No one has passed for more yardage or more touchdowns in a Dallas Cowboys uniform than Tony Romo. Not Troy Aikman, Roger Staubach, Danny White or Don Meredith.
But Romo has apparently completed his last pass for the team. After losing his starting job last season, he is retiring as a player to become the lead football analyst for CBS Sports, replacing Phil Simms.
CBS announced the hiring on Tuesday and said that Romo would join the play-by-play man Jim Nantz and the sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson on the lead announcing team. “We know Tony will quickly develop into a terrific analyst,” the news release said.
On Tuesday afternoon, Romo posted on Twitter a photograph of himself in a CBS blazer with the message, “I guess it’s time to start dressing up.”
CBS’ announcement acknowledged Simms, who has been its lead NFL analyst for 20 years. “We are discussing with Phil his future role with CBS Sports,” it said.
Romo played for the Cowboys for 13 seasons and compiled a 78-49 record as a starter, but, unlike Aikman and Staubach, he never won a Super Bowl. In fact, he was never on a team that produced a decent playoff run, going 2-4 in his career. As a result, he will probably always sit just below the top quarterbacks in the Cowboys pantheon.
But playoff failures are not the reason the Cowboys cut him. They had plenty of other reasons. Chief among them was the emergence of Dak Prescott, the rookie who stepped in last season when Romo was injured and put up huge numbers for the 13-3 Cowboys.
Romo will be 37 at the start of next season, and he has struggled to stay on the field of late, managing only four games in 2015 and only four passes in 2016. After missing the first 10 weeks of last season with a back injury, he returned, but Prescott had been so impressive that Romo did not get his job back.
Nonetheless, there were some suitors who had hoped to get something out of Romo’s twilight years. Romo was a four-time Pro Bowl selection and could have provided veteran leadership to a young team or been the final piece of the puzzle for a team close to the top prize. Most of the speculation recently centered on the Denver Broncos and the Houston Texans.
Denver, which struggled with Trevor Siemian last season, and Houston, whose big-money signing of Brock Osweiler was a bust, will now have to look elsewhere.
Still, Romo has been good enough recently enough that some wondered if he would return, if the offer was right. Starting quarterbacks get injured, and teams have been known to have midseason quarterback crises. Veteran players are also known to have second thoughts about retirement — ask Brett Favre.
Romo has certainly been the most speculated-about player in this offseason, linked with a dozen or more teams at one time or another. The Cleveland Browns, Washington Redskins, Kansas City Chiefs, New York Jets and San Francisco 49ers were all linked with him. It seemed likely that there would be a job for him somewhere.
Instead, he retires ranked 21st in career passing touchdowns, with 248, sandwiched between the standouts Drew Bledsoe and Boomer Esiason. But like them, he will be remembered for never winning a Super Bowl as a starter.
Romo played college football at Eastern Illinois. In a year in which quarterbacks Carson Palmer, Byron Leftwich, Kyle Boller and Rex Grossman were all taken in the first round of the draft, Romo was bypassed by every team through all seven rounds in 2003.
The Cowboys signed him to a free-agent contract, and he sat on the bench for three years behind Quincy Carter, Vinny Testaverde and Drew Bledsoe before finally taking over as starter in 2006. His elevation led to a reversal of fortune for the Cowboys. They had made the playoffs just once in the previous six seasons. Under Romo, they made it in three of four years, including in 13- and 11-win seasons. But they won just one playoff game.
After a fallow period, Romo had a last hurrah in 2014, making the Pro Bowl and leading the Cowboys to a 12-4 record. But the team tripped up in the playoffs again, losing to the Green Bay Packers in the divisional round.
