As it turns out, quarterback Tony Romo might not be as dumb as he looks.
In the wake of the possibility that Romo didn’t know that it was fourth down when it was fourth down in the closing seconds of Sunday’s loss to the Broncos, the Cowboys contend that Romo knew that it was indeed fourth down.
And the team has actually issued a written statement to explain away video evidence suggesting that Romo was under the impression that he had one more play.
“As Tony was walking off the field after the fourth down play, he saw that the down marker on the Dallas sideline read ‘3.’ As it turned out, the marker was in the process of being changed, sequentially, from the number ‘4' to the number ‘1' for the Broncos ensuing possession,” according to the statement.
“The marker on the Cowboys side read ‘3' temporarily. When he saw the ‘3,’ he thought there might have been the possibility of an error on the down count.”
We’re not 100-percent sure how an official NFL down marker works, but we doubt that the shift from “4" to “1" requires the user of the marker to manually cycle back through “3" and “2".
Moreover, with all of the cameras that are present during an NFL game, shouldn’t there be images of the down marker showing the “3" that apparently caused Romo to think that he had another crack at tying the game?
Look, regardless of whether the explanation advanced by the Cowboys is the truth, would the Cowboys have admitted that their starting quarterback didn’t know what down it was? If NFL teams learned anything from last year’s admission by Donovan McNabb that he didn’t know that regular-season games could end in a tie, it’s that nothing good comes from telling the truth when it comes to a supposed franchise quarterback not being as bright as he’s paid to be.