankle injury is not too serious because he’s the most physical player we have in the secondary and Mike Jenkins still doesn’t like to tackle.
Some good things to take away from this game:
Our Dallas Cowboys outplayed one of the best teams in the league, if only for 3 and 1/2 quarters. The Defense is going to be fine. It’s clear to see that we planned on having Nnamdi Asomugha in our secondary and had no plan B. I think it was also expected that Stephen Bowen would be on the Line. Still, Rob Ryan seems to be doing a good job and once our Corners get healthy…
Jason Witten put in another impressive performance. Jason has moved in to second place behind only DeMarcus Ware as The Franchise players. Would have been more noticeable if his buddy Romo hadn’t negated his play by turning the ball over, twice.
A more disciplined yet aggressive team. Yes, they had 7 penalties to non for the Jets, but (with notable exceptions) not as sloppy. A big improvement, so far, over last year.
Some not so good things:
Did anyone else notice that Tony Romo went down at least twice (that I saw) without being touched? Just tucked and dropped, in traffic, but still.
Missed assignments and players out of position on both sides of the ball. This is growing pains of young players, I hope.
That was a cheap shot by ex-con Plaxico Burress on an unwitting Mike Jenkins. It was such a cheap shot, that when Jenkins came back into the game and got the opportunity, he actually tackled Burress. No, that’s not a misprint, Mike Jenkins made a tackle! I would be surprised if Burress isn’t fined by the NFL for it this week.
Felix Jones looked an awful lot like the Felix Jones we saw last year, and not so much like the Felix Jones we saw in the pre-season. Hope that’s not a trend.
Still have the occasional questionable call by our offensive coordinator, and I could still hear the circus music playing sometimes coinciding with some false starts, badly timed snaps (with 8 seconds on the clock [and who’s fault was that one]) and poorly executed plays.
Injuries are piling up.
All in all, I liked the way this team played. We were given no shot to win, yet we were dominating at times. Lets hope this continues (without the 4th quarter collapses of course). How ’bout we win next time.
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