The Dallas Cowboys are coming off a great season in which they were one of the best teams in the NFC, but they have room to improve. After all, they didn’t reach the Super Bowl LI and their defense remains a work in progress. But they also have an important question to answer. What are they doing to do with their logjam at the quarterback position?
It’s clear that Dak Prescott is the future of the Cowboys. He’s young, talented and has room to grow. And if that wasn’t enough, he led Dallas to a 13-3 record in his first season as a starter. A season in which he should’ve been the backup. However, Tony Romo’s injury gave Prescott a chance, and he ran away with it. He was so good that he got the Rookie Of The Year award, even over his teammate Ezekiel Elliott who led the NFL with 1,631 rushing yards this season.
So naturally the question is not if Romo is going to recover the starting job. That ship sailed months ago, and it’s clear Dallas is Dak’s team. Now we have to wonder – what are the Cowboys going to do with Romo?
The options are limited. They can let him ride the bench for another season, but that’s not going to happen. He’s a franchise icon, and it would be quite disrespectful to let him do that. Plus, Romo has a close relationship with the Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones. He’s going somewhere, so the question now becomes “where will he play next season?”
Well, it all depends on what the Cowboys do with him, and as things stand now it’s either a trade or a release. Out of the two, the release would be the best option for both parties. Trading Romo could be quite complicated, because we can’t forget we’re talking about a franchise quarterback who’s slated to earn around $14 million in 2017. To make things even worse, his cap hit in 2017 would be $25,2 million.
Few teams can absorb that kind of cap hit, and Romo isn’t going to play anywhere. He wants one last chance to play for a title. So it seems releasing him is the way to go.
That could happen in around two weeks, and if we consider that scenario the list of teams that could sign Romo isn’t very long. The Kansas City Chiefs, the Houston Texans and the Denver Broncos appear as the most likely destinations. But for that to happen, the Chiefs would have to trade Alex Smith and the Texans would have to get rid of Brock Osweiler. That’s not likely, especially considering Osweiler was the least valuable quarterback in the NFL last year after signing a four-year, $72 million prior to the start of the 2016 season.
The Broncos are an interesting option, to say the least. They won the Super Bowl in 2015, and they have a championship-caliber defense. Their offense has a few question marks, but there’s no question Romo would be a better option than Paxton Lynch or Trevor Siemian. We all saw what the Broncos did in the last year of Peyton Manning and while it’s not fair to compare Romo to Manning, his veteran leadership would certainly be a plus.
We will have to wait a few weeks before we get any sort of clarity in this situation. But Romo is not going to be in Dallas next year. It’s a matter of when and where we’ll see him in another uniform. That seems like the best scenario for everybody.