It’s easy to forget these days that Tony Romo was once an undrafted third-string quarterback buried on the Dallas Cowboys depth chart behind the likes of Quincy Carter, Vinny Testaverde, and Chad Hutchinson. As it turns out, back in those days, Romo was close to quitting football altogether.
Romo joined the Village Church’s podcast for their February 18 episode and discussed a point in 2004 when he nearly walked away from football to become an assistant golf professional in Wisconsin.
“I’m sitting there and obviously I’m not really wanting to get into the numbers game,” Romo said, as transcribed by Jon Machota of SportsDay. “I’m not a rocket scientist but one, two, three and I’m four. It just doesn’t look as solid, but you don’t want to think that way. The problem is you can’t help it.
“When I get in camp the first few days, I’m tight and every throw I feel like I have to make perfectly,” Romo said. “I just can’t do anything wrong. I have to read it perfect and I have to know what’s going on and I have to do it faster. I was just struggling for about three days. I remember sitting in my hotel room right there and I was so pent up with anxiety and everything was just coming to a head and it was like, ‘I can’t take it.’ It was just so much. My whole life felt like it was on this moment.
“That’s when I sat in bed and I just prayed to the Lord, and this was a very defining moment for me. I was like, ‘If I’m not meant to be the quarterback here or play quarterback in the NFL, that’s fine. Then I’m going to go back and be a really good assistant golf club professional back in Burlington, Wisconsin.'”
The next week, Romo said, Quincy Carter was released after failing a drug test, Romo made the team after performing better, and the rest, as they say, is history.
If Carter doesn’t fail that drug test and get released, does Romo get cut and end up back in Wisconsin wondering what might have been? We’ve already seen what the Cowboys look like without Romo. The last decade would look quite different in Dallas.
H/T ForTheWin
