BRITTLE ROMO GIVES COWBOYS QUITE A SCARE
Injured QB will miss final pre-season outing, but not opener against Giants
Little-known fact: “Romo” in Scooby-Doo-ese translates to “Oh, no.”
As in, “Romo, Raggy!” (Or, “Oh no, Shaggy!”)
Hanna-Barbera cartoon dialogue aside, “Oh, no” has been a common interjection of Dallas Cowboys fans over the past decade, whenever Tony Romo is on the field. It was usually shouted in anger, after a ruinous Romo interception.
But over the past few seasons it’s been shouted in concern, when the aging, ever-less gaffeprone but evermore brittle quarterback falls in agony to the turf, unable to get up.
We saw it again Thursday, early in the Cowboys’ pre-season game at Seattle. Seconds after his third snap, in his first action of the preseason, Romo dropped to pass, rolled left, started to run and, as he went to slide, got hit hard in the back by fast-closing Seattle pass rusher Cliff Avril.
Romo writhed in pain on the ground, reaching for his back. Romo, Raggy, indeed. The local Seattle telecast showed a glimpse of Cowboys owner/GM Jerry Jones a few minutes later, sitting in his visiting owner’s suite at CenturyLink Field, looking like he’d just been punched in the gut by George Foreman.
“I was just in shock,” Jones told a Dallas TV station. “I had my mind on, ‘Come on, Tony, get up.’ (I) said a few prayers right there.”
After being tended by virtually every doctor and trainer from the Cowboys’ sideline, Romo walked off the field without aid.
He did not return to the game. The plan had been for him to play only two series anyway. Steve Wyche of NFL Network reported that Romo took some simulated snaps, threw a few passes and asked to go back in.
No way. Head coach Jason Garrett would have been crazy even to consider it, and didn’t.
“His back was bothering him a little bit after that play,” Garrett told a Dallas telecast interviewer at halftime. “We don’t think it’s a serious thing, and we just felt better keeping him out.”
Romo later said it “was prob- ably as tough a hit as I’ve taken on my back in the last five years.” He said he didn’t feel it was necessary to have his back X-rayed afterward.
Jones said Romo is still scheduled to start the Cowboys’ regular-season opener on Sept. 11 against the New York Giants, and confirmed Romo won’t play in the Cowboys’ fourth and final pre-season game, next Thursday against Houston.
In March, Romo had surgery on his left clavicle, after breaking it twice last season and for the third time since 2010. He missed all but four games last year as Dallas plummeted from NFC East champ in 2014 to a 4-12 record.
The corrective surgery Romo had is called a “Mumford procedure,” to reduce pain. Surgeons shaved a portion off the problematic clavicle bone where it meets the shoulder.
Sports-talk radio and Twitter only half-jokingly obsessed Friday over how many games Romo might actually play in 2016.
WEEKEND TV: Networks carry five games: Saturday’s Kansas City at Chicago (1 p.m. EDT, NFL Network) and Tennessee at Oakland (8 p.m. EDT, CBS); Sunday’s San Diego at Minnesota (1 p.m. EDT, FOX), Arizona at Houston (4 p.m. EDT, FOX) and Cincinnati at Jacksonville (8 p.m. EDT, NBC).