Cowboys 'Deep Blue' Captures Romo/Quincy Start
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IRVING (105.3 THE FAN) - The Cowboys media team is at least as good as the football team, and it shows in a series of team-produced documentaries on a handful of subjects.
The latest "Deep Blue'' production to catch the fancy of Cowboys fans is "Star Crossed,'' the story of the early 2000's decision to move away from quarterback Quincy Carter to instead invest in Tony Romo.
"I always felt like I wasn't good enough technically and I knew that," Romo says in the film which features 105.3 The Fan's Ben Rogers as narrator. "When I went to a combine or a place and saw people throw, they were better than me. Now I was given just a gift from the Lord the ability to see and react quickly, so I had that on other people but I didn't have the ability, the just refinement to the game, the structure and fundamentals that you need to play at a high level. I did it on just natural raw ability and I needed to get better and I wasn't there yet. That's why I had to throw a football 360 days a year."
Romo — a small-town, small-time quarterback at Eastern Illinois who did, to his credit, eventually win the Walter Payton Award as the best player in Division I-AA — was barely on the map. Carter, on the other hand, was a pro baseball player, a Heisman Trophy candidate and a second-round pick peddled as the heir to the retired Troy Aikman.
Romo did manage an invitation to the NFL Scouting Combine, where he felt overwhelmed by all the big-school talent.
"I thought I was terrible," Romo said in the production, overseen by Dallas Cowboys website boss Derek Eagleton. "I watched them all and I was like, 'Well, they're all better than me,' so if anything it made me feel like I had to get a lot better. At no point was I saying, 'Oh yeah, I got these guys.''
Romo, of course, never did get drafted. He was a UDFA, free to join any team that would have him. Arizona, Denver and Dallas were the finalists. The sale was closed by then-Cowboys coach Bill Parcells, who in the documentary spends some time congratulating himself on a level of Romo's success that simply could not have been predicted.
"I really liked Denver because of Coach (Mike) Shanahan," Romo said of the Broncos coach who also had been an Eastern Illinois QB. "I thought he was fantastic. I liked their system, all that stuff, but it also came down to who can I beat out? What team can I make?"
Romo chose the Cowboys and made the Cowboys … and a dozen years later is the Pro Bowl centerpiece of a Dallas team that believes it can do things that Romo himself once barely dared dream of.
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