I think that it's certainly true that Romo could have made a safer decision on that play. Clearly the pass to Murray was the safer call.
That being said, if the short pass to Murray had ended in another short pass, and then a punt we would have lost.
And? This is so reminiscent of the Seattle game rhetoric, it is comical. Oh yeah? Didn't really matter and stuff because, well, Alexander ran over Roy Williams and they like ran out the clock...not accountable!
We do not know that for certainty. Is it probable and very likely, sure. But the only thing factual was what happened prior to that. And that was Romo's mistake...which amazingly, even after days of rumination, people still won't even admit it was a bad decision.
Had he made the right decision, Romo would be hailed as a hero right now instead of the goat and the result is the same. A Loss. And that is all that matters.
This week, we'd have been nailing Kiffin to the wall, but you know what, there would be excuses there too. We lost the game.
The game was lost regardless as Denver was the better team. The question strictly turns if we should be impressed that we looked better and if that translates to the future...which honestly, only a fool feels extremely confident that it does.
If we had had a defense that had been able to facilitate conservative play, this would have been a much more low scoring game.
But we didn't have that defense.
That's the general point. Romo had this game where it was because he was balls to the wall. Normally, he's not. I can all but guarantee you this was his finest 58 minutes of football in his career and he will never duplicate it again. It is just tragic he fell into a habit in the last two minutes.
When it got down to the point where it was tied and we needed to win it, he took it upon himself to think he could be the hero. And usually when he makes these kind of heartbreaking mistakes, it is because he feels he has to.
It is like a maestro conducting a magnificent concerto up until the end of the piece and then he sneezes to screw everything up. What's a problem is that he's sneezed before. Multiple times. Do you blame the orchestra for the ruined experience?
He does not know how to throttle back late in tight games with high stakes and play sound situational football.
He gets suckered into plays that often he would not make at other times and it is often by players that quite honestly, aren't going to be making Pro Bowls anytime soon. Rob Jackson and Danny Trevathan are ham and eggers that suddenly people want to credit making miracle plays off of poor victim Tony. How come these two guys will probably never have plays like this again the rest of their careers? Was it just luck? According to some people, I guess it is.
Right or wrong, the only way he sheds this reputation is to have games where he moves with the ebb and flow instead of being the ebb and flow personally.
Whether people will admit it or not, at the end of the day, we lost that game was because of the INT. It set them up, without question, with the game winning points.
Romo made the last of many risky decisions that had kept us in the game at that point and finally came up snake eyes.
Again, irrelevant on the scoreboard.