We knew that Chargers coach Norv Turner had gotten a little pissy about comments aired on NBC’s Football Night in America from former Bucs and Colts coach Tony Dungy. We’d missed similar griping from Cowboys coach Wade Phillips.
Phillips took issue with Dungy’s opinion that turnovers from quarterback Tony Romo impact his ability to lead. And so Phillips went back 33 years.
“Part of being a leader at the quarterback position is protecting the football,” Dungy said. “You’ve got to do that to be a great quarterback.”
“We played against him when he was in Pittsburgh and he turned it over several times,” Phillips said earlier this week of Dungy, per Tim MacMahon of ESPNDallas.com. “We knocked [Terry] Bradshaw out of the game, and he came in. I believe he fumbled the first snap.”
Phillips was pointing to a game in which Dungy, a quarterback in college but a safety in the NFL, was pressed into service after injuries to the only two quarterbacks on the Steelers roster, Terry Bradshaw and Mike Kruczek.
“He wasn’t a very good quarterback,” Phillips said.
More accurately, Dungy wasn’t a quarterback at all. At least not in the NFL.
More importantly, the fact that Wade would decide to fire back at Dungy suggests that the embattled Cowboys coach is worrying about the wrong things. Then again, at his current rate, Wade will be able to worry about lots of things other than coaching the Cowboys.
Even more importantly, Romo himself didn’t complain. “He’s right,” Romo said of Dungy’s remarks. “That’s a good statement.”
The lingering problem with Romo, in our view, is that he lacks the burning Brady-Manning desire to win championships. Undrafted after finishing his college career at Eastern Illinois, Romo signed with the Cowboys and worked his way up the ladder. But he’s always given off a “happy to be here” vibe, and in our assessment he lacks the passion and the intensity that makes truly great quarterbacks great.