Remember back to that fateful primetime game against the New York Giants when former Cowboys head coach Bill Parcells had finally seen enough of the sinking ship that was Drew Bledsoe, pulled the trigger at halftime and went with undrafted free agent Tony Romo at quarterback.
It was a fun time in Cowboys history, when Cowboys fans realized they finally had a long-term quarterback they'd been searching for since the days of Troy Aikman, Super Bowls and The Triplets. Romo has yet to win more than one playoff game as the Cowboys starting quarterback, but he's held that position now for going on a decade.
Parcells says in his new authorized biography that he did Romo a big favor by not playing him for a couple of years and letting him marinate on the bench and in the film room while watching Bledsoe, a seasoned pro, work.
“If I had put in Romo in his first year and just let him play, he would have been out of football in a year and a half," Parcells said in his book. "He was just a gunslinger. He was indiscriminate. And he would do [expletive] that you just can’t succeed doing. But after a year or two of practicing in the preseason, getting his [reps], you could see he had a real good chance to come along.”
There are several other good tidbits from Parcells' short run as the Cowboys' coach, which included two playoff berths, in the book "Parcells: A Football Life," detailed here in The Dallas Morning News.
