Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo tabled contract extension talks early in the 2012 season so that they did not become a distraction, but it is the offseason now and the desire for an extension remains strong on the team’s side.
On Tuesday, executive vice president Stephen Jones reiterated much of what we’ve heard before from the Cowboys about their interest in extending Romo’s contract before it runs out after the 2013 season. They’ve made their case for sticking with Romo in football terms and, as Jones did Tuesday, in economic terms.
“Tony is a key piece of what we’re about going forward,” Jones said, via Calvin Watkins of ESPNDallas.com. “We’re certainly going to be looking at his situation [in] time. We’ve historically [extended contracts] with quarterbacks for the Dallas Cowboys ahead of time. We did it with Troy [Aikman] and we certainly want to look at that with Tony so we can all move forward in terms of how we want to play around our salary cap with our team. Tony is the key piece in terms of how your cap is represented.”
Romo is set to have a cap number of $16.8 million in 2013, which is the highest on a team that needs to cut about $20 million from their cap before the start of free agency. Extending Romo is one of the easier ways to make that happen. If it does, the length and guaranteed money will tell us how much longer their marriage with Romo will last.