Tony Romo's Back Surgery And The Boy Who Cried Wolf

"The boy who cried Wolf" is a tale by Greek storyteller Aesop which dates back to about 600 BC. The story is about a shepherd boy who repeatedly tricks his fellow villagers into thinking a wolf is attacking the sheep he is guarding. But when the villagers come running to help the boy, there is no wolf. One day, when a wolf actually shows up and the boy calls for help once more, none of the villagers can be bothered to show up because they think it's another false alarm. In the end, the shepherd boy's sheep are eaten by the wolf.

The moral of the story is that if you "cry wolf" often enough, nobody will believe you when you eventually tell the truth.

The story reminds me a lot of the generally alarmist nature of the majority of reporting surrounding the Cowboys. You'll easily recognize that type of reporting by its urgent tone, its imagery of impending doom, and its focus on the worst possible outcome. In fact, if you google 'Dallas Cowboys' and 'doomed', you'll get about of 90,000 hits, many from Cowboys sources that I have permanently removed from my reading lists.

Similarly, there are reporters covering the Dallas Cowboys that I refuse to read or link to because their entire spiel is alarmism. They do get the occasional nugget right, but they get so much wrong so often that I simply don't trust them to accurately report anything about the Cowboys. Like one of the villagers in Aesop's story, I simply ignore headlines that claim the Cowboys are doomed to suffer in cap hell, are doomed to mediocrity for not drafting Johnny Manziel, are doomed in December, are doomed as long as Jerry Jones is alive, or some other such nonsense.

And it was with that mindset that I largely disregarded any recent story about Tony Romo's recovery from back surgery, basically assuming that the coverage was simply trying to garner pageviews with headlines about how Romo's back may still not be 100%, that he's taking too much time off from practice, and that he's not throwing well enough.

Basically, I thought that the alarmist Cowboys coverage had simply moved on to the next topic to hyperventilate about.

But then I stumbled over an article by Brandon George of the Dallas Morning News this morning titled: "Why have Dallas Cowboys QB Tony Romo’s deep passes looked so wobbly first two weeks of training camp?" I almost didn't read the article, expecting nothing more than a rehash of all the stuff I'd heard and read previously about Romo's back, but it was a slow morning news-wise, so I clicked on the article. To my shock, I found this quote from Cowboys QB coach Wade Wilson in the article:

"He’s probably just protecting his back and not wanting to fully cut it loose right now," Wade Wilson said [of Tony Romo]. "The ball is not spinning totally right every time, and there is a little bit of breeze. Usually he drives those pretty good. His most inconsistency has been on deep balls."

Now I'm alarmed. Wade Wilson is not known as somebody who's prone to hyperbole, and if he says not everything is right with Romo, then it's probably true. And inconsistency on deep balls? That sounds uncomfortably familiar. And it also sounds like we've been bamboozled by the Cowboys and their stories about how they feel good about Tony Romo and his back, and that he's back at 100%.

Question to you: Should I be alarmed, or am I just another villager who's been suckered by the shepherd boy once again?