Before stepping aside, Tony Romo asked for a chance to compete
By Darin Gantt | Nov 17, 2016, 14:56 GMT+00:00
Yes, Tony Romo stepped aside with grace and class this week, acknowledging that the Cowboys were Dak Prescott's team to lead at this point.
But before he did, the longtime Cowboys quarterback tried one last comeback, which put the bosses who love him in the hard position of saying no.
Via Albert Breer of TheMMQB.com, Romo went to team officials last week and asked for a chance to compete with Prescott for the starting job in practice, which realistically is the kind of thing that can happen in August but not in November when you’re in the middle of a playoff push.
“Tony’s smart,” executive vice president Stephen Jones said. “He’s very bright. And so when he came out and said it, in the end, I don't think it took him long to see that wouldn't be a great thing for the team. We’ve got a good thing, and no one wants Dak looking over his shoulder.”
So with that, Romo pushed through the stages of grief to what looked like acceptance and acknowledged what an eight-game winning streak made inevitable.
Because their starting quarterback is a rookie, he needs all the snaps he can get to prepare himself for a game, so the idea of splitting practice between him and Romo was a non-starter.
“I think he understands that,” Jones said of Romo. “As a competitor, does he want it? Yes. He wouldn’t be in the NFL if he didn’t have that burning in his belly. He’s dying to get out there. And we talked all offseason, he’s never been this fired up about a team, he couldn’t wait. And now to see it work like he thought it would, and the team doing something special, and to want back in, that’s not selfish. It’s just hard.
“He’s tremendously unselfish, because he understands it.”
Of course, there are more questions to answer down the line, as to how this plays out the rest of this season and offseason. But for now, Romo is playing nice, and taking one for the team they built for him to lead.