Romodus Operandi

About how a team sometimes gets better when their best player goes out, as everyone else steps up their game.

Gives hope to guys like me!

:-)

Here we are talking about our 38 year old back-up QB that is still slinging the ball well and has heat and accuracy to his passes, and you are prematurely ending Romo’s career in 2-3 years when he turns 33 (with less wear and tear than Kitna)?!

Romo has plenty of years ahead of him, I would even say he is in his prime. He is still learning and improving. While I don’t think Kitna is the (only) reason we are now winning games, JG as HC and his new balanced approach as OC are the biggest difference.

I do hope Tony is taking notes though because the one place where I see A LOT of difference is the pace of the offense. I remember Tony using every second in the playclock to read the field before the snap and there wasn’t this upbeat tempo that Kitna is providing.

The team was showing a lack of drive before Tony went down as shown by their record so I don’t think the quit factor was because off Kitna.

How quickly we forget that Kitna wasn’t lighting the world on fire when Wade was the coach. They laid down under him against Jacksonville and Green Bay (is that leadership?). Say what you want about Tony (and many do) but that has arguably only happened once under Tony for his entire reign (44-6 against Philly).

Garrett is the difference. Not Kitna.

offense didn’t start scoring at this rate when Kitna went under center.

the difference in offensive scoring is pretty small.

take out the McCann pick six, McCann punt return, the Bush fumble on the 10, the 2 pick-sixes against Indy.

It’s obvious to me that if Romo would be playing under Garrett the past 4 games we would have probably beaten the Saints, obviously the Colts and the other games would have been big time blowouts by us.

Romo is one of the very best qbs heading into the prime of his career (no disrespect to OCC, but his numbers lie about 30+ yr old qbs) and once he gets back, this offense will really look good. The 34 points per game isn’t all Kitna and the offense, guys like McCann, Scandrick and Lee have contributed to that point total as well.

There were many plays over the past several game that Romo makes which Kitna didn’t, either missed passes or reads, that would produced more points. The one obvious play from the Colts game was the overthrow to Austin in the endzone, Romo makes the throw in his sleep.

I know you like hatin’ on #9 bling, but give it a rest, Romo will be the Cowboys qb for a lot of years to come, so get used to it.

Can we explore this?

To say that Kitna’s performance right now discredits anything Romo has down is simply frustrating as hell.

Why does this frustrate you?

Do you think people were saying something different in New England when the Bledsoe (he hadn’t led them to a bling, but was no slouch and had his supporters) was out and Brady was starting to light them up?

I would think that someone such as yourself would relish the thought of being able to use this opportunity to talk more about WHY you think people who disagree with you are missing something in their positions.

that Romo or Kitna are any more or less a leader than the other guy. Different styles, different personality types, different character traits. Moot point, from my perspective.

Offensive production, fall-off and team collapse as the season disintegrated, all that, it’s nothing new under the sun. The post-coaching-change revisions and adjustments to a new state (both physical and psychological), a subsequent resurgence and resurrection, also nothing new under the sun.

We have two starter-quality QB’s, granted one with more teams that would start him, but two men capable of leading during game time. Did Romo always display it the way we fans thought it should be displayed? No. Does Kitna? No. Romo’d sometimes sit, head-hanging, perhaps in thought trying to figure ways to win, perhaps discouraged, but not leading his team-mates and sometimes it would carry over to the field. Kitna, exuberant, more out-going on the field and sidelines, both with respect to his team-mate interaction and his very body language, but prone to occasional child-like antics on the field (a product of his exuberance and heart-on-his-sleeve out-going nature). Take issue with either, it’s your, a fan’s, opinion, but neither’s a valid indictment of the overall leadership qualities of either of these men. I’ve seen them both pat their chest on the field and take responsibility for botched execution or a play, indicate to their team-mates “it’s on me”, so to speak. They take responsibility, hold themselves accountable to their team-mates, the men they’re on the field with. That’s part of leadership. They both have the quality.

Debate which is better, more suited to a situation, but to say one’s leadership or performance for this team, this year, discredits the other is pure unadulterated BS in my eyes.

Brandon, I am not saying you said or implied any of the above, but your post and “simply frustrating” comment brought it out of me. This appeared to be where to place it in-thread. The whole nonsensical quibbling some do regarding the impact and qualities of these 2 QB’s, two I am proud to say were QB’s of my team, frustrates the hell out of me. I think we’re both (all?), happy both these guys are on our team, especially this year.

And I’m pretty sure you didn’t take Blings article as being a repudiation or discrediting of what Romo brings to the Cowboys table. At least I didn’t read that intent in it. I may be wrong, but I see it as being an invitation to an open-minded debate, discrediting neither of these QB’s. And I see your comment as yet another that illustrates that no one factor is “the key” or single determinant factor in this or any other situation.

It is the combination of circumstance and individuals, their confluent coincidence, which changes the past through the present into the future.

And this formerly disarrayed group of individuals once again into a team. A team with pride and dignity.

To put it simply, it’s all of them and the situation they’re in. Garrett, Miller, Romo, Scandrick, Kitna, Holley, Pasqualoni, Ball, Witten, Young, Dez, Parnell, Ware, Barron, DeCamillis, Davis,…

They are a team. Our team.

And back.

The Cowboys were competitive because Romo was on pace for the best season of his career. The Cowboys were losing because penalties, tipped passes, dropped balls, drive-killing sacks and penalties and poor defense and special teams were killing any chances the Cowboys had of winning.

The offense was moving the ball. Roy Williams and Miles Austin were on a tear. And Romo was leading the way. You can’t blame Romo for the holds, the false starts, the tipped passes for interceptions….I’m not saying Romo was completely innocent because he wasn’t, but the reason the Cowboys were still competitive was because of Romo.

When Kitna came in and Phillips was still coaching, those mistakes were still there. The dropped passes. The bad routes. The incredibly poor pass blocking and run blocking. The tipped passes for interceptions. And the Cowboys were getting blown out.

His first three games (all under Phillips), Kitna was sacked nine times and threw six interceptions. That’s two and half games, really.

In the four games since (all under Garrett), Kitna has been sacked just five times and only has two interceptions. The line was blocking better, the receivers were motivated…the whole team changed.

What’s the common denominator here?

This is why I’m not worried about any sort of struggling that may or may not happen when Romo plays again. He’s going to be rusty, every quarterback is after that amount of time off. So don’t judge him by that. But this team is different under Garrett and it’s going to continue to play hard when Romo comes back.

He said himself that he’s waitied his whole career to be on a team with this kind of talent.

But the defense under Wade had almost no chance of those because they never actually made INTs in the first place! You can’t have good INT-TD luck if you’re never making INTs in the first place. We have 8 INTs in 4 games since Garrett (and Paul P.) took over. Before that, the Cowboys had 5 INTs in 8 games under Wade.

The fact of the matter is that the only thing that’s changed on the defense is new management, and you can credit Paul P. if you’d like, but Garrett becoming involved in the defense for the first time ever cannot be discounted. Both of their combined efforts have put the Cowboys defense in better position to make game-changing plays, and when they’ve actually been given the chance to make game-changing INT-TDs, they’ve capitalized on their opportunities. I’m not saying they will always return almost half of their INTs for TDs, but Garrett and Paul P. are at least giving the guys a lot more opportunities to do so, which is much more than you can say about life under Wade. The team has certainly caught breaks under Garrett, but they at least are giving themselves opportunities nowadays.

The best teams are both lucky and very good. The Cowboys are both under Jason Garrett, so there’s no taking of grains of salt needed in my opinion.

from the change to Garrett and has coincidentally given JG much more reason to run. Even Houck has come out in support of the Wed. practices as far as how much they have helped the offensive line. Even today though, I thought JG ran too much at times. We got in some really poor down situations thanks to running the ball at times and it almost cost us a leading TD if it hadn’t been for a leverage penalty on the Colts on that FG.

Furthermore, you yourself acknowledge that the offense hasn’t really improved that much so it is odd that you would then point out how much of a difference running more has made.

if Romo was still at QB, we would pass more and run less, but since Kitna is QB, Garrett feels better about “protecting” him with a run game and let him “drive the bus” and not try to win the game on his arm. Just a thought.