Romo’s success this season is going to depend heavily on his ability to beat the blitz – with help from Garrett and the rest of the Offence.  

Anecdotally everyone knows what happened in the last time we were in the playoffs.  The NYG’s, by necessity, "bet the farm" in the second half and brought everybody – blunting Romo’s effectiveness.   I know a bunch of you are yelling at your screens that one data point doesn’t create a trend, but consider this analysis from the Football Outsiders Almanac 2009: 

 "Romo has shown the rare ability to consistently raise his level of play on third down" [ snip  ]  The solution, defensive coordinators? Blitz more. Romo’s success rate goes down as the defence sends more rushers; on plays where the defence sent three, Romo’s success rate in 2008 was 56 percent; that dropped steadily with each rusher added, all the way down to a success rate of 33 percent when teams rushed seven" 

I believe that teams understand this.  The blitzing game-plan is now the blueprint for limiting Romo - if teams have that capability, which our divisional and potential playoff opponents will.   

For a QB to beat the blitz they need:

•  The physical tools - a quick release and/or some mobility, and
•  The mental tools - vision / decision-making. 

There can be little argument that Romo has the physical tools.  I have seen articles assessing the speed of his release as faster than Marino’s.  Everyone has seen ample evidence of his “escapability”.   Its less clear that he has the decision-making.  In some respects it seems that Romo’s mobility hurts his decision-making as he tries to stays alive too long trying to make the big play when he would be better off taking the short gain.   

Furthermore there was discussion last year of Romo’s poor practice habits.  Reading the reporting and commentary, my take on this was not that he didn’t work hard – all the evidence suggests he is a hard worker.  Rather the issue is that he didn’t practice with the mental discipline as if it was a game situation.  He would force the ball to his intended target and I am guessing – given he couldn’t be hit in practice – tend to go deeper than he really had time for. 

However, this is clearly not all on Romo, it seems to me that Garrett’s scheme contributes to this issue. 

• Too many deep routes and not enough underneath routes.  If a heavy blitz is coming, these simply don’t have time to develop – particularly given we didn’t have the quickest receivers. 
• This is compounded by the lack of hot routes.  On the Lunch Break podcast (1/5) Josh Ellis reported a conversation with Romo following the Philly game in which Romo raised hot routes.  Romo noted that on most plays Jason Witten was the only hot route.  Occasionally Crayton was hot, but there was usually only one on any play.  Well the Eagles found a way to take away the hot route and still bring pressure – leaving Romo to take the sack or do things like the misguided throw-up to Roy. 

To me this seems puzzling.  Why at this level would you only have 1 hot route?  Particularly if you have a lot of deep routes as Garrett’s scheme does.  You throw in the fact that TO was having trouble beating the press and you have a pretty good recipe for beating our passing game.  

So a few things need to change this year:

• The O needs a strong ability to pick up the blitz
• Romo needs to rely on his release more often (rather than his mobility) and continue to develop his decision-making under pressure (take the short gain) 
• Garrett needs to adjust the scheme to more effectively to counter the blitz.  The apparent focus on screen plays would indicate this is happening. 
• And finally, our ace in the hole, Mr Felix Jones.  With him back there, Garrett and Romo should make teams pay a big price for all out blitzes.