On this week’s edition of Slate’s sports podcast Hang Up and Listen, Stefan Fatsis discusses the Dallas Cowboys’ long history of minimizing quarterback Tony Romo’s injuries. An adapted transcript of the audio recording is below, and you can listen to Fatsis’ essay by clicking on the player below and fast-forwarding to the 62:52 mark.
On the third play of a preseason game against the Seattle Seahawks last Thursday, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo was hit by defensive end Cliff Avril. According to Mike Florio of the website Pro Football Talk, Romo grabbed his back “like Fred Sanford clutching his chest in anticipation of ‘the big one.’ ” But we’re not here to reminisce about 1970s sitcoms—though, for the record, I did love Sanford and Son. Instead let’s examine the five-stages-of-grief response to the injury from the Cowboys’ owner, Jerry Jones, and the team’s head coach, Jason Garrett.
After the game, denial. Romo said he was fine—because NFL players are conditioned to tell the media and coaches that they’re fine and to soldier on, and because pain is a constant companion in their lives. To an NFL player, “fine” means hurting like hell but no more than usual. Garrett said Romo was fine, too: “Initially I think he was in a little bit of shock. He didn’t feel real good. But once a little time went by, I think he was feeling better, better and better. We don’t think there is anything serious.”
Jones was even more definitive in his diagnosis. “He’s not injured. He was OK on the sideline immediately,” the owner declared. He said Romo’s back was “in good shape” and “we, everyone had a scare” and “he was not hurt.” “Said a few prayers right there,” Jones added. Bear in mind that Jerry Jones is not a physician and that Tony Romo’s back had not been MRI’d or X-rayed when the Cowboys leadership pronounced him fine.
The game was played on a Thursday night. On Friday, ESPN’s Ed Werder reported: “Tony Romo broke bone in back.” So, overnight, Tony Romo’s back went from definitively not hurt to broken. On Saturday, Ian Rapoport of NFL.com tweeted that Romo likely would need an epidural to play (because it’s always smart to mask pain to an injured back and then let 300-pound guys fall on you). And later Saturday came news that Romo actually had suffered a compression fracture of his L-1 vertebra, and was expected to be out for six to 10 weeks. He was wearing a back brace.
The denial stage was over, but the Cowboys moved seamlessly into anger (“a punch to the gut,” said Jones’ son, Stephen, a Cowboys executive) and, especially, bargaining. Garrett said he wouldn’t rule out Romo for the season opener on Sept. 11. “We’ve gotten a lot of different timetables for when he can return,” the former Princeton quarterback said on Sunday. “We also know that he’s played with a broken bone in his back before, so there’s no reason for me to stand up here and put a timetable on this.”
This is NFL logic at its finest and most offensive: Tony Romo played with a broken bone in his back before, so why not do it again? After all, it’s a different part of his back! While an ESPN report concluded otherwise, Jerry Jones—who is paying Romo $55 million guaranteed under a six-year contract signed in 2013—asserted that the broken bone in Romo’s back was truly a minor thing: “This is nowhere near the issue he had last year, not even in the same league as far as we’re concerned.”
Last year’s “issue” was a broken collarbone. If throwing a football is your job, maybe a broken collarbone is in fact in a league of its own. But if walking around for the rest of your life is a concern, then Romo’s fourth back injury in three years might be viewed as troubling. In 2014, Romo suffered two fractures that didn’t require surgery. In 2013, he underwent surgery to remove a cyst in the spring and then, with a game left in the season, had surgery for a herniated disc.
Let’s take a look at how Garrett and Jones handled the latter injury, which occurred when Romo was hurt after a hit early in a game against Washington, kept playing anyway, and then “tweaked” his back while spinning away from a defender. Cowboys owner/general manager/orthopedist Jones diagnosed Romo with “a tightening,” adding that “it wasn’t a contusion.” Jones denied reports that Romo would sit out at least the next game if not the rest of the season. He had “back spasms,” Dr. Jones said. “There is nothing structurally to prevent him from playing.” Garrett added: “Right now we have a quarterback who’s getting treatment.”
While crafting his medical-words salad about Romo’s condition, Jones declined to give details, implying that patient confidentiality mandated discretion. “The facts are there is a lot we can’t comment on,” Jones said before commenting some more. “But the most important thing is if he feels better as the week goes along, there is nothing structurally to prevent him from playing. He might be cleared to play.”
Three days later, Romo had back surgery. Jones dismissed it as no big deal. “The nature of his injury was not alarming,” he told reporters. “It was not complicated.” That’s true. For Jones, the surgery wasn’t complicated at all.
So we’ve covered denial (Romo’s fine!), a little anger (gut punch), and a lot of bargaining (he might play!) You can glimpse depression in the latest Romo saga in the somber reaction to the news that a rookie, Dak Prescott, might take over for the 36-year-old veteran. “We’re not naïve enough to think that a rookie QB can come in here and do” what Romo has done, Stephen Jones said. But acceptance is part of the process, sports fans. We love Tony, Tony’s great, Tony’s coming back. But Dak is working hard. He has command in the huddle! Dak has the highest quarterback rating in the NFL in the preseason! We feel good about Dak!
Whether he retires now or later, Tony Romo’s body is likely to be colossally messed up for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, the NFL’s anti-inflammatory–injecting and opioid-pushing owners and coaches and doctors will keep minimizing injuries and ignoring the long-term health consequences for players—while emphasizing the truly important cost of an injury to a player like Tony Romo. “Really just couldn’t imagine getting that hand dealt to us,” Jerry Jones said last week about the prospect of losing his quarterback. To us. Poor you, Jerry. Poor, poor you.
