I don't see anything that they 'made work' with Romo. If anything, Romo kept us somewhat competitive in spite of them, playing sandlot ball when he'd basically say fuck it and start slinging it around. I give Garrett and his fellow retards ZERO credit for any crumbs of success that we may have stumbled upon.
It's just my opinion, but I think if Romo would have had a competent coaching staff to work with, he would be in the argument for inclusion of the top handful of QBs of the last 15 years. And we would have had some playoff success to look back on.
I just really see no basis for completely disregarding any coaching input. No coach is going to let his players completely disregard what he wants done. Even if Romo was freelancing, everything starts out from a base of what the coaching staff had called, down to the protection scheme, the number of WRs on the field, what side of the field they are on, etc. Romo was great but the passing offense was often very highly rated. You can't do all of that simply playing sandlot football on every single play.
I think the scheme was pretty minimal/simple, true, but was designed to give Romo heavy autonomy. But that was a feature, not a bug.
But that's the point. A top QB was placed in a system that allowed him to put up top (passing) results. Those results were:
2010: 7th in points, 6th in passing yards
2011: 15th in points, 7th in passing yards
2012: 15th in points, 3rd in passing yards
2013: 5th in points, 14th in passing yards
2014: 5th in points, 16th in passing yards (the year Murray led the league in rushing).
Maybe not overachieving, but tough to argue the passing game was really being held back with those numbers too.
No arguing that a more creative staff might have gotten more out of Romo -- but I just can't buy that the coaches were all wandering completely in the dark and Romo would just go draw up something in the dirt every single play. It's not possible. They deliberately drew up a simple scheme and handed a lot of autonomy to a gifted QB as part of the design -- though gifted as in, top 10, not top 3 or top 4. No one would contend Romo was Brady, Manning, Rodgers, or Brees.
Now that they don't have a top 10-ish QB who can be counted on to make the necessary adjustments at the line, they are out of ideas. They don't have any more complex pre-snap designs to send in. And it's backfiring massively, because Prescott can't do what Romo did.
But to make it out as if the offense Romo was running was "not an offense" but rather just a collection of improvisations unlike the amount seen by any other offense or any other QB, well, there's just no evidence for that other than anecdotal (which proves literally nothing). Like, as far as we know, Matt Stafford or Phillip Rivers or Derek Carr have the same free reign over similar quality (mediocre) offensive design. And I suspect that is the case, actually.
The point is, the staff knew how to take a top 10 QB and make him put up top 10 numbers. Presumably, the problem is they no longer have a top 10 QB. They have a bottom 10 QB and as a result, are getting bottom 10 numbers.