four times, intercepting him two times and causing him to lose one fumble, all rendering his QB rating to 66.1 and his average per pass attempt to an anemic 4.5 yards.
Yeah, all that.
And Romo? Yawn.
All he did was complete 21 of 29 passes (I could find two drops in those seven incompletions) for 311 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions and a 141.6 QB rating. These types of performances now are taken for granted, more expected than appreciated, causing those darts of perception to take dead aim after putting up mere human numbers.
That's why I say, stop it.
Do you realize Romo has:
- Now won 68.8 percent of the games he's started (31-14).
- Established a 25-10 record (71 percent) after going 6-4 as a starter the final 10 games in 2006 when he took over for the benched Drew Bledsoe.
- Already thrown for more than 300 yards in half the games this season - the last two straight - stretching his club career record to 19, which means more than Roger Staubach and more than Troy Aikman by a long shot.
- Won 16 of those 19, 300-yard passing performances.
- Put up three, 100 QB ratings this year, Sunday's 141.6 the third highest of his short career as a starter and highest in the past 27 games, only that 141.7 rating versus Philadelphia in 2007 and his career-high 148.9 against Tampa Bay in 2006 better.
So here is the deal: Tony Ramiro Romo has become a prisoner of the high bar he has set. Because had Romo fumbled that ball down on the five-yard line at the end of the first half instead of ducking out of a potential sack, breaking another tackle and then finding Crayton in the end zone for a touchdown six seconds until intermission, there would have been all this moaning about how he doesn't take care of the football.
Just sit back and enjoy this treat Romo is, and quit judging him from game to game, as if you are evaluating the Texas weather that changes from day to day. Evaluate the whole body of work. A season is 16 games, not one. Quit jumping to hasty conclusions.
Look at Romo after six games, not just the last two passes against Denver when making these absolute evaluations. The Cowboys now are 4-2, finally having won consecutive games for the first time since Games 11 and 12 of last year. He has completed 60.3 percent of his passes so far this year. His touchdown to interception ratio is 9 to 4, meaning he is throwing twice as many touchdown passes as he is interceptions, the barometer of good NFL quarterbacks.
And his QB rating is 94.7, rather remarkable since that 29.6 rating-buster second game of the season, and even at that, let me be the one to remind you even though he was intercepted three times in that game, the Cowboys were leading 31-30 when he left the field.
So relax, appreciate what you're watching, because before you know it, there the Cowboys will be, looking for another franchise quarterback, and likely going through another painful drought as they did the front portion of this decade.
Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, Romo hasn't won anything yet - as in a playoff game. But you know what, neither has Jason Witten or DeMarcus Ware or Bradie James or Terence Newman, and that doesn't seem to diminish their careers.
But in the now becoming immortal words of No. 9, "This is a process," and you know, he's right. Very rarely do we find microwave-ready quarterbacks in the NFL.
Or as Romo's very objective father Ramiro said one day to me - yes, I did say objective, even if it's his son, he's amazing that way - "He's going through a learning process," and he meant Tony is trying to find a middle ground between unconscionably gun-slinging and being tentatively conservative.
"And I've learned my lesson about never counting him out again," Papa Romo said.
Son understands.
"There's obviously a mix and I've been trying to find it for some time," the younger Romo said of protecting the football, but not to the point of dissolving his innate creativity and ability to make plays. "I think in some ways when you're playing the game at this position the ball is so valuable, you can't give it to the other team, and when you do
