Tony Romo, and his shock decision to retire from the NFL and become a broadcaster was the A Block/front page national news story on Tuesday. It was a big bold move that might convey the current status of the NFL free agent market for quarterbacks, and thus the future of Jay Cutler.
Romo and Cutler are two players that have been incessantly compared to one another during their NFL careers and it seems like kismet that they both hit the open free agent market after completing their tenures at the respective primary NFL teams.
As we already know, the market for Jay Cutler is extremely bearish, and he is reportedly putting the retirement option on the table.
Perhaps the direction Romo went will give us a clear signal amidst the noise? It seems logical to assume right now that there is no NFL team interested in paying the kind of money that an experienced veteran like Romo would command. In other words, perhaps no team is looking for a QB like Romo, or even similar to Romo, i.e. Jay Cutler right now.
To hear Tony Romo tell it though, he did not make this decision due to being unable to find a NFL team suitor.
“I’m making the decision to go to CBS because I am choosing CBS over playing football,” Romo said on a Tuesday afternoon media call that severely lacked in news-worthiness.
“That’s the decision I want to make. Not because I’m being forced to.”
In order to get some more insight into how the market currently is, and therefore what might happen with Jay Cutler, Romo would be the perfect person to speak with. Who would know this topic better than he and his agent?
Unfortunately, Romo wouldn’t take any questions on anything related to that, and his media call, for the most part, was worthless time burglary. The very first question Romo took on the call was about the Houston Texans QB situation, why he didn’t end up there, and what direction Houston might decide to go at the position.
It was the most optimal situation possible for Romo to make the transition from player to analyst, but sadly, he did not. Romo dodged and evaded the Texans question not once, but twice.
If Romo had dodged opposing tacklers the way he dodged the question, he would have been the G.O.A.T.
The call was pretty dominated by toeing the corporate line kind of pablum, accompanied by the most banal of athlete cliches. Romo gave us plenty of (these are verbatim Romo quotes, and none have been repeated here):
-“I’m excited about this. It’s going to be great, and hopefully I’m good enough to do this for a really long time.”
-“It can be pretty fun trying to attack something and do something at a high level.”
-“I’m excited about trying to be really good at this.”
-“I’ve got to go attack this just like football and see where I’m good and where I’m not.”
-“I like that challenge. I think it’s going to be enjoyable trying to be great at something.”
It’s extremely obvious that the former Cowboys signal caller is still in current/active athlete “I don’t want to make headlines by what I say in public” mode. He has not yet graduated to former-athlete “in order to stay relevant I must say something that people will talk about and keep me in the news” mode.
At least that’s the impression the Eastern Illinois graduate conveyed on the media call. If his Analyst work is going to be this vanilla/after school special/motivational cat poster…you’ll seriously long to have Phil Simms back.
While Simms said a lot of idiotic things, at least he was entertaining, and that’s a lot better than the dull corporatespeak we heard on Tuesday.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times and NBC Chicago.com, contributes to Chicago Tribune.com, Bold, WGN CLTV and KOZN.
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