Hang on, Romo-haters and throwers-under-buses! Before you turn your creepy Romosexual love into unadulterated hate, let’s take a quick look back at the three picks Romo threw and gain some perspective.
Romo gets all the blame for the deep ball interception, as it looked more like a punt to the open Giant. But the off-the-foot interception for a touchdown was as big a fluke as you will see this season in the NFL. Take another look:
Interception off Witten’s Foot
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD4dsOlaw6c]
How is that Romo’s fault? 99.9 times out of a hundred, that pass is incomplete on the turf. Every quarterback throws incomplete passes at receivers’ feet. But you might as well blame Witten’s perfectly timed back-kick as Romo’s throw for that one.
The video quality’s bad on this one, but this is plainly the only ball you can blame on Tony.
The One That Got Away
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpYlHMdby1U]
We don’t seem to have any video clips of the leaping catch the Giants’ rookie made for a touchdown against Tony early on. It was an athletic play by a good defense. The pass was a gamble, but one which Romo has successfully made many times in his young career.
Update: Here’s coverage of the first interception:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGKYgHGFKIQ]
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Like I said in another post, the ‘fluke’ would not have been a fluke if it was a decent throw to begin with. Romo threw behind Witten down the middle of the field fading left. Had it been in a position where Witten could have caught it and then he muffed it and it then got booted, we could call it a fluke: the throw was horrible to begin with the second it left Romo’s hand
Have to disagree with you, Steve. Like I said in the post, EVERY quarterback throws low balls that end up at a receiver’s feet. It always happens, often several times per game. This one happened to get kicked up in the air by Witten’s foot so it could be easily caught by the trailing defender.
It was nothing but a fluke.
First INT: Overthrown and behind Roy a bit. You can make a case Roy should have made a better effort for the ball, but it is still an errant throw.
Second INT: Ball is thrown behind Witten. While the bounce was unlucky after, the fact remains he still missed a wide open man.
Third INT: Just awful — he didn’t read the coverage at all.
Bottom line is that Romo just played awful and he knows it. He’s going to need to bounce back in a big way next week and just erase this one from the memory banks.
How do you NOT hit a wide open Witten?!?!?! That’s my beef! AWFUL pass that ended up being a fluke play… Right now I consider Romo in the same league as Shaun Hill.
Sorry, they were his fault. No matter how flukey the foot one was it started as a pass, not at his feet, but behind Witten that deflected off his hand then his feet. Overall he was wide open crossing the field and the bad throw caused the bad luck.