Tony Romo Plays Hero, Keeps Dallas Cowboys in NFC East Contention

For years, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo has been the butt of everyone's jokes. For as many wins as he's led the Cowboys to, and as many yards, touchdowns and big plays he's facilitated, it seems as if his public perception is continually centered around his failures.

Romo have your attention yet? 

In Week 12, he came up big once again with a huge 31-28 prime-time win over the New York Giants. It was a rivalry game on Sunday Night Football, which seems like a perfect time for one of Romo's trademarked game-crushing mistakes. Only this time it never happened, and Dallas improved to 8-3.

Instead, Romo was 18-of-26 for 275 yards (10.6 yards per attempt) and four touchdowns. His last touchdown, to wide receiver Dez Bryant with just over a minute left in the game, put Dallas up for good as the severely underrated Cowboys defense stopped the Giants on the following drive with a turnover on downs. 

It was Romo at his best, but it's not a player we haven't seen before. 

Former Bleacher Report writer Scott Kacsmar has long been one of the loudest voices of clarity on Romo's actual history over and against the contrived narratives about him. As a spearhead of the Pro Football Reference study on game-winning drives and fourth-quarter comebacks, Kacsmar has more than a little skin in the game when we're talking about whether Romo is an all-time choke artist.

Here's what Kacsmar wrote for B/R a couple of years ago:

"

In his career, Tony Romo is 15-23 (.395) in fourth-quarter comeback opportunities. That is the exact same record as Dallas legend Roger Staubach.

You remember him, right? 'Captain Comeback.' Known as one of the 'most clutch players' ever.

Yet somehow, little Tony 'Choker' Romo has produced the exact same record through 38 opportunities in regard to leading the team to victory when trailing by one score in the fourth quarter.

"

The numbers for Romo have changed, and he's actually added a handful of comeback wins since then, but the idea that he is a choker hasn't become any less pervasive. Even as we collectively admit Romo has some talent at this whole football thing, we collectively wonder whether he has enough "it" (whatever it is) to get the Cowboys to the proverbial mountaintop. 

The only thing he was missing tonight was the red cape. 

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Romo didn't do it alone against New York. First, he had a lot of help from the Giants themselves.

Other than the fantastic play of rookie wideout Odell Beckham Jr., the Giants offense sputtered and stopped for most of the night. Some of that credit goes to the Cowboys defense, but much of the dishonor goes to quarterback Eli Manning, who was 29-of-40 passing but couldn't find a rhythm with any wideout other than Beckham.

For much of the game, the Giants offense was a balance of mediocre running and screen passes, with incredible plays from Beckham sprinkled on top. In a hard-fought rivalry matchup, that was almost enough to beat the Cowboys. 

Except for Romo; he was the difference. 

For the Cowboys, running back DeMarco Murray paced the offense with 121 yards. He has now rushed for over 100 yards in 10 out of 11 games this season. The offensive line had a superb performance, keeping Romo clean (two sacks on the night)—especially in the final minutes where the NBC on-air timer showed the Dallas signal-caller having upward of seven seconds to throw some of the passes on his game-winning drive. 

Murray's effectiveness and the offensive line's impact gave Romo all of the time he could have wanted, and the defense slammed the door. Romo didn't do it all, but he did everything asked of him. 

Elsa/Getty Images

That's the point, isn't it? For years, as a nation of football fans remembered the worst of Romo, we were ignoring all of the times he pulled his pedestrian teammates out of the frying pan. Sure, sometimes that just ended up in the fire anyway, but no NFL quarterback bats .1000, and few have done as well as Romo. 

So, we can hardly discount Romo when his teammates finally aren't letting him down. This is similar to what "Captain Comeback" himself, Roger Staubach, told me a couple of weeks ago about Romo:

"

Just look at the facts. Look at what he’s done. The statistics are phenomenal. He’s also been very effective in the fourth quarter. Yeah, he's made some mistakes, but that's going to happen to anyone who plays in the NFL long enough.

When you don’t have the kind of support you need. Sometimes your mistakes look worse than you are. He’s performed at a very high level. Guy is a great football player. You have to have a player that transfers his confidence to the rest of the team and Tony does that.

"

Staubach also praised the offensive line and improved defense for being that support Romo needs. 

This isn't a team carrying its quarterback. This is what it looks like when a quarterback finally isn't dragging a bunch of dead weight behind him, and the rest of the team decides to start pitching in with a little regularity. 

With Sunday night's win, the Cowboys remain mathematically tied for the NFC East lead with the 8-3 Philadelphia Eagles. Though, at the moment, the Eagles have a better divisional win percentage which would give them the tiebreaker. 

This puts the Cowboys in great position for the rest of the season, as they have two games against the Eagles in the next three weeks and a pretty fair schedule overall. Other than the Eagles, the Cowboys have to play Chicago, Washington and Indianapolis, so even a downright pessimist could easily see Dallas finishing the season at 11-5, which would be its best record since 2009. 

Frank Franklin II/Associated Press

The Eagles, for their part, have Seattle, Washington and the Giants to contend with outside of their two games with the Cowboys. That makes the strength of the rest of their schedule pretty much a wash with Dallas.

This is the kind of situation people mean when they say a team "controls its own destiny." The Cowboys truly do control their own destiny for the rest of 2014. While not mathematically a lock for the playoffs in a competitive NFC, they would need a big collapse as they sit not only near the top of the NFC East but atop the wild-card standings as well. 

With Romo at the helm and with the help he has around him this season, it's time to stop betting against Dallas.

Michael Schottey is an NFL National Lead Writer for Bleacher Report and an award-winning member of the Pro Football Writers of America. Find more of his stuff on his archive page and follow him on Twitter.