Yeah, I never understood how people wanted him back as a starter for the playoffs. The dude gutted it out in the regular season finale, but he wasn’t 100%.
Gutted it out? He barely played, mainly because they did not want divided loyalties between Romo and Dak who they had prematurely decided to go with.
Behind the scenes Romo had pleaded with team management to at least have a chance to compete, but the management decided they did not want that.
I was mystified by that.
Romo, a class act, publicly turned the reins over to Dak so the team could align under a single leader, but he was fuming about not being given a chance.
The playoffs were at stake FFS, and they thought Dak was going to give the team a better shot than Romo? It was idiotic.
Romo's back was healed. It's a narrative not based in reality that he was this broken down dude because he re-broke his collarbone after coming back too soon in 2015 and experienced a fluke tackle in preseason 2016. Not for an 8 game stretch at the most.
Hell even if he got hurt,
well then you fucking have Dak.
Romo's lone drive in 2016 looked professional with his safety lookoffs and in just a few throws he consistently threatened the Eagle secondary. He looked damned good, and he hadn't played at all that year before then. The receivers, understanding what was happening, looked ready to give Romo everything they had, even in a meaningless game. You saw the extra energy from Dez, and especially Terrance Williams.
After the TD, gutless Garrett couldn't get him off the field fast enough and played fucking Mark Sanchez the rest of the game. Can you imagine the controversy had Romo played the rest of the half and flattened the Eagles? There's no way he'd have gotten hurt, and Garrett couldn't have withstood that pressure.
This wasn't Joe Montana coming back for a half to end the season while Steve Young, another HOFer took over.
This was an experienced, really good QB being benched because the public liked Dak, Garrett loved that he had a puppet on the field, and the Cowboy leadership thought QBing was a bunch of statistics. Further proof our "leadership" was and still are a bunch of dense idiots. Want further proof? 2017 Dak. Meltdown Dak. Rookie Dak was no better, just better protected.