Tony Oh No!: Romo sidelined for four weeks
Any way you slice it, Dallas lost a heart breaker yesterday to the Arizona Cardinals. Unfortunately, the loss was much costlier than anyone realized as Tony Romo will miss the next four weeks recovering from a broken pinkie finger on his throwing hand.
The fallout from Sunday’s loss to Arizona just worsened: Pro Bowl quarterback Tony Romo fractured his right pinkie finger on the first play of overtime and could miss four weeks.
Romo, who felt heavy pressure from the Cardinals’ defense all game, wore a heavy wrap on his hand after the game. The team’s initial diagnosis was a sprained finger.
The Cowboys have 17th-year veteran Brad Johnson and Brooks Bollinger behind Romo.
Needless to say, this is a damaging blow to the Cowboys’ chances of competing for the NFC East title. This opens the door for Brad Johnson to take over the huddle. While Johnson is a smart, savvy veteran with Super Bowl hardware of his own, he’s also 40 years old and hasn’t been a difference making QB since his 2003 season (in Tampa Bay). This is what I had to say about Johnson back in the preseason while profiling the league’s backup QBs:
Brad Johnson, Dallas Cowboys - Brad Johnson turns 40 this season and is the QB positions’ elder statesman. While Johnson’s days of prolific passing are long gone, his consistent productivity throughout his career shouldn’t be forgotten. Johnson has completed at least 60% of his passes in every season since 1994! He’s thrown for at least 3,000 yards and 20 TDs four times, for three different teams. And he’s a Super Bowl champion. At the end of the day, Johnson’s job is to mentor Tony Romo and serve as a 2nd QB coach in Big D. But, in the event Romo gets hurt, Johnson could manage the team to some real life Ws, but probably wouldn’t be as helpful to your fantasy team.
So is this the death knell for the Cowboys? No, not in terms of real NFL success [for fantasy purposes, it’s pretty bad news]. The Cowboys have the offensive line and running backs to leverage a more conservative, ball-control offense. And the defense, while inconsistent, can play better than it has to date. Those are big IFs though and possibly asking too much of a team largely built around the potency of the offense.
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