Tony Romo Out Against Arizona Cardinals; Dallas Cowboys Get Blessing in Disguise

By RantSports Staff on November 2, 2014

Early Sunday morning, the news everyone was expecting to not expect broke: Tony Romo will not play in the Dallas Cowboys’ Week 9 matchup against the Arizona Cardinals due to two broken transverse process in his lower back. Although the Cowboys’ highly-paid signal-caller is sitting out, Dallas may have caught a break (no pun intended) with this turn of events.

During the Cowboys’ overtime loss to the Washington Redskins in Week 8, Romo suffered the injury on the fifth sack of the game when yet another blitz caught him off guard and he relegated to the fetal position, which resulted in a knee hitting him square in his surgically-repaired spine. He returned to the game, but had no velocity on his throws and was just as ineffective at reading the blitz during the game as he was before the injury.

During Romo’s brief absence in the Redskins game, Brandon Weeden led the Cowboys to 10 points on two drives by leaning on the running game and then making smart, timely throws when the defense started peaking into the backfield, which is exactly what Romo did during Dallas’ pleasantly surprising start to the season.

The Cardinals’ defense is a tougher unit than the Redskins’ on paper and it undoubtedly will use similar 3-4 blitzes and disguised blitzes just as Washington did. Now that there’s a healthy quarterback under center for Dallas, maybe that won’t be such an issue this week.

Before anyone gets any moronic ideas, we’re not suggesting in any way the Cowboys should make Weeden their guy or that he’s a better passer than Romo. What we’re saying is Dallas is much better off with a healthy quarterback who isn’t a sitting duck against a team tied for the league’s best record.

If Weeden plays as well as he did during his brief appearance against the Redskins, the Cowboys have a great shot at winning this game – and a much better one than they would have with Romo ducking at any sign of pressure with a broken back.