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Dallas Cowboys: The case for Tony Romo as MVP

By Jason Crouch

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Each year, the NFL gives the MVP award to the player considered to be the most valuable to his team. Since he will miss seven full games with a collarbone injury, I recognize it’s highly unlikely that Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo will win this award in 2015.

However, the past five weeks have shown the world exactly how valuable Romo is to this team. The team has struggled mightily to get any traction on offense. When your defense holds the opposing team to 13 points of offense two weeks in a row, but you still lose, you need your leader back on the field.

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Frankly, Tony Romo is a hero in Dallas, even if he doesn’t usually get the respect he deserves. The guy works hard. Really hard. He plays hard. He has played and won games while dealing with terrible injuries, including a punctured lung, broken ribs, fractured bones in his back, and more. He is tough. Period.

Now that he is 35 years old, I have no idea how many more years he can and will play, but he deserves to retire with at least one Super Bowl ring. We fans all know that.

Romo has put up elite numbers for years, yet he gets little respect. Last year, he led the entire NFL for passer rating, QBR, yards per attempt, and completion percentage. Feel free to look up the statistics if you find this hard to believe.

In his rookie year, no NFL team drafted him, which means that they didn’t think he was good enough to be in the top 224 players available in the draft. Let that sink in for a minute.

Want to see the list of the 13 quarterbacks who were drafted when Romo wasn’t? Well, Carson Palmer was the first pick that season.

Here are the others:

Byron Leftwich, Kyle Boller, Rex Grossman, Dave Ragone, Chris Simms, Seneca Wallace, Brian St. Pierre, Drew Henson, Brooks Bollinger, Kliff Kingsbury, Gibran Hamdan, and Ken Dorsey.

Yes, really.

Palmer is the only QB drafted that season who is still on a roster in the NFL. He has an 0-2 record in the playoffs.

The bottom line is that Romo’s football story is amazing.

Yes, he had a couple of bad plays in big games in 2006 and 2007. It’s ridiculous to continue to focus on those moments. Instead, keep in mind that he brought the first playoff victories to Dallas since 1996, along with their first realistic shot at a championship since Barry Switzer was the coach.

If you are a sincere fan of the Cowboys with anything more than a rudimentary understanding of football, you should be thankful for Tony. He has kept this team competitive every single year that he has played.

The only losing season they’ve had with Romo was when he missed 10 full games with a broken clavicle.

Consequently, I will defend him any time someone tries to blame him for team woes. Clearly, this season should serve as a strong reminder about his value.

It’s unfortunate that it took another big injury for many members of the media (and Cowboys fans) to realize just how solid our quarterback is, and how much we need him on the field.

Team owner and general manager Jerry Jones summed it up nicely while speaking with 105.3 The Fan’s Shan and RJ show:

"“..We need him back under center.”"

Those six words ring true to every sincere fan of the team.

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Obviously, I am hopeful that the Cowboys will be able to win one or two games before Romo makes his return on November 22nd. If not, this season looks very bleak, despite the overall weakness of the NFC East division.

They were 2-0 with him playing, and they are 0-5 without him.

In short, Tony Romo has proven, in his prolonged absence, that he is the MVP of this team.

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