Tony Romo says Dallas Cowboys are just a player away, but QB Dak Prescott has to own picks

Tony Romo, the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback turned CBS football analyst, is the betting favorite to win the Invited Celebrity Classic Golf tournament, which begins Friday and runs through Sunday.

Romo is competing alongside the likes of World Golf Hall of Famer Annika Sörenstam, newly retired Major League Baseball star Albert Pujols and Hall of Fame Cowboys Emmitt Smith and DeMarcus Ware in the tournament at Las Colinas Country Club. The tournament will consist of 78 PGA Tour champions players and 40 celebrities for a total of $2.5 million in prize money.

But before Romo could tee off, he was forced to address some questions involving his former team and his successor, Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott.

According to Romo, the Cowboys are a player or two away from being a title team after finishing 12-5 in each of the past two seasons, both ending in playoff losses to the San Francisco 49ers.

They have not won a Super Bowl in 27 years, a span that includes Romo’s 10 years as the Cowboys starting quarterback from 2006-2015.

But Romo believes the team is on the right track.

“I mean, they’ve been so close here for a while,” Romo said. “I would say, among the teams in the playoffs, this was probably as deep from one to about five or six that could win a championship. And Dallas was right there, you know, with the Eagles, with the Chiefs and everyone else. Anyone could have won on any given day. And these games come down to a play, a call, the bounce of the ball, and your job is to try and make it where it doesn’t just come down to that. But it’s why you go get certain people and individuals to be able to create those. And that includes coaching staff, front office, players, everyone involved, and I just think they’re just that player or two away. And that’s played out, obviously for a few years now.”

The Cowboys have won three division titles and have been to the playoffs four times since Prescott took over as quarterback in 2016.

For Prescott and the Cowboys to take the next step, he must rid himself of the turnovers that plagued him in 2022.

Prescott led the NFL with 15 interceptions in just 12 games. He missed five games due to a fractured hand.

It was a stark departure from the previous six years of his career when Prescott was not known as a mistake-prone quarterback.

Many in 2022 were blamed on miscommunication, bad routes by the receivers or passes that were tipped into the hands of the defenders. But Romo said Prescott must own them all and address them, as all interceptions fall on quarterback.

He dealt with the same things during his career with the Cowboys where finished as the team’s all-time leading passer.

“That’s still falls on you,” Romo said, “But that’s why you play quarterback. It’s your job to overcome it, figure it out. But you evaluate every one, and then you go back in and put yourself in that situation, where you literally think about what you thought before the play, the situation, what was the score? What did I go into the game thinking? Was it something they did schematically? Or was it a physical error? If it’s a physical error, and that has come up two or three times now, you got to go to work on that part of your game to eliminate that and get better at that throw.

“Is it because I felt something emotionally like we have to score on this drive to come back? Or did I want to prove something? I mean, there’s all these things that go on. So you start to really just situational them and then go work it.”

At the Invited Classic, Romo will work on avenging a sudden death playoff loss to former pro tennis player Mardy Fish in last year’s event.

The tournament raises money for three regional youth-focused charities, the Momentous Institute, First Tee Dallas and First Tee Fort Worth.